“The Halfa people were close upon our track at the time when I was abandoned, and they picked me up in the desert.  I must have been delirious, I suppose, for they tell me that they heard my voice, singing hymns, a long way off, and it was that, under the providence of God, which brought them to me.  They had a camel ambulance, and I was quite myself again by next day.  I came with the Sarras people after we met them, because they have the doctor with them.  My wound is nothing, and he says that a man of my habit will be the better for the loss of blood.  And now, my friends”—­his big, brown eyes lost their twinkle, and became very solemn and reverent—­“we have all been upon the very confines of death, and our dear companions may be so at this instant.  The same Power which saved us may save them, and let us pray together that it may be so, always remembering that if, in spite of our prayers, it should not be so, then that also must be accepted as the best and wisest thing.”

So they knelt together among the black rocks, and prayed as some of them had never prayed before.  It was very well to discuss prayer and treat it lightly and philosophically upon the deck of the Korosko.  It was easy to feel strong and self-confident in the comfortable deck-chair, with the slippered Arab handing round the coffee and liqueurs.  But they had been swept out of that placid stream of existence, and dashed against the horrible, jagged facts of life.  Battered and shaken, they must have something to cling to.  A blind, inexorable destiny was too horrible a belief.  A chastening power, acting intelligently and for a purpose—­a living, working power, tearing them out of their grooves, breaking down their small sectarian ways, forcing them into the better path—­that was what they had learned to realise during these days of horror.  Great hands had closed suddenly upon them, and had moulded them into new shapes, and fitted them for new uses.  Could such a power be deflected by any human supplication?  It was that or nothing—­the last court of appeal, left open to injured humanity.  And so they all prayed, as a lover loves, or a poet writes, from the very inside of their souls, and they rose with that singular, illogical feeling of inward peace and satisfaction which prayer only can give.

“Hush!” said Cochrane.  “Listen!”

The sound of a volley came crackling up the narrow khor, and then another and another.  The Colonel was fidgeting about like an old horse which hears the bugle of the hunt and the yapping of the pack.

“Where can we see what is going on?”

“Come this way!  This way, if you please!  There is a path up to the top.  If the ladies will come after me, they will be spared the sight of anything painful.”