y can smell water miles away, and would always, if
unguided, make for it."

At ten in the evening Edgar rode into the Bedouins' encampment, having
passed over eighty miles since leaving the Pyramid. Sidi's party had
arrived there half an hour earlier, and he found that his friend was now
in the tent of the sheik. Edgar went there at once, and Sidi introduced
him to his uncle, who was some years older than his father.

"I am rejoiced to see you," the sheik said gravely. "I heard how you had
before befriended Sidi, and the messenger who arrived here told us how
you had saved the lives of my brother and nephew, and I wanted to see
your face.

"Truly you are young, indeed, to have done such wonderful deeds, and to
have so much wisdom, as well as courage. Sidi tells me that some fifteen
hundred of the Frankish cavalry are riding hither."

"I think that there can be no doubt of it," Edgar replied. "Certainly
they have gone to the wells of Orab. We left them but a short distance
from it. They will camp there to-night. They may, for aught I know,
change their direction to-morrow, but in any case it will be three days
before they are here. They would not journey more than twenty miles a
day."

"They are too strong for us to fight," the sheik said. "I was at the
battle near Cairo, though, as we arrived late, and did not know at what
point my brother's men were gathered, I did not join them, but when all
was over rode off with Mourad and his Mamelukes. I can put but six
hundred horsemen in the field at short notice; though, had I a week's
time, I could call up another four hundred, who are encamped at some
wells far away to the west. But even were they here I could not venture
to engage in open fight with fifteen hundred Franks.

"I have given orders that at daybreak the tents shall be struck, and all
the women and children, with the baggage and as many bunches of dates as
the camels can carry, shall start at once for the wells of Azim, seventy
miles away. It is a long journey, and there is no water by the way, so
there is no fear of the French following. There are already a hundred of
my tents there, for although this oasis is a large one, being nigh eight
miles long and two wide, it is not large enough for the whole of my
people. The one at Azim is smaller, but it will support us for a time;
and there is an abundance of water for the camels, which number twelve
hundred, and the sheep and goats, of which there are about two