en the Emir spoke to Mansoor.

"The chief wishes to know which of you four is the richest man?" said
the dragoman. His fingers were twitching with nervousness and plucking
incessantly at the front of his covercoat.

"Why does he wish to know?" asked the Colonel.

"I do not know."

"But it is evident," cried Monsieur Fardet. "He wishes to know which is
the best worth keeping for his ransom."

"I think we should see this thing through together," said the Colonel.
"It's really for you to decide, Stephens, for I have no doubt that you
are the richest of us."

"I don't know that I am," the lawyer answered; "but in any case, I have
no wish to be placed upon a different footing to the others."

The Emir spoke again in his harsh rasping voice.

"He says," Mansoor translated, "that the baggage-camels are spent, and
that there is only one beast left which can keep up. It is ready now
for one of you, and you have to decide among yourselves which is to have
it. If one is richer than the others, he will have the preference."

"Tell him that we are all equally rich."

"In that case he says that you are to choose at once which is to have
the camel."

"And the others?"

The dragoman shrugged his shoulders.

"Well," said the Colonel, "if only one of us is to escape, I think you
fellows will agree with me that it ought to be Belmont, since he is the
married man."

"Yes, yes, let it be Monsieur Belmont," cried Fardet.

"I think so also," said Stephens.

But the Irishman would not hear of it.

"No, no, share and share alike," he cried. "All sink or all swim, and
the devil take the flincher."

They wrangled among themselves until they became quite heated in this
struggle of unselfishness. Some one had said that the Colonel should go
because he was the oldest, and the Colonel was a very angry man.

"One would think I was an octogenarian," he cried. "These remarks are
quite uncalled for."

"Well, then," said Belmont, "let us all refuse to go."

"But this is not very wise," cried the Frenchman. "See, my friends!
Here are the ladies being carried off alone. Surely it would be far
better that one of us should be with them to advise them."

They looked at one another in perplexity. What Fardet said was
obviously true, but how could one of them desert his comrades? The Emir
himself suggested the solution.

"The chief says," said Mansoor, "that if you cannot settle who is to go,
you had better leave it to Al