The order was quickly given for the aerial police scouts to start. Within a few minutes the patrols left Cairo and the adjoining air-stations, and, spreading out fan-wise, they crossed the Canal, the Gulf of Sinai, the wild mountainous peninsula which bears the same name, and the Hedjaz coast, until they entered the desert regions beyond. Then they commenced their search by moonlight for the battered and drifting air-liner over the trackless, desert lands which lie between the 28th and the 30th parallels.
By a pre-arranged system of Very lights, the patrols kept each other informed of their exact positions during the night, and watched keenly the eastern horizon for any response which might come from the belated airship.
Meanwhile the air-liner, fighting manfully against the freshening wind, made very slow progress, and drifted still further and further away from her course. The air was full of wireless messages both from Cairo and the patrols, but she was as yet unable to reply and define her position. The engineer and wireless operator, however, had been able to receive some of the messages indistinctly, and they knew at any rate that help was not far away.
The captain was naturally very much depressed by the turn of events. Somehow he felt that he had not acted very heroically in the matter. He had considered the safety of his distinguished passengers perhaps too much.
"If I had had no passengers to consider, I would have remained aloft until the whole liner had been shot to ribbons!" he declared to himself, when he at last retired for a few minutes to his private cabin. "They should never have taken me alive! But there, my instructions stand--the safety of the passengers and crew before anything else. I was a fool, though, to act as I did. I ought to have sent out the S.O.S. to Cairo without a second's delay, instead of arguing with this brigand; but there, whoever expected to encounter anything like this?"
Then as his thoughts turned to the wonderful machine, he endeavoured to docket all the information he could remember about the brigand's aeroplane, for he knew that he would be expected to recount every detail when he met the court of enquiry, "which," he murmured, "is as certain to take place as to-morrow's sunrise.
"Gee whiz! Three hundred miles an hour, and silent engines to boot! Phew! nobody will believe me, anyhow. Still, I shall have to face the music, and also to explain why I have lost a hundred thousand pounds of specie," and the skipper looked down on the white sands below, and for a moment he almost contemplated suicide.
"I wouldn't mind if I could only bring sufficient information to the authorities to lead to the speedy capture of the villain, but I can't. There wasn't time even for a photograph. The bandit was aware of all that, and I understand that every camera was removed from the airship before he let us go."
At that instant there came a slight tap at the cabin door.
"Come in!" cried the commander, expecting some further report from the sick-berth steward about the condition of the maharajah, who, half an hour ago, was said to be showing signs of recovery, owing to the bracing air at three thousand feet.