Leclair peered at him in the screaming dark.

“Why, my Captain?” asked he.  “The Legionaries can care for themselves.  If Nissr is breaking up, in the gale, we can do nothing.  And on the way we may be lost.  To retrace our journey over the desert would surely be to invite death.”

“We must return, nevertheless.  This storm may last all night, and it may blow itself out in half an hour.  That cannot be told.  The Legion may think us lost, and try to search for us.  Lives may be sacrificed.  Morale demands that we go back.  Moreover, we certainly need not traverse the desert.”

“How, then?”

“We can descend the wady to the beach, and make southward along it, under the shelter of the dunes.”

“In the noise and confusion of the storm they may take us for Arabs and shoot us down.”

“I will see to that.  Come, we must go!  Carry Lebon, if you like.  Rrisa and I will take Abd el Rahman.”

“M’alme, not Abd el Rahman, now,” ejaculated Rrisa, “but Abd el Hareth![1] Let that be his title!”

[Footnote 1:  The former name signifies “Slave of Compassion;” the latter, “Slave of the Devil.”]

“As thou wishest, Rrisa.  But come, take his feet.  I will hold him by the shoulders.  So!  Now, forward!”

“And have a care not to breathe the sand, Master,” Rrisa warned.  “Turn thy face away when the jinnee smite!”

Stumbling, heavy-laden, the three men made their painful way down to the beach, turned to the left, and plowed southward in deep sand.  As they left the remains of the fire a great blackness fell upon them.  The boisterous exultation of the wind, howling in from a thousand miles of hot emptiness, out over the invisible sea now chopped into frothy waves, seemed snatching at them.  But the dunes at their left flung the worst of the sand-storm up and over.  And though whirls and air-eddies, sand-laden, snatched viciously at them, they won along the beach.

That was lathering toil, burdened as they were, stumbling over driftwood and into holes, laboring forward, hardly able to distinguish more than the rising, falling line of white that marked the surf.  Voices of water and of wind conclamantly shouted, as if all the devils of the Moslem Hell had been turned loose to snatch and rave at them.  Heat, stifle, sand caught them by the throat; the breath wheezed in their lungs; and on their faces sweat and sand pasted itself into a kind of sticky mud.

After fifteen minutes of this struggle the Master paused.  He dropped Abd el Rahman’s shoulders, and Rrisa the Sheik’s feet, while Leclair stood silently bowed with the weight of Lebon and of the belaboring storm.

“Oooo-eeee!  Oooooeeee!  Oooooo-eeee!” the Master hailed, three long times.  An answering shout came back, faintly, from the black.  The Master bent, assured himself the old Sheik’s mouth and nose were still covered by the hood of the burnous, and cried:  “Forward!” And the three men stumbled on and on.