herewith he tried to guard it.

The rascal, though, was not discomfited; for, clutching hold of a tulwar
he carried loosely in a sash of the old dressing-gown-like garment he
wore, he almost slashed my nose off, the barrel of my Martini only just
preventing me from losing all my good looks!

The shock sent me on my knees; and then, seeing a sword lying on the
ground in front of me, I gripped hold of this more by instinct than
anything else, and I rose to my feet again as quick as lightning.

Quick as I was, however, the brute of an Arab was quicker; and, aiming a
terrible slashing cut at me with the tulwar, which had it landed would
have decapitated me as clean as a whistle, and the last word of my
history been told for good and all--aye, but for a wonderful
interposition just as I thought my end had come.

With a piercing yelp, that was succeeded by a deep, savage growl, a
white dog bounded up from the ground beside the officer, who had not yet
recovered from the effects of the blow that had struck him down.

Would you believe it, this dog was `Gyp'!

Making a jump which no one could have imagined a dog of his size capable
of doing, he clutched the Arab chief by the throat as he slashed at me,
making him stumble back, thus causing the cut that would otherwise have
sliced off my head like a carrot to be wasted in the air.

As the big murdering rascal stumbled back, I thrust forth my arm holding
the officer's sword and sent the blade right through the beggar's
stomach up to the hilt.

"Be the powers, me joker," cried a voice behind me, as sheik and `Gyp'
and I all fell together on the ground in one batch, "ye did that well,
alannah! Begorrah, it wor roight in his bri'd-basket, sure!"

"My goodness!" I exclaimed, recognising a voice that sounded as
familiar to my ears as the bark of `Gyp' just now. "Who's that?"

CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

WARM GREETINGS.

"Tom, don't ye know me, owld chappie?" cried Mick, for, of course, it
was him; though, what with my deadly struggle and rescue by `Gyp,' whom
I thought thousands of miles away, besides the fact of my old chum
coming so unexpectedly on the scene, I felt perfectly bewildered,
thinking that I must be in a dream. "Begorrah, ye're starin' at me,
sure, ez if I wor a ghost or a banshee, bedad!"

"Really, Mick," said I, when I could at length speak and was convinced
that it was himself in proper person and no phantom of my imagination,
gripping his fist in a