An hour later, the moon was well up in the sky, though the light was not yet brilliant, and they parted by the wall of the cattle-byre with promises to meet on the morrow, and he turned and left her standing in the shadow; but some instinct moved him, and he returned and kissed her yet again, and said one more farewell; then he took the narrow track leading down to the river, and Merla knew that she must hasten home; for her father, who had been out in the early evening, would be returning.  Before she left she turned back once more into the byre, and stood looking at the stars that she had communed with so often:  a great sadness fell on her thoughts, a chill as after a final parting.  As she turned to go, her eyes fell on a grey patch on the byre floor—­his coat!  He had left it behind.  Merla gave a little laugh as she picked it up:  the parting seemed less final now.  She would keep it till the morrow.  Would he want it? miss it?  No, the night was so still and sultry; and, throwing it over her arm, she passed onwards to her hut.

As she neared the enclosure, her heart beat rapidly.  A light was burning within the hut, and by the moonlight she saw the great camel moving restlessly in the narrow space outside.  Angry voices reached her in sharp discussion—­her father’s and another.  Just inside the enclosure she paused and listened, trembling, uncertain what this unusual clamour and strange voice might mean.

“I gave you my camel, my knife, and my carpet.  Where is the Pearl I was promised?  Is not the moon at the full?”

Merla heard these words with a thrill passing through every fibre.  She knew her father had no pearl in his possession, but was not her name “Pearl of the Desert”?  Next there came some confused murmur—­seemingly words of apology—­in her father’s voice that she could not catch, but the stranger interrupted angrily: 

“Unhappy man! tricked seller, tricked buyer, would you know where the Pearl is? would you know where your daughter hides?  I have heard that she has been seen with a stranger, a white-faced stranger—­I know not if he be a leper or an Englishman—­” with a bitter laugh, “but in either case I want her not.  Come, give me my knife, and I lead off my camel.”

Merla’s heart failed, for her father gave a shriek as he heard the accusation, and a shower of oaths and imprecations came to her shrinking ears.  Nothing was clear any more; there was only clamour and raving in the hut.  But once she caught the words, “to the river—­does he go to the river?” and above all the storm of words there was the awful sound of the sharpening of a knife.

Like a shadow, noiseless and silent, Merla crept swiftly, under the shade of the camel’s body, across the enclosure to the mud partition behind which her youngest brother slept, and roused him.  “Nungoon!” she said breathlessly, gripping his shoulder, “take the track to the river, and run for your life.  You will overtake the Englishman.  Tell him this.  ’Merla says:  Run to the launch and get off the land quickly, and never come back to Omdurman, or come with a guard.  They seek to kill you here.’  Go, brother; run!”