g party, with shikari trackers, led by Brown, was sent out
in search of the straggler. Night came on before they could pick up
his trail, and nothing further could be done except to build signal
fires on adjacent hills; but all without result. Anxiety for his
safety crystallized into chill fear for his life, when the dull glow of
the signal fires was suddenly extinguished by the next morning's sun;
for the desert knows neither twilight nor dawn--the sun bursts up
blood-red out of shrouding darkness like a rocket from its case, and at
once it is day.

An hour later Brown's shikaris found the place where Dubois-Desaulle
had strayed from the column, followed his trail through the bush hither
and thither for two miles, to a point where he had found a native
warrior seated beneath a tree. They read, with their unerring skill at
"sign" lore, that there he had stood and talked for some time with the
native, and then pressed on, rider and footman travelling side by side,
till, within the shelter of especially dense surrounding bush, the
footman had dropped behind the rider--for what dastardly assassin's
purpose the next twenty steps revealed. There stark lay the body of
gay Dubois-Desaulle, dropped from his mule without a struggle by a
mortal spear-thrust in his back, the manner of his mutilation a
Danakil's sign manual!

Immediately messengers were sent to the caravan bearing the news and
asking reinforcements. At this time the indomitable chief, McMillan,
was laid up with veldt sores on the legs, unable to walk or even to
ride except in a litter. Promptly, however, he despatched Lieutenant
Fairfax and William Marlow, with about thirty more men, to Brown's
support, with orders never to quit till he got the murderer. By a
forced march, Fairfax reached Brown at four in the afternoon.

When journeying in desert places and amid deadly perils, it is always
an unusually terrible shock to lose one from among so few, and to be
forced to lay him in unconsecrated ground remote from home and friends.
So it was a sobbing, saddened trio that stood by while a grave was dug
to receive all that was mortal of their gallant comrade. And within it
they laid him, wrapped in the ample folds of an Abyssinian _tope_;
stones were heaped above the grave--at least the four-footed beasts
should not have a chance to rend him!--and three volleys were fired as
a last honor to Dubois-Desaulle, ex-legionary of the Army of Algiers.

Tears dried, e