d Frank to himself, "and what are they going
to do to these unfortunate wretches?"

But he already knew, and a terrible feeling of dread made his heart
contract as if it stood still; there was a strangling sensation at his
throat which checked his breathing, and the crowd in the open space swam
slowly round him, making him feel that in his giddiness he would the
next minute fall off his horse.

Then his heart began to throb violently, and an intense desire attacked
him to press the beautiful creature he rode with his heels and gallop
right away so as to hide the scene from his eyes. But directly after
the knowledge that he had so much at stake came in reaction, and he felt
that happen what might he must sit there, not showing the slightest
emotion, bearing everything, for no effort upon his part could alter the
fate of prisoners taken in what was no doubt a revolt against superior
authority, that authority being one of the most cruel and bloodthirsty
rulers of a cruel and bloodthirsty race.

"It is inevitable," he thought, and the words he had said rose to his
mind, as he felt and knew from all he had heard about the new Mahdi's
followers that if the fight had gone otherwise on the previous night the
Emir's people who were prisoners would have met with a similar fate.

"`All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword,'" he
muttered, and then the power to stir seemed to have left him, as he sat
cold and stony in his saddle to witness whatever might come.

He was not long left in doubt.

The prisoners were in three bodies, strongly guarded, each group by a
couple of score or so of fierce-looking, well-armed men, some bearing
round shields in one hand, three spears of different lengths in the
other, while others wore swords only, hanging from a broad baldric, and
looking with their cross hilts and long, straight blades very similar to
those seen in illuminations and on effigies of the old crusaders, saving
that the blade widened out a little towards the point, and narrowed
again.

The prisoners were all fine-looking young men, fierce and savage of
aspect, and doubtless accustomed to deal out slaughter, torture, and
horrible cruelties amongst the conquered people of the Soudan; but to
Frank as he sat there the idea of their being slain before his eyes in
cold blood half maddened him, filling him with an intense desire to be
one of a retributive army whose task it would be to sweep their
conquerors from th