“Nay! Namlah, it is a voice, it is—listen!”
Faintly but clearly the cry came to them upon the morning wind. Helen looked at her lover, and Namlah bent and touched the amulet upon the camel’s shoulder so as to hide her eyes. The battle-cry, derisive, challenging, even at a great distance, left no doubt as to who pursued them.
But Namlah was of the desert, with the eyes of a hawk and the tenacity of those whose daily life is one long fight against the greatest odds. She shaded her eyes suddenly and stared ahead. She pointed and laughed and kicked her camel vigorously.
But there was no sign of living thing in all the desert to Ralph and Helen when they looked to where she pointed.
“I see nothing, Namlah.”
“Yonder, Excellency! See you not a band of men moving many, many miles away. Allah! their backs are towards us. They go from us.” She turned in her saddle and shook her fist at the speck in the far distance, then put her hand to her ear. “Allah! ’tis verily a horse! Faster! Faster! Excellencies, urge the camels, they but crawl, urge them, for in yon band of men, be they robbers or starving Bedouins, lies our salvation.”
Infinitesimal spots upon the desert, which, ridged and wrinkled, lay like the outstretched hand of Fate, they urged the dromedaries until they fled to outstrip the wind, under the sky of violent colouring.
“Allah! open their eyes that they see us! Open their ears that they hear us! Excellency! Excellency! is there no way by which to turn their heads towards us!” Her words were lost in the rush of the tremendous speed, but Helen, understanding the expressive gestures, turned and shouted to her lover.
The camels paid no heed when the desert rang with the double report of Trenchard’s revolver, but Abdul, who journeyed in the company of the Bedouins who had succoured him, in the hope of learning news of his white master in Hareek, turned in his saddle and looked back, whilst Zarah, oblivious of the strain she was putting upon the mare, shouted the battle-cry derisively when the firing shattered the desert stillness and drove the beautiful creature at full speed over the sands, urging her with needle-pointed spear.