"No, no!" cried Fortune, pushing up the barrel. "Let him go. He was kind to me, after his fashion."
Mahomed smiled. He had expected this, and that was why he had gone about the business unconcernedly.
"What do you say?" demanded the stranger of Ryanne.
Ryanne, having no love whatever for Mahomed, shrugged.
"Humph! And you?" to George.
"Oh, let him go."
"All right. Two to one. Off with you, then," to Mahomed. "But wait! What about these beggars of yours? What are you going to do with them?"
"They have been paid. They can go back."
The moment the camel felt the sand under his pads, he struck his gait eastward. And when the mists and shadows crept in behind him and his rider, that was the last any of them ever saw of Mahomed-El-Gebel, keeper of the Holy Yhiordes in the Pasha's palace at Bagdad.
"Now then," said the leader of the strange caravan, "my name is Ackermann, and mine is a carpet-caravan, in from Khuzistan, bound for Smyrna. How may I help you?"