One trick or feat had caused the heavens to be rent with screams of pure joy and shouts of “Wallahi-el-azim,” “Ma sha-Allah” and other references to the might and glory of the Almighty.

You do not often see this feat of strength and dexterity, and when you do, it brings your heart almost out of your body and has an exhibition of tent-pegging simply beaten to a frazzle.

A spectator of the tender age of three, clothed—­as it was a day of festival—­in tarbusch and voluminous robe girt about him with a cummerbund—­on ordinary days he would have been clothed in nature and girt in dirt—­toddled straight into the middle of a square, just as the outriders charged across it.  There was no room for them to turn, so packed were the places where the sidewalks should have been, neither was there time in which to rein in their horses.  Women shrieked and beat their breasts, men looked on at the inevitable tragedy with the composure of the sterner sex.

The babe stood stock-still.

And Yussuf the outrider, bending low on his saddle, drove straight down upon it, gathered the back part of the cummerbund and some folds of the voluminous skirt upon the point of his spear, and, lifting the mite, amidst yells and shouts and wild clamour, carried him at spear-length and top speed safely across the square.

Where the real danger comes in is in judging the exact amount of stuff to gather on the spear-head; an inch or so too much and you may get a part of the kiddie’s little back; an inch or so too little and, when you have him high in air, you may cut through the cloth and cause said kiddie to make a hasty descent to terra firma.

Anyway, the child was safely restored to its fond mother, who simultaneously smacked it and stuffed its mouth with fly-blown sweetmeats, and became the hero for the latter part of the day.

The real cortege was headed by camels bearing gifts from the House el-Umbar to the great white woman who stood, on the balcony in a grey silk taffeta dress, a shawl of priceless lace on her head and a grey parrot upon her shoulder.  Silks, jewels, sweetmeats, bibelots in ivory and precious metal, dates, coffee in berries, a monkey and a bushel of wheat were amongst the gifts carried by the camels who grumbled and rumbled as they stalked with swaying gait and contemptuous half-closed eyes.

Next came the armed escort, mounted on horses, with modern rifles slung and cummerbunds stuck full of the most atrocious-looking knives.  They scowled at everyone, but as they passed under the balcony each one drew his knife and rattled it against that of his neighbour so that the weapons made a glittering arch in the light of the setting sun, as salutation to the old white woman who was of their mistress’s race.

Came Mustapha, the Ethiopian, into whose care the Sheikh had given his wife all those years ago, when they had ridden out of the desert up to his dwelling amongst the talik palms of the Flat Oasis.