tain?" asked he. "The Legionaries can care for themselves.
If _Nissr_ is breaking up, in the gale, we can do nothing. And on
the way we may be lost. To retrace our journey over the desert would
surely be to invite death."

"We must return, nevertheless. This storm may last all night, and it
may blow itself out in half an hour. That cannot be told. The Legion
may think us lost, and try to search for us. Lives may be sacrificed.
Morale demands that we go back. Moreover, we certainly need not
traverse the desert."

"How, then?"

"We can descend the wady to the beach, and make southward along it,
under the shelter of the dunes."

"In the noise and confusion of the storm they may take us for Arabs
and shoot us down."

"I will see to that. Come, we must go! Carry Lebon, if you like. Rrisa
and I will take Abd el Rahman."

"_M'alme_, not Abd el Rahman, now," ejaculated Rrisa, "but Abd el
Hareth![1] Let that be his title!"

[Footnote 1: The former name signifies "Slave of Compassion;" the
latter, "Slave of the Devil."]

"As thou wishest, Rrisa. But come, take his feet. I will hold him by
the shoulders. So! Now, forward!"

"And have a care not to breathe the sand, Master," Rrisa warned. "Turn
thy face away when the _jinnee_ smite!"

Stumbling, heavy-laden, the three men made their painful way down to
the beach, turned to the left, and plowed southward in deep sand. As
they left the remains of the fire a great blackness fell upon them.
The boisterous exultation of the wind, howling in from a thousand
miles of hot emptiness, out over the invisible sea now chopped into
frothy waves, seemed snatching at them. But the dunes at their left
flung the worst of the sand-storm up and over. And though whirls and
air-eddies, sand-laden, snatched viciously at them, they won along the
beach.

That was lathering toil, burdened as they were, stumbling over
driftwood and into holes, laboring forward, hardly able to distinguish
more than the rising, falling line of white that marked the surf.
Voices of water and of wind conclamantly shouted, as if all the devils
of the Moslem Hell had been turned loose to snatch and rave at them.
Heat, stifle, sand caught them by the throat; the breath wheezed in
their lungs; and on their faces sweat and sand pasted itself into a
kind of sticky mud.

After fifteen minutes of this struggle the Master paused. He dropped
Abd el Rahman's shoulders, and Rrisa the Sheik's feet, while Leclair
stood silen