the waste, and a
dark-brown snake flitting across their path. Nothing all day save these,
and nothing all the sleepless night save a desert wolf stealing down
the sands. Macnamara's eyes burned in his head with weariness, his body
became numb, but Mahommed Mahmoud would allow no pause. They must get so
far ahead the first two days that Abdullah's pursuers might not overtake
them, he said. Beyond Dongola, at a place appointed, other camels would
await them, if Mahmoud's tribesmen there kept faith.

For two days and nights Macnamara had not slept, for forty-six hours
he had been constantly in the saddle, but Mahommed Mahmoud allowed him
neither sleep nor rest.

Dongola came at last, lying far away on their right. With Dongola, fresh
camels; and the desert flight began again. Hour after hour, and not a
living thing; and then, at last, a group of three Arabs on camels going
south, far over to their right. These suddenly turned and rode down on
them.

"We must fight," said Mahmoud; "for they see you are no Arab."

"I'll take the one with the jibbeh," said Macnamara coolly, with a
pistol in his left hand and a sword in his right. "I'll take him first.
Here's the tap off yer head, me darlin's!" he added as they turned and
faced the dervishes.

"We must kill them all, or be killed," said Mahmoud, as the dervishes
suddenly stopped, and the one with the jibbeh called to Mahmoud:

"Whither do you fly with the white Egyptian?"

"If you come and see you will know, by the mercy of God!" answered
Mahmoud.

The next instant the dervishes charged. Macnamara marked his man, and
the man with the jibbeh fell from his camel. Mahmoud fired his carbine,
missed, and closed with his enemy. Macnamara, late of the 7th Hussars,
swung his Arab sword as though it were the regulation blade and he in
sword practice at Aldershot, and catching the blade of his desert foe,
saved his own neck and gave the chance of a fair hand-to-hand combat.

He met the swift strokes of the dervish with a cool certainty. His
weariness passed from him; the joy of battle was on him. He was wounded
twice-in the shoulder and the head. Now he took the offensive. Once
or twice he circled slowly round the dervish, whose eyes blazed, whose
mouth was foaming with fury; then he came on him with all the knowledge
and the skill he had got in little Indian wars. He came on him, and the
dervish fell, his head cut through like a cheese.

Then Macnamara turned, to see Mahmo