"This Koran, Rrisa, is now thine!" he cried in a loud voice, to make the Arab hear him. "And a great gift to thee, a Sunnite, is the Koran, of this desecrating son of the rejected!"
Bowed before the flail of the sand—while Rrisa uttered broken words of thanks—the Master called to Leclair:
"By Corsi (Allah's throne), now things assume a different aspect!
This old dog of dogs is a prize, indeed! And—what now—"
Leclair did not answer. The Frenchman was not even near him. The Master saw him in the wady, dimly visible through the ghostly white sand-shrouds spinning in the blue-whipped fire-glare. There on hands and knees the lieutenant was huddled. With eager hands he was tearing the hood of a za'abut—a rough, woolen slave cloak, patched and ragged—from the face of a prostrate figure more than half snowed under a sand-drift.
"Nom de Dieu!" the Master heard him cry. "Mais, nom de—"
"What have you found, Lieutenant?" shouted the Master, letting the simoom drive him toward the wady. In their excitement none of the men would yet take cover, lie down and hide their faces under their coats as every dictate of prudence would have bidden. "Who is it, now? What—"
"Ah, my Captain! Ah! the pity of it! Behold!"
The Frenchman's voice, wind-gusted, trembled with grief and passionate anger; yet through that rage and sorrow rang a note of joy.
"Tell me, Leclair! Who, now?" demanded the Master, as he came close and peered down by the fire-gleam roaring on the beach, sending sheaves of sparks in comet-tails of vanishing radiance down-wind with rushing sand.
"It is impossible, my Captain," the lieutenant answered in French. His voice could now make itself heard more clearly; for here in the wady a certain shelter existed from the roaring sand-cyclone. "Impossible, but—Dieu!—it is true!"