As she was rising, she saw on her bosom a little locket which hung from a thin gold chain. She lifted a hand to it, and hesitated uncertainly.
"It's all I have in the world that's my own," said the Emir's wife in a pleading whisper, "all I can offer you but my empty thanks. I'd like to think to-night that you will sometimes remember me. Will you not keep it, for my sake?"
"I'll wear it always—I'll never forget you—and oh! I'm so sorry that I must go," cried Sallie, sorely distressed, and had to hurry away without more words. Captain Dove had twice called her. There were tears in her eyes as she ran back across the sand to where, under the green flag, he was wrathfully waiting for her, and she scarcely heard his harsh order to hurry up.
Some of the Emir's men had come forward with a couple of litters. She seated herself in one, although she would much rather have walked, and, as soon as Captain Dove was ready, they were carried off, the Emir shouting a valedictory message to the old man.
"You keep your bargain and I'll keep mine," Captain Dove called back, and snorted contemptuously.
"That damned fellow talks to me as if I had been his second mate!" he commented, and snorted again.
From the mouth of the dark defile which led toward the shore, Sallie looked back over one shoulder, almost as an escaped prisoner might, at the bizarre, fantastic scene the still camp made in that strange crimson light. And the big, red-haired Emir standing motionless under his great green flag, whose fluttering folds seen from that distance seemed of the colour of blood, waved a hand to her ere she disappeared.
She shivered, instinctively. She had been dumbly afraid of the man, and that although she was possessed of a courage such as could look grim death itself in the empty eye-holes and smile. She was correspondingly thankful when, the gorge and its sentinels safely behind her, she found herself once more facing the open sea.
Captain Dove's carriers set him down alongside the boat, lying high and dry on the sands where they had left it. Having set it afloat, they lifted him carefully into it, and her also. A few shallow yards from the shore, she slipped off her white cloak and head-covering at an order from the old man, and so set to rowing again.
Once, one of her oars touched some invisible body swimming parallel with the boat, and a lightning-like flash of phosphorus showed a curved black fin that darted to a little distance and then turned back toward them. It was risky work crossing the bar, but both she and Captain Dove knew just what they were about, and presently they shot free of the surf into comparative safety.