ers had had some good-natured laughter at his expense,
for he was not quite skilful enough to deceive the critical European
intelligence. But now it looked as if this piece of obvious palming
might be the point upon which all their fates would hang. A deep hum of
surprise rose from the ring of Arabs, and deepened as the Frenchman drew
another date from the nostril of a camel and tossed it into the air,
from which, apparently, it never descended. That gaping sleeve was
obvious enough to his companions, but the dim light was all in favour
of the performer. So delighted and interested was the audience that they
paid little heed to a mounted camel-man who trotted swiftly between the
palm trunks. All might have been well had not Fardet, carried away by
his own success, tried to repeat his trick once more, with the result
that the date fell out of his palm and the deception stood revealed.
In vain he tried to pass on at once to another of his little stock. The
Moolah said something, and an Arab struck Fardet across the shoulders
with the thick shaft of his spear.

"We have had enough child's play," said the angry priest. "Are we men or
babes, that you should try to impose upon us in this manner? Here is the
cross and the Koran--which shall it be?"

Fardet looked helplessly round at his companions.

"I can do no more; you asked for five minutes. You have had them," said
he to Colonel Cochrane.

"And perhaps it is enough," the soldier answered. "Here are the Emirs."

The camel-man, whose approach they had heard from afar, had made for the
two Arab chiefs, and had delivered a brief report to them, stabbing
with his forefinger in the direction from which he had come. There was a
rapid exchange of words between the Emirs, and then they strode forward
together to the group around the prisoners. Bigots and barbarians, they
were none the less two most majestic men, as they advanced through the
twilight of the palm grove. The fierce old greybeard raised his hand
and spoke swiftly in short, abrupt sentences, and his savage followers
yelped to him like hounds to a huntsman. The fire that smouldered in his
arrogant eyes shone back at him from a hundred others. Here were to
be read the strength and danger of the Mahdi movement; here in these
convulsed faces, in that fringe of waving arms, in these frantic,
red-hot souls, who asked nothing better than a bloody death, if their
own hands might be bloody when they met it.

"Have the pri