Among the broken rocks those behind could sometimes only see the long, undulating, darting necks of the creatures in front, as if it were some nightmare procession of serpents. Indeed, it had much the effect of a dream upon the prisoners, for there was no sound, save the soft, dull padding and shuffling of the feet. The strange, wild frieze moved slowly and silently onwards amid a setting of black stone and yellow sand, with the one arch of vivid blue spanning the rugged edges of the ravine.
Miss Adams, who had been frozen into silence during the long cold night, began to thaw now in the cheery warmth of the rising sun. She looked about her, and rubbed her thin hands together.
"Why, Sadie," she remarked, "I thought I heard you in the night, dear, and now I see that you have been crying."
"I've been thinking, auntie."
"Well, we must try and think of others, dearie, and not of ourselves."
"It's not of myself, auntie."
"Never fret about me, Sadie."
"No, auntie, I was not thinking of you."
"Was it of any one in particular?"
"Of Mr. Stephens, auntie. How gentle he was, and how brave! To think of him fixing up every little thing for us, and trying to pull his jacket over his poor roped-up hands, with those murderers waiting all round him. He's my saint and hero from now ever after."
"Well, he's out of his troubles anyhow," said Miss Adams, with that bluntness which the years bring with them.
"Then I wish I was also."
"I don't see how that would help him."
"Well, I think he might feel less lonesome," said Sadie, and drooped her saucy little chin upon her breast.
The four had been riding in silence for some little time, when the Colonel clapped his hand to his brow with a gesture of dismay.
"Good God!" he cried, "I am going off my head."
Again and again they had perceived it during the night, but he had seemed quite rational since daybreak. They were shocked therefore at this sudden outbreak, and tried to calm him with soothing words.
"Mad as a hatter," he shouted. "Whatever do you think I saw?"
"Don't trouble about it, whatever it was," said Mrs. Belmont, laying her hand soothingly upon his as the camels closed together. "It is no wonder that you are overdone. You have thought and worked for all of us so long. We shall halt presently, and a few hours' sleep will quite restore you."
But the Colonel looked up again, and again he cried out in his agitation and surprise.
"I never saw anything plainer in my life," he groaned. "It is on the point of rock on our right front--poor old Stuart with my red cummerbund round his head just the same as we left him."
The ladies had followed the direction of the Colonel's frightened gaze, and in an instant they were all as amazed as he.
There was a black, bulging ridge like a bastion upon the right side of the terrible khor up which the camels were winding. At one point it rose into a small pinnacle. On this pinnacle stood a solitary, motionless figure, clad entirely in black, save for a brilliant dash of scarlet upon his head. There could not surely be two such short sturdy figures, or such large colourless faces, in the Libyan Desert. His shoulders were stooping forward, and he seemed to be staring intently down into the ravine. His pose and outline were like a caricature of the great Napoleon.
"Can it possibly be he?"
"It must be. It is!" cried the ladies. "You see he is looking towards us and waving his hand."
"Good Heavens! They'll shoot him! Get down, you fool, or you'll be shot!" roared the Colonel. But his dry throat would only emit a discordant croaking.
Several of the Dervishes had seen the singular apparition upon the hill, and had unslung their Remingtons, but a long arm suddenly shot up behind the figure of the Birmingham clergyman, a brown hand seized upon his skirts, and he disappeared with a snap. Higher up the pass, just below the spot where Mr. Stuart had been standing, appeared the tall figure of the Emir Abderrahman. He had sprung upon a boulder, and was shouting and waving his arms, but the shouts were drowned in a long, rippling roar of musketry from each side of the khor.