when that lead seemed sufficient, they must put on all possible
speed to make the crossing through the hills into the Nile valley
ahead of their pursuers. Once more he stirred their lagging camels
into a jogging trot....

It was around the middle of the afternoon now, and it had been noon
since their tongues had tasted water. Arlee felt her mouth parched
and her tongue dry and curling; her skin was feverishly hot; her
whole body burned and ached, and her head was giddy with the heat
and the hunger. But she thought how little a thing it was to be hot
and hungry and tired--when one was free. And she drew the silver
shawl closer over her head and wrapped the silken tunic of her frock
about her scorching shoulders, and clung tight to the pommel of her
big saddle as her beast pounded on and on in his lurching stride.

* * * * *

It had been some time since they had seen the dots, and now the road
ahead of them, like the former path they had abandoned, was turning
more and more to the left, winding in and out the low and broken
foothills, and as they followed its course with increasing security,
Billy began to tell himself that their fears had been unfounded and
the alarming horsemen were merely following their own route south.

And then he heard a whistle.

A prescience of danger shot through him. His fears returned a
hundredfold. Sharply he scanned the way about them, but nothing was
in sight. The whistle was not repeated; he could have imagined that
he dreamed it. An utter stillness possessed the wilderness.

And then around the corner of a jutting rock ahead of them a
horseman trotted, a big black man on a gray horse, and reined in,
waiting, facing them. Arlee gave a choking cry.

"The eunuch!" she gasped out.

Behind them Billy flung a lightning glance, and over the heads of
the dunes two more riders appeared, converging down upon them from
the rear. Three in sight--how many more behind the rocks?

Desperately Billy gripped his bridle rope, and with a wrenching pull
and a whack of his guiding stick he turned his camel sharply to the
left, snatching at Arlee's bridle rope as the beasts bumped against
each other in their surprise.

"Quick--this way," Billy commanded, and with the left hand clutching
the girl's rope, with the right he wielded the stick furiously. Out
over the sand both camels plunged, goaded into wild speed by such
violent measures, and a cheated yell broke from t