ack his words, when with a surprising
swiftness the Arab let go his hold, and getting one in on the point,
sent the Englishman reeling backwards to fall in a heap against the
base of the pyramid, and then to scramble to his feet, too dizzy to
stop his adversary, who, flinging the veil over the woman's face,
passed swiftly to the place where awaited the camels.

And too slow was Jack Wetherbourne to gain the spot in time to stop the
flight of the camel which with its double burden was already racing
straight ahead into the desert; and too bemused by the blow to
recognise the fact when he did get there that the hired brute he was
staggering too was built for speed in the image of the tortoise
compared to the hare-like-for-swiftness contour of the abandoned beauty
who had strolled to the spot from the other side of the pyramid, and
quite undisturbed was watching her sister's hurried departure into the
unknown.

CHAPTER XXXIX

All our lives we all chase wraiths in the moonshine! Be the wraiths
the outcome of proximity in the garden under the silvery moon rays,
which so often snap the trap about our unwary feet by rounding off the
physical angles of our momentary heart's desires, or lending point to
the stub ends of their undeveloped mentality; or the wraiths of the
midnight soul, otherwise disarranged nervous or digested system, which
float invitingly, distractingly, tantalisingly in front of our
clogged-by-sleep vision at night; turning out, however, in the early
light heralding the early cup of tea, to be nothing more soul
distracting than the good old brass knob adorning the end of the
bedstead.

But Jack Wetherbourne's wraiths, which he was chasing in the moonlight,
were good honest humans with the requisite number of legs and arms
wrapped in good, white raiment; one of which humans with the other in
his arms sat astride a camel, who made up by her muscular development
whatever she might lack in goodness of heart and honesty of purpose;
she too being wrapped in the silvery drapery which the moon throws
pell-mell around pyramid and mud hut, humble fellah, descendant maybe
of some long dead Pharaoh, and the jocular, jubilant millionaire, who
with luck can trace a grandfather.

But chase he ever so eagerly, Jack Wetherbourne could barely keep his
quarry in sight as on and on sped the racing camel with that curious
slithering gait which denotes great speed, whilst the wind caught at
Jill's veil, blowing it thi