ad.

Baynes turned weakly in the direction of the shore to see Malbihn drawn
up upon his elbows levelling his rifle at him. The Englishman slid to
the bottom of the canoe as a bullet whizzed above him. Malbihn, sore
hit, took longer in aiming, nor was his aim as sure as formerly. With
difficulty Baynes turned himself over on his belly and grasping his
revolver in his right hand drew himself up until he could look over the
edge of the canoe.

Malbihn saw him instantly and fired; but Baynes did not flinch or duck.
With painstaking care he aimed at the target upon the shore from which
he now was drifting with the current. His finger closed upon the
trigger--there was a flash and a report, and Malbihn's giant frame
jerked to the impact of another bullet.

But he was not yet dead. Again he aimed and fired, the bullet
splintering the gunwale of the canoe close by Baynes' face. Baynes
fired again as his canoe drifted further down stream and Malbihn
answered from the shore where he lay in a pool of his own blood. And
thus, doggedly, the two wounded men continued to carry on their weird
duel until the winding African river had carried the Hon. Morison
Baynes out of sight around a wooded point.

Chapter 23

Meriem had traversed half the length of the village street when a score
of white-robed Negroes and half-castes leaped out upon her from the
dark interiors of surrounding huts. She turned to flee, but heavy
hands seized her, and when she turned at last to plead with them her
eyes fell upon the face of a tall, grim, old man glaring down upon her
from beneath the folds of his burnous.

At sight of him she staggered back in shocked and terrified surprise.
It was The Sheik!

Instantly all the old fears and terrors of her childhood returned upon
her. She stood trembling before this horrible old man, as a murderer
before the judge about to pass sentence of death upon him. She knew
that The Sheik recognized her. The years and the changed raiment had
not altered her so much but what one who had known her features so well
in childhood would know her now.

"So you have come back to your people, eh?" snarled The Sheik. "Come
back begging for food and protection, eh?"

"Let me go," cried the girl. "I ask nothing of you, but that you let
me go back to the Big Bwana."

"The Big Bwana?" almost screamed The Sheik, and then followed a stream
of profane, Arabic invective against the white man whom all the
tran