ht, although I could not explain it to the Abati
crowd, that if you lived at all, you would almost certainly head for
the hills as I knew you had no compass, and you would not be able to
see anything else. So I rode along the plain which stretches between the
desert and the mountains, keeping on the edge of the sand-hills. I rode
all day, but when night came I halted, since I could see no more. There
I sat in that great place, thinking, and after an hour or two I observed
Pharaoh prick his ears and look toward the west. So I also started
toward the west, and presently I thought that I saw one faint streak
of light which seemed to go upward, and therefore couldn't come from a
falling star, but might have come from a rifle fired toward the sky.

"I listened, but no sound reached me, only presently, some seconds
afterwards, the dog again pricked his ears as though _he_ heard
something. That settled me, and I mounted and rode forward through the
night toward the place where I thought I had seen the flash. For two
hours I rode, firing my revolver from time to time; then as no answer
came, gave it up as a bad job, and stopped. But Pharaoh there wouldn't
stop. He began to whine and sniff and run forward, and at last bolted
into the darkness, out of which presently I heard him barking some
hundreds of yards away, to call me, I suppose. So I followed and found
you three gentlemen, dead, as I thought at first. That's all the story,
Captain."

"One with a good end, anyway, Sergeant. We owe our lives to you."

"Beg your pardon, Captain," answered Quick modestly; "not to me at all,
but to Providence first that arranged everything, before we were born
perhaps, and next to Pharaoh. He's a wise dog, Pharaoh, though fierce
with some, and you did a good deal when you bought him for a bottle of
whisky and a sixpenny pocket-knife."

It was dawn on the following morning before we sighted the oasis,
whither we could travel but slowly, since, owing to the lack of camels,
two of us must walk. Of these two, as may be guessed, the Sergeant was
always one and his master the other, for of all the men I ever knew I
think that in such matters Orme is the most unselfish. Nothing would
induce him to mount one of the camels, even for half-an-hour, so that
when I walked, the brute went riderless. On the other hand, once he was
on, notwithstanding the agonies he suffered from his soreness, nothing
would induce Higgs to get off.

"Here I am and h