His father smiled.
“It’s all right, Jack,” he said. “Only I have been so worried about Bob. And this sudden discovery of Roy Stone in this part of the world, and with an airplane, seems like an answer to prayer. If there is any way of saving Bob, I begin to believe it must be by airplane, because the campaign of the revolutionists will take too long. Athensi may fall in time, but the Sacrificial Games would be held long before the city’s capitulation. And that would mean——”
“I know Dad.” Jack’s hand gripped his father’s shoulder hard.
“Well, things look immeasurably brighter now,” Mr. Hampton added. “And for the revolutionists, too. Stone is a quixotic fellow or he would not have left the Spanish service because he thought the Moors were receiving a bad deal. It may be, he will be glad to help the revolutionists. And an airplane could certainly be of use to them. But, first of all, he said he would do his best to help rescue Bob.
“They’ll be here at sunset. The oasis is three hundred miles away, but what it took us six days to travel, Stone can cover in three hours.”
“They?” asked Frank.
“Yes, Amrath is sufficiently recovered to come, too. Now I must go and tell Horeb. He’ll be glad. Amrath is a big man among these revolutionists.”
CHAPTER XXI.
REUNION.
When Roy Stone, having repaired the leak in his radiator, descended in a long spiral, bringing his airplane to rest on the desert not far from the mouth of the Great Road, he found as strange a reception committee awaiting him as ever greeted an aviator’s landing.
It was near the hour of sunset. The last rays of the descending sun, balanced on the edge of the world and about to sink below the horizon, shot almost straight across the desert. Low sand dunes of so little height as to seem almost invisible at noon, now shot lengthy grotesque shadows to the east. The face of the Great Mountain Wall, solid unbroken gray rock, glowed in a misty golden light. The far peaks of the interior country, rising from pools of purple shadow, seemed like lighted cones. The shadows of those standing grouped on the desert floor and waving hands and burnooses in greeting, wavered to extraordinary length to the eastward along the desert floor.