irt, velvet waistcoat and baggy cotton
trousers? The latter would present difficulties, for the waist-string
would tangle and the water would swell the knot and prevent the drawing
of string over string.

Moreover, the garments, though very baggy, were tight round the ankles.
Would he cast off his beautiful yard-long Khyber knife? It would go to
his heart to do that, both for the sake of the weapon itself and because
he would have to go to his death unavenged, seized by a shark without
giving it its death-wound. Had he heard and would he follow the boat in
the moonlight, find the _toni_ and escape? Could he swim to Aden? They
had said not--even leaving sharks out of consideration, and indeed it
must be forty or fifty miles away. Judging by their progress they must
have done about one hundred and fifty miles since they embarked at the
lonely spot on the Berbera coast for the other lonely spot on the Aden
coast, where certain whisperings with certain mysterious camel-riders
would preface their provisioning for the voyage along the weary
Hadramant coast to the Ras el Had and Muscat--just a humble boat-load of
poor but honest toilers and tradesmen, interested in dried fish, dates,
the pearl-fishery and the pettiest trading. No, he would never reach
land, wonderful swimmer as he was. He would be lost in the sea as is the
Webi Shebeyli River in the sands of the South, unless he followed the
drifting boat and found the _toni_. Otherwise, he might be picked up,
but he would have to keep afloat all night to do that, unless he had the
extraordinary luck to be seen by dhow or ship before dark. That could
hardly be, unless the same ship or dhow were visible from their own
boat, and none had been seen.

No, he must be dead--and Moussa Isa would shortly follow him. How he
wished he could have given his life to save him. Had he known, he would
have cried out, "Let them eat me, O Master," and prevented him from
risking his life. If he should get the chance of striking one blow for
his life in the morning he would bestow it upon the scar-faced beast who
had tripped the fair Sheik overboard. If he could strike two he would
give the second to the old Arab who flogged women and children to death
with the _kourbash_,[42] as an amusement, and whose cruelties were
famous in a cruel land; the old Evil who hated, and plotted the death
of, the fair Sheikh, with the leader of the expedition in order that
they might divide his large share of the