prayer p142]

The great red sun was down with half its disc slipped behind the violet
bank upon the horizon. It was the hour of Arab prayer. An older and more
learned civilisation would have turned to that magnificent thing upon
the skyline and adored _that_. But these wild children of the desert
were nobler in essentials than the polished Persian. To them the ideal
was higher than the material, and it was with their backs to the sun and
their faces to the central shrine of their religion that they prayed.
And how they prayed, these fanatical Moslems! Wrapt, absorbed, with
yearning eyes and shining faces, rising, stooping, grovelling with their
foreheads upon their praying carpets. Who could doubt, as he watched
their strenuous, heart-whole devotion, that here was a great living
power in the world, reactionary but tremendous, countless millions all
thinking as one from Cape Juby to the confines of China? Let a common
wave pass over them, let a great soldier or organiser arise among them
to use the grand material at his hand, and who shall say that this may
not be the besom with which Providence may sweep the rotten, decadent,
impossible, half-hearted south of Europe, as it did a thousand years
ago, until it makes room for a sounder stock?

And now as they rose to their feet the bugle rang out, and the prisoners
understood that, having travelled all day, they were fated to travel
all night also. Belmont groaned, for he had reckoned upon the pursuers
catching them up before they left this camp. But the others had already
got into the way of accepting the inevitable. A flat Arab loaf had been
given to each of them--what effort of the _chef_ of the post-boat had
ever tasted like that dry brown bread?--and then, luxury of luxuries,
they had a second ration of a glass of water, for the fresh-filled bags
of the new-comers had provided an ample supply. If the body would but
follow the lead of the soul as readily as the soul does that of the
body, what a heaven the earth might be! Now, with their base material
wants satisfied for the instant, their spirits began to sing within
them, and they mounted their camels with some sense of the romance of
their position. Mr. Stuart remained babbling upon the ground, and the
Arabs made no effort to lift him into his saddle. His large, white,
upturned face glimmered through the gathering darkness.

"Hi, dragoman, tell them that they are forgetting Mr. Stuart," cried the
Colonel.

"No use, sir," said Mansoor. "They say that he is too fat, and that they
will not take him any farther. He will die, they say, and why should
they trouble about him?"

"Not take him!" cried Cochrane. "Why, the man will perish of hunger and
thirst. Where's the Emir? Hi!" he shouted, as the black-bearded Arab
passed, with a tone like that in which he used to summon a dilatory
donkey-boy. The chief did not deign to answer him, but said something
to one of the guards, who dashed the butt of his Remington into the
Colonel's ribs.

[Illustration: The old soldier fell forward gasping p145]

The old soldier fell forward gasping, and was carried on half senseless,
clutching at the pommel of his saddle. The women began to cry, and the
men with muttered curses and clenched hands writhed in that hell of
impotent passion, where brutal injustice and ill-usage have to go
without check or even remonstrance. Belmont gripped at his hip-pocket
for his little revolver, and then remembered that he had already given
it to Miss Adams. If his hot hand had clutched it, it would have meant
the death of the Emir and the massacre of the party.

And now as they rode onwards they saw one of the most singular of
the phenomena of the Egyptian desert in front of them, though the ill
treatment of their companion had left them in no humour for appreciating
its beauty. When the sun had sunk, the horizon had remained of a
slaty-violet hue. But now this began to lighten and to brighten until a
curious