e others
fathomed the reason of it, but some instinct flashed it upon Stephens's
horrified perceptions.

"Oh, you villain!" he cried furiously. "Hold your tongue, you miserable
creature! Be silent! Better die--a thousand times better die!"

But it was too late, and already they could all see the base design by
which the coward hoped to save his own life. He was about to betray the
women. They saw the chief, with a brave man's contempt upon his stern
face, make a sign of haughty assent, and then Mansoor spoke rapidly and
earnestly, pointing up the hill. At a word from the Baggara, a dozen of
the raiders rushed up the path and were lost to view upon the top.
Then came a shrill cry, a horrible strenuous scream of surprise and
terror, and an instant later the party streamed into sight again,
dragging the women in their midst. Sadie, with her young, active limbs,
kept up with them, as they sprang down the slope, encouraging her aunt
all the while over her shoulder. The older lady, struggling amid the
rushing white figures, looked with her thin limbs and open mouth like a
chicken being dragged from a coop.

The chief's dark eyes glanced indifferently at Miss Adams, but gazed
with a smouldering fire at the younger woman. Then he gave an abrupt
order, and the prisoners were hurried in a miserable, hopeless drove to
the cluster of kneeling camels. Their pockets had already been
ransacked, and the contents thrown into one of the camel-food bags, the
neck of which was tied up by Ali Wad Ibrahim's own hands.

"I say, Cochrane," whispered Belmont, looking with smouldering eyes at
the wretched Mansoor, "I've got a little hip revolver which they have
not discovered. Shall I shoot that cursed dragoman for giving away the
women?"

The Colonel shook his head.

"You had better keep it," said he, with a sombre face. "The women may
find some other use for it before all is over."

CHAPTER V.

The camels, some brown and some white, were kneeling in a long line,
their champing jaws moving rhythmically from side to side, and their
gracefully poised heads turning to right and left in a mincing,
self-conscious fashion. Most of them were beautiful creatures, true
Arabian trotters, with the slim limbs and finely turned necks which mark
the breed; but among them were a few of the slower, heavier beasts, with
ungroomed skins, disfigured by the black scars of old firings. These
were loaded with the doora and the watersk