have nursed you. Now my father's friend, and my friend,
who to-night has saved my life, lies wounded. If you leave him, you
leave me, too, for I stay as his nurse. What do you decide?"

Stanton was on her in two strides. Seizing her arm he twisted it with a
savage wrench and flung her tottering behind him. The pain forced a cry
from the girl, and Ahmara laughed. That was more than the men could
stand, for to them Sanda was always the White Angel, Ahmara the Black;
and over there by the fire they had discussed a deputation to Stanton,
announcing that, since starting, they had heard too much evil of the
haunted Libyan desert to dare venture across its waterless wastes. The
spirit of mutiny was in them, having smouldered and flashed up,
smouldered and flamed again at Stanton's cruelty. This was too much! The
spark was fired. A Senegalese whom Sanda had cured of a scorpion bite--a
black giant to whom Max had lent his camel when Stanton would have left
him in the desert--leaped like a tiger on the Chief. Steel flashed under
the moon, and Stanton fell back without a groan, striking the hard sand
and staining it red.

For an instant there was silence. Then burst forth a wild shout of hate
and joy....

CHAPTER XXIX

OUT OF THE DREAM, A PLAN

Stanton was dead, hacked in pieces by the men he had cursed and beaten.
Ahmara had fled to Dardai to live as she could by her beauty; and the
murderers, taking with them, in a rage of haste and terror, camels,
water, and provisions, had disappeared. The caravan of the great
explorer had vanished like a mirage; and the Lost Oasis lay hidden
forever from despoiling eyes and hands in the uncharted Libyan desert.

At dawn Sanda sat beside Max in his tent, where two of the few men who
remained had carried him. Through the hideous hours he had lain as one
dead. But light, touching his eyelids, waked him with a shuddering
start.

"You!" he whispered. "Safe! I've had horrible dreams."

"Only dreams," she soothed him.

"How pale you are!" He stared at her, still half dazed.

"Perhaps it's the light."

"No, it's not the light. I remember now.... What happened after
he--I----"

"I'll tell you when you're stronger."

"I'm strong enough for anything. Only a little odd in my head."

"And your poor wounded hand? I bathed it and bandaged it again, and you
never knew."

"Queer! I thought if I were dead I should have known if you touched me!"
He spoke more to himself than to Sanda