During their ride over the desert they had met no other human beings. Once or twice they had seen, to right or left of their track, a collection of mud huts, overshadowed by the plumy tufts of tall date-palms, betokening the presence of a handful of fellaheen scratching a livelihood from the unfriendly sand. Again they had twice beheld in the far distance a caravan winding its leisurely way upon some mysterious errand to an unknown destination; but these last had been too far away for their component parts of horses, camels, merchandise, to be distinguished; and after a brief glance towards the long snaky lines as they wound their way through the sand, Sir Richard and Anstice had wisely refused to strain their eyesight further.
But this solitary unit on the vast face of the desert was a different matter; and Anstice gazed steadily ahead in an as yet fruitless attempt to make out what this thing which appeared to move towards them might be.
At first he said nothing, thinking that his eyes might quite conceivably be playing him tricks, that this apparently moving figure might possibly be a figment of his brain, or one of those delusive sprites which are said to haunt the unwary traveller in the desert; but at length, as the distance between the object and himself diminished more and more rapidly, until he could have sworn he caught the flutter of a blue robe, Anstice felt it time to point out the vision or whatever it might be to his as yet unseeing companion.
"Sir Richard," he said, so suddenly that Sir Richard, who had been jogging along sunk in reverie, started in surprise. "Do you see anyone coming towards us over the sand?"
Sir Richard, thus appealed to, sat up more erectly in his saddle; and gazed with his keen old eyes in the direction of Anstice's pointing hand; and Anstice watched him with an anxiety which was surely out of place.
After a moment's fruitless search Sir Richard unslung the field-glasses which he carried, and applied them to his eyes; and in another moment, having adjusted the focus, he uttered an exclamation.
"By Gad, Anstice, you're right! It's a native of sorts, and he is coming directly towards us. He is too far off for me to distinguish his features—you look and see what you can make of him."
He handed the glasses to Anstice, who raised them to his eyes; and after adjusting the lenses to suit his younger, keener sight, he swept them round in an attempt to focus the distant object.
First an apparently illimitable expanse of sky and sand swam slowly into view, each insignificant landmark in the desert magnified almost incredibly by the powerful glasses; and at last the blue-robed native appeared suddenly as though only a stone's throw away from the man who searched for him.
The glass revealed him as an Arab of an ordinary type clad in a faded blue djibbeh, over which he wore the short grey coat so inexplicably beloved of the native. On his head was a scarlet fez; and his blue robe was gathered up in such a way as to leave bare his brown and sinewy legs as he paddled ruthlessly and unhesitatingly over the burning sand.