Sallie felt Reuben Yoxall tug at her sleeve and began to move softly away after him. From somewhere in the distance a shot suddenly rang out. More followed, in quick succession. The irregular crackle of independent rifle-fire soon made it clear that the concentric attack on the camp had begun. The three men in the mouth of the gorge were shouting excitedly to each other.
"We must get away back on board—at once," Yoxall whispered peremptorily. "We can't search the whole Sahara, blind, for a man you wouldn't even know if you saw him. You've done all you can, Sallie. You've kept your promise. Come away, now."
She suppressed a hopeless sob with an effort. It seemed so inexpressibly hard that they should have gained nothing at all by the grave risk they were still running. But hope had failed her, too.
"We'll wait by the boat—just for a little, Rube," she begged none the less. "It may be that—"
"Come on, then," he urged again. "Let's get to the boat,—and, if you'll stay by it, I'll scout round a bit before we put off again."
"More this way," she directed him, as he moved on, impatient to get her back into at least comparative safety. And, under her guidance, they soon reached the rough, trodden path that led toward the lagoon where the boats were lying.
A hundred yards further on, he stopped her abruptly, and dropped to the ground, to set an anxious ear to it. He was up again in a second or two.
"There's a whole army coming this way," he declared in a tone of stricken dismay, "and horses with them too!
"We must make for the soft sand and lie down and burrow as deep as we can."
He turned toward the sea, one arm about her, and almost carried her across the deep, undulating drifts that clutched at her ankles like a dry quicksand. His own strength soon failed against them. He stumbled and fell on his face at the brink of a slope, and slipped on into its hollow and lay there, quite still. But he had let go his hold of her, so that she had not lost her feet: and she was soon cowering beside him, face downward also. They had both heard the nearness of those other feet—very many of them—which had seemingly crossed from the pathway to intercept them.