e to drink,
mate?"

"Nothing, thankee. I'm allowanced by the doctor even in the matter o'
tea and coffee," said the sergeant. "As to bein' an' old man--well, I
ain't much older than yourself, I daresay, though wounds and sickness
and physic are apt to age a man in looks."

Sitting down beside the sailors, Hardy told of the great fight at
McNeill's zereba, and how Molloy and others of his friends had gone to
rescue a comrade and been cut off. He relieved Fred's mind, however, by
taking the most hopeful view of the matter, as he had previously
relieved the feelings of Marion. And then the three fell to chatting on
things in general and the war in particular.

"Now don't this feel homelike?" said Sam, looking round the room with
great satisfaction. "If it wasn't for the heat I'd a'most think we was
in a temperance coffee-house in old England."

"Or owld Ireland," chimed in a sailor at the neighbouring table.

"To say naething o' auld Scotland," added a rugged man in red hair, who
sat beside him.

"Well, messmate," assented Fred, "it _do_ feel homelike, an' no mistake.
Why, what ever is _that_?"

The sailor paused, and held up a finger as if to impose silence while he
listened, but there was no need to enforce silence, for at that moment
the sweet strains of a harmonium were heard at the other end of the long
room, and quietude profound descended on the company as a rich baritone
voice sang, with wonderful pathos, the familiar notes and words of
"Home, Sweet Home!"

Before that song was finished many a warrior there had to fight
desperately with his own spirit to conceal the fact that his eyes were
full of tears. Indeed, not a few of them refused to fight at all, but,
ingloriously lowering their colours, allowed the tell-tale drops to
course over their bronzed faces, as they thought of sweethearts and
wives and friends and home circles and "the light of other days."

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

LED INTO CAPTIVITY.

We turn once more to the Nubian desert, where, it will be remembered, we
left several of our friends, cut off from McNeill's zereba at a critical
moment when they were all but overwhelmed by a host of foes.

The grand-looking Arab who had so opportunely appeared on the scene and
arrested the spears which were about to finish the career of Jack Molloy
was no other than the man who had been saved by Miles from the bullet of
his comrade Rattling Bill. A kind act had in this case received its
appr