e land and back into the wild districts from which
they had flocked in response to the hoisting of the Mahdi's standard of
war with its promise of blood, treasure, and slaves.

"They are savages--savages," he muttered. "Why do such wretches cumber
the earth?"

At that moment he felt the young Emir's hand upon his arm, and he
started as if from some horrible nightmare to see the young man's
smiling face before him, and followed the direction of his pointing
hand.

For the horrible scene which he had been brought to see as a pleasant
sight, was the execution of some of the men who had risen against the
Emir and his friend.

It was a scene that, but for its truth and that it was but one of the
many horrors of its kind which stained the domination of the Khalifa and
his people, were better left unpenned--one of those which show the need
for retributive justice and the strong hand of a power whose strength
should at once crush down the vile rule of cruelty and crime against
modern civilisation and peace.

For as Frank's eyes followed the pointing hand it was to see that the
wholesale murder of the prisoners had begun, and that the preparations
he had supposed to be scaffolding for some fresh buildings were but part
of the horror he was to witness. Already ropes had been fastened round
the necks of three of the miserable prisoners, who were drawn up hanging
from a crossbeam; and as the crowds shouted in their triumph more and
more were drawn up, till quite twenty were suspended, quivering for a
brief time and then swinging slowly, becoming motionless and dead.

Fascinated and helpless, Frank gazed, till a loud shouting drew his eyes
to another group nearer to him, and there, bound and kneeling, with a
spear-armed man in front and a dozen more behind, were some thirty of
those who were never to look again upon the glory of the fast-sinking
sun.

But there was no struggling--no sign of resistance. The prisoners knelt
bare-headed, their faces proud and calm, and for the most part silent,
save where here and there one turned smiling to his companion to right
or left, as if to say a few words of encouragement, though for the most
part they gazed straight before them at their guards, and in imagination
it seemed to the young Englishman that they were bidding their enemies
see how brave men dared to die.

It was the hideous rule of the Mahdi and the sword, for as Frank looked,
one who seemed to be an officer, in flowing