. The non-commissioned officer hurried toward
him, saluting as his heels clicked together before his superior.

"Take this black dog back to his people," he ordered. "See that they
leave at once. Shoot the first man who comes within range of camp
tonight."

Sheik Amor ben Khatour drew himself up to his full height. His evil
eyes narrowed. He raised the bag of gold level with the eyes of the
French officer.

"You will pay more than this for the life of Achmet ben Houdin, my
sister's son," he said. "And as much again for the name that you have
called me and a hundred fold in sorrow in the bargain."

"Get out of here!" growled Captain Armand Jacot, "before I kick you
out."

All of this happened some three years before the opening of this tale.
The trail of Achmet ben Houdin and his accomplices is a matter of
record--you may verify it if you care to. He met the death he
deserved, and he met it with the stoicism of the Arab.

A month later little Jeanne Jacot, the seven-year-old daughter of
Captain Armand Jacot, mysteriously disappeared. Neither the wealth of
her father and mother, or all the powerful resources of the great
republic were able to wrest the secret of her whereabouts from the
inscrutable desert that had swallowed her and her abductor.

A reward of such enormous proportions was offered that many adventurers
were attracted to the hunt. This was no case for the modern detective
of civilization, yet several of these threw themselves into the
search--the bones of some are already bleaching beneath the African sun
upon the silent sands of the Sahara.

Two Swedes, Carl Jenssen and Sven Malbihn, after three years of
following false leads at last gave up the search far to the south of
the Sahara to turn their attention to the more profitable business of
ivory poaching. In a great district they were already known for their
relentless cruelty and their greed for ivory. The natives feared and
hated them. The European governments in whose possessions they worked
had long sought them; but, working their way slowly out of the north
they had learned many things in the no-man's-land south of the Sahara
which gave them immunity from capture through easy avenues of escape
that were unknown to those who pursued them. Their raids were sudden
and swift. They seized ivory and retreated into the trackless wastes
of the north before the guardians of the territory they raped could be
made aware of their presence.