, that he should have chosen this for his song? With moist
eyes his friends looked back through the darkness, for well they knew
that home was very near to this wanderer. Gradually the voice died away
into a hum, and was absorbed once more into the masterful silence of the
desert.

"My dear old chap, I hope you're not hurt?" said Belmont, laying his
hand upon Cochrane's knee.

The Colonel had straightened himself, though he still gasped a little in
his breathing.

"I am all right again, now. Would you kindly show me which was the man
who struck me?"

"It was the fellow in front there--with his camel beside Fardet's."

"The young fellow with the moustache--I can't see him very well in this
light, but I think I could pick him out again. Thank you, Belmont!"

"But I thought some of your ribs were gone."

"No, it only knocked the wind out of me."

"You must be made of iron. It was a frightful blow. How could you
rally from it so quickly?"

The Colonel cleared his throat and hummed and stammered.

"The fact is, my dear Belmont--I'm sure you would not let it go
further--above all not to the ladies; but I am rather older than I used
to be, and rather than lose the military carriage which has always been
dear to me, I--"

"Stays, be Jove!" cried the astonished Irishman.

"Well, some slight artificial support," said the Colonel stiffly, and
switched the conversation off to the chances of the morrow.

It still comes back in their dreams to those who are left, that long
night's march in the desert. It was like a dream itself, the silence of
it as they were borne forward upon those soft, shuffling sponge feet,
and the flitting, flickering figures which oscillated upon every side of
them. The whole universe seemed to be hung as a monstrous time-dial in
front of them. A star would glimmer like a lantern on the very level of
their path. They looked again, and it was a hand's-breadth up, and
another was shining beneath it. Hour after hour the broad stream flowed
sedately across the deep blue background, worlds and systems drifting
majestically overhead, and pouring over the dark horizon. In their
vastness and their beauty there was a vague consolation to the
prisoners; for their own fate, and their own individuality, seemed
trivial and unimportant amid the play of such tremendous forces.
Slowly the grand procession swept across the heaven, first climbing,
then hanging long with little apparent motion, and th