necessary to find the girl's father that night, for fear he might
start on his homeward journey too early in the morning to be
intercepted.

They had waited perhaps half an hour when the messenger returned with
Kadour ben Saden. The old sheik entered the room with a questioning
expression upon his proud face.

"Monsieur has done me the honor to--" he commenced, and then his eyes
fell upon the girl. With outstretched arms he crossed the room to meet
her. "My daughter!" he cried. "Allah is merciful!" and tears dimmed
the martial eyes of the old warrior.

When the story of her abduction and her final rescue had been told to
Kadour ben Saden he extended his hand to Tarzan.

"All that is Kadour ben Saden's is thine, my friend, even to his life,"
he said very simply, but Tarzan knew that those were no idle words.

It was decided that although three of them would have to ride after
practically no sleep, it would be best to make an early start in the
morning, and attempt to ride all the way to Bou Saada in one day. It
would have been comparatively easy for the men, but for the girl it was
sure to be a fatiguing journey.

She, however, was the most anxious to undertake it, for it seemed to
her that she could not quickly enough reach the family and friends from
whom she had been separated for two years.

It seemed to Tarzan that he had not closed his eyes before he was
awakened, and in another hour the party was on its way south toward Bou
Saada. For a few miles the road was good, and they made rapid
progress, but suddenly it became only a waste of sand, into which the
horses sank fetlock deep at nearly every step. In addition to Tarzan,
Abdul, the sheik, and his daughter were four of the wild plainsmen of
the sheik's tribe who had accompanied him upon the trip to Sidi Aissa.
Thus, seven guns strong, they entertained little fear of attack by day,
and if all went well they should reach Bou Saada before nightfall.

A brisk wind enveloped them in the blowing sand of the desert, until
Tarzan's lips were parched and cracked. What little he could see of
the surrounding country was far from alluring--a vast expanse of rough
country, rolling in little, barren hillocks, and tufted here and there
with clumps of dreary shrub. Far to the south rose the dim lines of
the Saharan Atlas range. How different, thought Tarzan, from the
gorgeous Africa of his boyhood!

Abdul, always on the alert, looked backward quite as often a