them shouted, "is that the brother of the Queen of the
English with you? Let him ride with us, and you may return in peace."

"He is my brother, too," said Hassan. "Stand aside, you sons of Eblis,
or you shall bite the earth."

A wild shout from every height of the defile was the answer. Tancred
looked up. The crest on either side was lined with Bedouins, each with
his musket levelled.

"There is only one thing for us to do," said Tancred to Hassan. "Let us
charge through the defile, and die like men!"

Seizing his pistols, he shot the first horseman through the head, and
disabled another. Then he charged down the ravine, and Hassan and his
men followed, and scattered the horsemen before them. The Bedouins fired
down on them from the crests, and, in a few moments, the place was
filled with smoke, and Tancred could not see a yard around him. Still he
galloped on, and the smoke suddenly drifted, and he found himself at the
mouth of the defile, with a few followers behind him. A crowd of
Bedouins were waiting for him.

"Die fighting! Die fighting!" he shouted. Then his horse stumbled,
stabbed from beneath by a Bedouin dagger, and fell in the sand. Before
he could get his feet out of the stirrups, he was overpowered and bound.

"Don't hurt him," said the Bedouin chief. "Every drop of his blood is
worth ten thousand piastres."

Late that night, as Amalek, the great Rechabite Bedouin sheikh, was
sitting before his tent, a horseman rode up to him.

"Salaam," he cried. "Sheikh of sheikhs, it is done! The brother of the
Queen of England is your slave!"

"Good!" said Amalek. "May your mother eat the hump of a young camel! Is
the brother of the queen with Sheikh Salem?"

"No," said the horseman, "Sheikh Salem is in paradise, and many of our
men are with him. The brother of the Queen of the English is a mighty
warrior. He fought like a lion, but we brought his horse down at last
and took him alive."

"Good!" said Amalek. "Camels shall be given to all the widows of the men
he has killed, and I will find them new husbands. Go and tell Fakredeen
the good news!"

Amalek and Fakredeen would not have cared had they lost a hundred men in
the affair. The Bedouin chief and the emir of Lebanon could bring into
the field more than twenty thousand lances, and the capture of Tancred
was part of a political scheme which they were engineering for the
conquest of Syria. They knew from Besso that the young English prince
was fabulous