an 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 prisoners embraced the true faith?" asked the Emir
Abderrahman, looking at them with his cruel eyes.

The Moolah had his reputation to preserve, and it was not for him to
confess to a failure.

"They were about to embrace it, when--

"Let it rest for a little time, O Moolah." He gave an order, and the
Arabs all sprang for their camels. The Emir Wad Ibrahim filed off at
once with nearly half the party. The others were mounted and ready,
with their rifles unslung.

"What's happened?" asked Belmont.

"Things are looking up," cried the Colonel. "By George, I think we are
going to come through all right. The Gippy Camel Corps ar