Graham pulled up his donkey, and sat like a shape of stone, until the silver-grey distance swallowed up the phantom.
Out towards the oasis called the Well of Seven Palms, the straggling military company proceeded in growing weariness. The officer in charge had secured fairly reliable evidence to show that the Arabs had struck out straight for the Red Sea. Since he was not omniscient, he could not know that they had performed a wide detour which would lead them back an hour before dawn to the camp by the Nile beside the Temple of Horus, where El-Suleym waited for his captive.
It was at the point in their march when, to have intercepted the raiders, they should have turned due south instead of proceeding toward the oasis, that one of them pulled up, rubbed his eyes, looked again and gave the alarm.
In another moment they all saw it—a white camel; not such a camel as tourists are familiar with, the poor hacks of the species, but a swan-like creature, white as milk, bearing a white-robed rider who ignored utterly the presence of the soldiers, who answered by no word or sign to their challenge, but who passed them like a cloud borne along by a breeze and melted vaporously into the steely distances of the desert. The captain was hopelessly puzzled.
“Too late to bring him down,” he muttered, “and no horse that was ever born could run down a racing camel. Most mysterious.”
Twenty miles south of their position, and exactly at right-angles to their route, rode the Bishareen horsemen, the foremost with Eileen Graham across his saddle. And now, eighteen miles behind the Bishareen, a white camel, of the pure breed which yearly furnishes the stately bearer of the Mahmal, spurned the sand and like a creature of air gained upon the Arabs, wild riders though they were, mile upon mile, league upon league.
Within rifle-shot of the camp, and with the desert dawn but an hour ahead, only a long sand-ridge concealed from the eyes of the Bishareen troupe that fleet shape which had struck wonder to the hearts of all beholders. Despite their start of close upon two hours, despite the fact that the soldiers were now miles, and hopeless miles, in their rear, the racer of the desert had passed them!
Eileen Graham had returned to full and agonizing consciousness. For hours, it seemed, her captives had rode and rode in silence. Now a certain coolness borne upon the breeze told her that they were nearing the river again. Clamour sounded ahead. They were come to the Arab camp. But ere they reached it they entered some lofty building which echoed hollowly to the horses’ tread. She was lifted from her painful position, tied fast against a stone pillar, and the bandage was unfastened from about her head.
She saw that she was lashed to one of the ruined pillars which once had upheld the great hall of a temple. About her were the crumbling evidences of the sacerdotal splendour that was Ancient Egypt. The moon painted massive shadows upon the debris, and carpeted the outer place with the black image of a towering propylæum. Upon the mound which once had been the stone avenue of approach was the Bedouin camp. It was filled with a vague disturbance. She was quite alone; for those who had brought her there were leading their spent horses out to the camp.