A hasty search brought no trace of the girl, but one of the search parties learnt that a horse was missing from the royal stables.
On hearing this the Sultan went at once to the stables, looking for a clue there. The missing horse was Pansy's. The discovery sent a sudden glow of hope coursing through him. It argued that somehow or other she had managed to reach the stables and had set out into the desert.
The Sultan understood horses, even better, it seemed to him now, than he understood women. Left to its own devices the old horse would go the way it knew the best; the way he generally took it. And left to itself it was almost certain to be, since its rider had no knowledge of any of the sandy tracks that lay around the city.
Within a few moments he was on the swiftest of his own horses, riding with all speed towards the oasis; but not before leaving orders with his officers to scour the desert in every direction.
He had ridden perhaps five miles when into the stealthy hiss of the sand another sound came. At first so far away that it was but a distant moan in the night. As he tore on rapidly it grew louder, developing into a chorus of hideous laughter, the cry of hyenas howling round their prey.
Desert reared, instinctively he knew there must be at least twenty of them.
When, above the mêlée he heard the terrorized screams of a horse, a deadly fear clutched him. Where the horse was, the girl was. And the sound told him the two had been attacked.
Around Pansy the ghastly conflict was raging. Around her mangled corpse, perhaps.
He suffered all the tortures of the damned, as with spur and crop he urged the great stallion onwards, until the animal was a lather of sweat and foam.
The hyenas heard the throb of those approaching hoofs, and fear gripped their cowardly hearts.