“And perhaps it is enough,” the soldier answered.  “Here are the Emirs.”

The camel-man, whose approach they had heard from afar, had made for the two Arab chiefs, and had delivered a brief report to them, stabbing with his forefinger in the direction from which he had come.  There was a rapid exchange of words between the Emirs, and then they strode forward together to the group around the prisoners.  Bigots and barbarians, they were none the less two most majestic men, as they advanced through the twilight of the palm grove.  The fierce old greybeard raised his hand and spoke swiftly in short, abrupt sentences, and his savage followers yelped to him like hounds to a huntsman.  The fire that smouldered in his arrogant eyes shone back at him from a hundred others.  Here were to be read the strength and danger of the Mahdi movement; here in these convulsed faces, in that fringe of waving arms, in these frantic, red-hot souls, who asked nothing better than a bloody death, if their own hands might be bloody when they met it.

“Have the prisoners embraced the true faith?” asked the Emir Abderrahman, looking at them with his cruel eyes.

The Moolah had his reputation to preserve, and it was not for him to confess to a failure.

“They were about to embrace it, when—­

“Let it rest for a little time, O Moolah.”  He gave an order, and the Arabs all sprang for their camels.  The Emir Wad Ibrahim filed off at once with nearly half the party.  The others were mounted and ready, with their rifles unslung.

“What’s happened?” asked Belmont.

“Things are looking up,” cried the Colonel.  “By George, I think we are going to come through all right.  The Gippy Camel Corps are hot on our trail.”

“How do you know?”

“What else could have scared them?”

“O Colonel, do you really think we shall be saved?” sobbed Sadie.  The dull routine of misery through which they had passed had deadened all their nerves until they seemed incapable of any acute sensation, but now this sudden return of hope brought agony with it like the recovery of a frost-bitten limb.  Even the strong, self-contained Belmont was filled with doubts and apprehensions.  He had been hopeful when there was no sign of relief, and now the approach of it set him trembling.

“Surely they wouldn’t come very weak,” he cried.  “Be Jove, if the Commandant let them come weak, he should be court-martialled.”

“Sure we’re in God’s hands, anyway,” said his wife, in her soothing, Irish voice.  “Kneel down with me, John, dear, if it’s the last time, and pray that, earth or heaven, we may not be divided.”

“Don’t do that!  Don’t!” cried the Colonel anxiously, for he saw that the eye of the Moolah was upon them.  But it was too late, for the two Roman Catholics had dropped upon their knees and crossed themselves.  A spasm of fury passed over the face of the Mussulman priest at this public testimony to the failure of his missionary efforts.  He turned and said something to the Emir.