a's childlike worship, he might have
pulled himself together after the starting of the caravan. But, as it
was, there were black thoughts to be chased away, and the simplest
receipt for replacing them with bright ones was to fill his head with
fumes of whisky.

When Sanda, riding behind her curtains, or shrinking in her tent, heard
Stanton cursing the negro porters, and roaring profane abuse at the
camels and camel-drivers, she did not know that he was drunk; but the
men knew, and, being sober by religion, ceased to respect him. Among
themselves, they began to question the wisdom of his orders, and suspect
him of treachery toward themselves. Losing faith in the leader, they
lost faith in the wonderful hidden oasis he sought, the oasis peopled by
rich Egyptians who had vanished into the desert to escape persecution
after the Sixth Dynasty. Arabs and negroes said it must be true after
all that the "Chief" was mad, and they had been mad to trust themselves
to him, or to believe in the mysterious city lost beyond unexplored
mountains and shifting dunes which were but shrouds for dead men. He was
either deliberately leading them all to death, for the insane pleasure
of it, or else he had some plan for making his own fortune by selling
his escort as slaves. Men began to desert whenever they came to an
attractive stopping-place where there was food and water. They feigned
illness, or fled in the night with their camels into the vastness of the
desert, their faces turned once more to the west. For soon, if they
stayed, they would pass beyond the zone of known oases, into the
terrible land of mystery, charted by no man, a land where it was said
the sun had dried up all the springs of water. So the caravan dwindled
as slowly, painfully it moved toward the east; and even while he hated
him, Max was sometimes moved to pity for the harassed leader. Stanton
grew haggard as the desert closed in round him and his disaffected
followers; but there were days when, instead of sympathizing
reluctantly, Max cursed the explorer for a brute, and cursed himself for
saving the brute's life. There were days when Stanton shot or whipped a
Soudanese for an impudent word, or ordered a forced march because Sanda
had sent to beg respite for some wretch struck down with fever whom she
was nursing.

As the men lost faith in Stanton and his vision of the Lost Oasis they
attached themselves fanatically to the wife of their Chief, the "Little
White Moon,