"Found—?" shouted the Master, plunging forward.
Leclair followed close, staggering in the sudden gale. "Abd el
Rahman?"
"The old hyena, surely! M'almé, M'almé! See!"
The white men stumbled with broken ejaculations to where Rrisa was crouched over a gaunt figure in the drifting sand.
"Is that he, Rrisa?" cried the Master. "Art thou sure?"
"As that my mother bore me! See the old jackal, the son of Hareth! (the devil). Ah, see, see!"
"Dieu!" exclaimed the Frenchman, in his own tongue. "It is none other!" With a hand of great rejoicing, he stirred the unconscious Sheik—over whom the sand was already sifting as the now ravening simoom lashed it along.
Forgotten now were all his fears of death in the sand-storm. This delivery of the hated one into his hands had filled him with a savage joy, as it had the two others.
"Ah, mon vieux!" he cried. "It is only the mountains that never meet, in time!"
The Master laughed, one of those rare flashes of merriment that at infrequent intervals pierced his austerity. Away on the growing sand-storm the wind whipped that laugh. Simoom and sand now appeared forgotten by the trio. Keen excitement had gripped them; it held them as they crouched above the Sheik.