And as soon as Spanish Dick had ridden off Shard sent some men to roll all the barrels back from the depot where they were buried in the sand, with orders to watch the cutter all the time and, if she signalled, to return as fast as they could.

They buried the Arabs that day, removing their water-bottles and any provisions they had, and that night they got all the water-barrels in, and for days nothing happened.  One event of extraordinary importance did indeed occur, the wind got up one day, but it was due South, and as the oasis lay to the North of them and beyond that they might pick up the camel track Shard decided to stay where he was.  If it had looked to him like lasting Shard might have hoisted sail but it it dropped at evening as he knew it would, and in any case it was not the wind he wanted.  And more days went by, two weeks without a breeze.  The dead oxen would not keep and they had had to kill three more, there were only seven left now.

Never before had the men been so long without rum.  And Captain Shard had doubled the watch besides making two more men sleep at the guns.  They had tired of their simple games, and most of their songs, and their tales that were never true were no longer new.  And then one day the monotony of the desert came down upon them.

There is a fascination in the Sahara, a day there is delightful, a week is pleasant, a fortnight is a matter of opinion, but it was running into months.  The men were perfectly polite but the boatswain wanted to know when Shard thought of moving on.  It was an unreasonable question to ask of the captain of any ship in a dead calm in a desert, but Shard said he would set a course and let him know in a day or two.  And a day or two went by over the monotony of the Sahara, who for monotony is unequalled by all the parts of the earth.  Great marshes cannot equal it, nor plains of grass nor the sea, the Sahara alone lies unaltered by the seasons, she has no altering surface, no flowers to fade or grow, year in year out she is changeless for hundreds and hundreds of miles.  And the boatswain came again and took off his cap and asked Captain Shard to be so kind as to tell them about his new course.  Shard said he meant to stay until they had eaten three more of the oxen as they could only take three of them in the hold, there were only six left now.  But what if there was no wind, the boatswain said.  And at that moment the faintest breeze from the North ruffled the boatswain’s forelock as he stood with his cap in his hand.

“Don’t talk about the wind to me,” said Captain Shard:  and Bill was a little frightened for Shard’s mother had been a gipsy.

But it was only a breeze astray, a trick of the Sahara.  And another week went by and they ate two more oxen.

They obeyed Captain Shard ostentatiously now but they wore ominous looks.  Bill came again and Shard answered him in Romany.

Things were like this one hot Sahara morning when the cutter signalled.  The lookout man told Shard and Shard read the message, “Cavalry astern” it read, and then a little later she signalled, “With guns.”