“That is true,” said the Colonel.  “I would not for the world take away any real grounds of hope which you may have; but on the other hand, there is no use in preparing bitter disappointments for ourselves.  If we had been listening to an attack, we should have heard some reply.  Besides, an Egyptian attack would have been an attack in force.  No doubt it is, as you say, a little strange that they should have wasted their cartridges—­by Jove, look at that!”

He was pointing over the eastern desert.  Two figures were moving across its expanse, swiftly and stealthily, furtive dark shadows against the lighter ground.  They saw them dimly, dipping and rising over the rolling desert, now lost, now reappearing in the uncertain light.  They were flying away from the Arabs.  And then, suddenly they halted upon the summit of a sand-hill, and the prisoners could see them outlined plainly against the sky.  They were camel-men, but they sat their camels astride as a horseman sits his horse.

“Gippy Camel Corps!” cried the Colonel.

“Two men,” said Miss Adams, in a voice of despair.

“Only a vedette, ma’am!  Throwing feelers out all over the desert.  This is one of them.  Main body ten miles off, as likely as not.  There they go giving the alarm!  Good old Camel Corps!”

The self-contained, methodical soldier had suddenly turned almost inarticulate with his excitement.  There was a red flash upon the top of the sand-hill, and then another, followed by the crack of the rifles.  Then with a whisk the two figures were gone, as swiftly and silently as two trout in a stream.

The Arabs had halted for an instant, as if uncertain whether they should delay their journey to pursue them or not.  There was nothing left to pursue now, for amid the undulations of the sand-drift the vedettes might have gone in any direction.  The Emir galloped back along the line, with exhortations and orders.  Then the camels began to trot, and the hopes of the prisoners were dulled by the agonies of the terrible jolt.  Mile after mile, mile after mile, they sped onwards over that vast expanse, the women clinging as best they might to the pommels, the Colonel almost as spent as they, but still keenly on the look-out for any sign of the pursuers.

“I think . . .  I think,” cried Mrs. Belmont, “that something is moving in front of us.”

The Colonel raised himself upon his saddle, and screened his eyes from the moonshine.

“By Jove, you’re right there, ma’am.  There are men over yonder.”

They could all see them now, a straggling line of riders far ahead of them in the desert.

“They are going in the same direction as we,” cried Mrs. Belmont, whose eyes were very much better than the Colonel’s.

Cochrane muttered an oath into his moustache.

“Look at the tracks there,” said he; “of course, it’s our own vanguard who left the palm grove before us.  The chief keeps us at this infernal pace in order to close up with them.”