g of dogs is a prize, indeed! And--what now--"

Leclair did not answer. The Frenchman was not even near him. The
Master saw him in the wady, dimly visible through the ghostly white
sand-shrouds spinning in the blue-whipped fire-glare. There on hands
and knees the lieutenant was huddled. With eager hands he was tearing
the hood of a _za'abut_--a rough, woolen slave cloak, patched and
ragged--from the face of a prostrate figure more than half snowed
under a sand-drift.

"_Nom de Dieu!_" the Master heard him cry. "_Mais, nom de_--"

"What have you found, Lieutenant?" shouted the Master, letting the
simoom drive him toward the wady. In their excitement none of the men
would yet take cover, lie down and hide their faces under their coats
as every dictate of prudence would have bidden. "Who is it, now?
What--"

"Ah, my Captain! Ah! the pity of it! Behold!"

The Frenchman's voice, wind-gusted, trembled with grief and passionate
anger; yet through that rage and sorrow rang a note of joy.

"Tell me, Leclair! Who, now?" demanded the Master, as he came close
and peered down by the fire-gleam roaring on the beach, sending
sheaves of sparks in comet-tails of vanishing radiance down-wind with
rushing sand.

"It is impossible, my Captain," the lieutenant answered in French. His
voice could now make itself heard more clearly; for here in the wady
a certain shelter existed from the roaring sand-cyclone. "Impossible,
but--_Dieu_!--it is true!"

"What is true?"

"Incredible, yet--_voila_!"

"In Allah's name, Lieutenant!" the Master ejaculated, "compose
yourself! Explain! Who is this Arab, here?"

"No Arab, sir! No, no!"

"Not an Arab? Well, what is he, then?"

"Ah, these scars, my Captain! Behold--see the slave dress, the weals
of the branding-iron on cheek and brow! Ah, for pity! See the starved
body, the stripes of the lash, the feet mangled by the bastinado! What
horrible things they have done to him--ah, God have pity on us!"

Tears gleamed on the stern fighter's cheeks, there in the ghostly blue
firelight--tears that washed little courses through the dust and sand
now griming his face. The French airman, hard in battle and with heart
of steel and flame, was crying like a child.

"What now? Who is it?" shouted the Master. "A European?"

"Yes, my Captain! A Frenchman!"

"A Frenchman. You don't mean to say it--is--"

"Yes, yes! My orderly! Lebon!"

"God!" exclaimed the Master. "But--"

A cry from Rrisa interru