fore they took another step
in advance.

The professor stood there in the darkness with the perspiration
streaming down his face as he recalled the stories he had heard of the
atrocities committed by the outlaws who made their homes in the
mountains of the sultan's dominions. He was tortured by a dozen
different plans which suggested themselves for his next course of
action, but neither of them commended itself for second consideration,
while there he was, face to face with the one great difficulty, that he
was cut off from his companions, and unable to stir without betraying
his presence and being captured or perhaps slain.

To stir was impossible. He hardly dared to breathe, while his heart
throbbed with so audible a beat that he fully expected it to betray his
whereabouts.

It was a perilous time, and his agony of mind was terrible, for just
then it seemed to him that he had, to gratify his own selfishness,
brought the son of his old friend--a lad weak and wasted from a long
illness--into a peril which might have been avoided. There they were,
perfectly unconscious of danger in this direction; and as soon as the
party had finished their whispered consultation he felt that they would
steal cautiously on and make their attack.

What should he do--fire at them or over them, and in the confusion make
a dash for the little camp?

He dared not risk it, for it seemed a clumsy, gambling experiment, which
would most probably result in failure.

What should he do then--sacrifice himself?

Yes. It seemed after all that his firing would not be so clumsy an
expedient, for even if it ended in his own destruction it would warn his
friends and place them upon their guard.

He hesitated for a few moments, as he tried once more to realise the
position. This might not, after all, be the gang of men who had stolen
their horses; but everything pointed to the fact that it was, as he had
at first imagined--that they had been duped by Yussuf's ruse, and then
made, by some way known to them, for the principal gorge, down which
they had come to turn into the lesser ravine by the spring, and then in
the night or early morning, take their victims in the rear, drive them
out into the open country, and master them with ease.

While Mr Preston was running over all this in his own mind he could
hear the low whispering of the little, body of men going on, and every
now and then an impatient stamp given by one of the horses, followed