But there was no sign of living thing in all the desert to Ralph and Helen when they looked to where she pointed.
“Yonder, Excellency! See you not a band of men moving many, many miles away. Allah! their backs are towards us. They go from us.” She turned in her saddle and shook her fist at the speck in the far distance, then put her hand to her ear. “Allah! ’tis verily a horse! Faster! Faster! Excellencies, urge the camels, they but crawl, urge them, for in yon band of men, be they robbers or starving Bedouins, lies our salvation.”
Infinitesimal spots upon the desert, which, ridged and wrinkled, lay like the outstretched hand of Fate, they urged the dromedaries until they fled to outstrip the wind, under the sky of violent colouring.
“Allah! open their eyes that they see us! Open their ears that they hear us! Excellency! Excellency! is there no way by which to turn their heads towards us!” Her words were lost in the rush of the tremendous speed, but Helen, understanding the expressive gestures, turned and shouted to her lover.
The camels paid no heed when the desert rang with the double report of Trenchard’s revolver, but Abdul, who journeyed in the company of the Bedouins who had succoured him, in the hope of learning news of his white master in Hareek, turned in his saddle and looked back, whilst Zarah, oblivious of the strain she was putting upon the mare, shouted the battle-cry derisively when the firing shattered the desert stillness and drove the beautiful creature at full speed over the sands, urging her with needle-pointed spear.
Nor did she look back, else might she have seen Fate pressing hard upon her heels.
“_On the day of victory no fatigue is felt._”—ARABIC PROVERB.
Like a darker shadow amongst the shadows thrown upon the desert from the ill-omened sky, Rādi the bitch, the swiftest greyhound whelped in Hasa, loped alongside the dromedary ridden by Yussuf, with “His Eyes,” pillion-wise, behind him. She barely left a mark upon the sands so lightly did she run, perplexed, upon a track which held but the common scent of horse and camel. True, she ran in the wake of Lulah, her stable friend, but of enemy there was no trace; therefore of what avail to spend her strength in chasing shadows by the light of the rising sun?