Hugh Carden's mother looked down at her from the back of her camel, on which had been fixed the padded seat which is perhaps the most comfortable of all saddles.
Wellington, with the book between his teeth, sat next her, firmly secured by a rope through the steel ring in his spiked collar to the back of the seat.
"Take him, your grace," had urged Jane Coop, whose own heart was nigh to breaking at being left behind. "Take him; he'll find her if we should happen to have made a mistake. Missie calling you, Wellington. Take the book to Missie; she wants it."
And the dog had obediently picked up the book in his teeth and waddled in the wake of the search-party.
Maria Hobson stood close beside her mistress; the indifferent fellaheen stood some little way apart. They, too, have long since become accustomed to the vagaries of the great white races.
"Let me go alone, dear. He is my son!"
The mother had pleaded for the sake of her first-born, and the old woman, understanding, had given way.
"Goodbye, dear. I will wait for you here. Hobson will look after me. Besides, as long as we save her good name, what matters anything else? Thank God for the moon, Jill. You will easily follow the track of the two horses. Give them both my love, and tell them I'm waiting. Au revoir."
She stood and watched the camel slither across the desert at that animal's almost incredible speed; then turned, sat down on the edge of her litter, took out her bejewelled Louis XV snuff-box, rasped a match on the sole of her crimson shoe, and lit a Three Castles with her eyes on the track left by the hoofs of two horses.
Yes! Two.