As if in answer to his command, a blustering, hot buffet of wind roared down with amazing suddenness, filling the dark air with a stinging drive of sand.  The fire by the beach flailed into long tongues of flame, throwing black shadows along the side of the wady.  No stars were now visible.  From empty spaces, a soughing tumult leaped forth; and on the instant a furious gust of fine, cutting particles whirled all about, thicker than driven snow in a northern blizzard.

“Iron, O thou ill-omened one!” cried Rrisa, with the ancient invocation against the sand-storm.  He stretched out his forefinger, making the sign of protection.  Neither the meaning of his cry nor of the gesture could he have explained; but both came to him involuntarily, from the remote lore of his people.

He turned from the oncoming storm, leaning against the wind, clutching for his cap that the wind-devil had just whirled away.  After it he stumbled; and, falling to his knees, groped for it in the gloom.

“Thousand devils!” ejaculated the Frenchman.  “No time, now, for killing!  Lucky if we get back ourselves, alive, to the beach!  My Captain!”

“What now?” the Master flung at him, shielding mouth and eyes with cupped hands.

“To the wady, all of us!  That may give protection till this blast of Hell passes!”

A startled cry from Rrisa forestalled any answer.  The Arab’s voice rose in a wild hail from the sand-filled dark: 

“O M’alme, M’alme!”

“What, Rrisa?”

“Behold!  I—­I have found him!”

“Found—?” shouted the Master, plunging forward.

Leclair followed close, staggering in the sudden gale. “Abd el Rahman?”

“The old hyena, surely! M’alme, M’alme!  See!”

The white men stumbled with broken ejaculations to where Rrisa was crouched over a gaunt figure in the drifting sand.

“Is that he, Rrisa?” cried the Master.  “Art thou sure?”

“As that my mother bore me!  See the old jackal, the son of Hareth! (the devil).  Ah, see, see!”

“Dieu!” exclaimed the Frenchman, in his own tongue.  “It is none other!” With a hand of great rejoicing, he stirred the unconscious Sheik—­over whom the sand was already sifting as the now ravening simoom lashed it along.

Forgotten now were all his fears of death in the sand-storm.  This delivery of the hated one into his hands had filled him with a savage joy, as it had the two others.

“Ah, mon vieux!” he cried.  “It is only the mountains that never meet, in time!”

The Master laughed, one of those rare flashes of merriment that at infrequent intervals pierced his austerity.  Away on the growing sand-storm the wind whipped that laugh.  Simoom and sand now appeared forgotten by the trio.  Keen excitement had gripped them; it held them as they crouched above the Sheik.

“Allah is being good to us!” exulted the Master, peering by the gale-driven fire-glare.  “This capture is worth more to the Legion than a hundred machine-guns.  What will not the orthodox tribes give for this arch-Shiah, this despoiler of the sacred Haram at Mecca?”