I have no fears. Ever since we prayed I have felt as if our guardian angels had their wings round us." She was like a guardian angel herself as she turned to the shrinking Sadie, and coaxed some little hope back into her despairing heart.
The short, thick Arab, who had been in command of Wad Ibrahim's rearguard, had Joined the Emir and the Moolah; the three consulted together, with occasional oblique glances towards the prisoners. Then the Emir spoke to Mansoor.
"The chief wishes to know which of you four is the richest man?" said the dragoman. His fingers were twitching with nervousness and plucking incessantly at the front of his covercoat.
"Why does he wish to know?" asked the Colonel.
"I do not know."
"But it is evident," cried Monsieur Fardet. "He wishes to know which is the best worth keeping for his ransom."
"I think we should see this thing through together," said the Colonel. "It's really for you to decide, Stephens, for I have no doubt that you are the richest of us."
"I don't know that I am," the lawyer answered; "but in any case, I have no wish to be placed upon a different footing to the others."
The Emir spoke again in his harsh rasping voice.
"He says," Mansoor translated, "that the baggage-camels are spent, and that there is only one beast left which can keep up. It is ready now for one of you, and you have to decide among yourselves which is to have it. If one is richer than the others, he will have the preference."
"Tell him that we are all equally rich."
"In that case he says that you are to choose at once which is to have the camel."
"And the others?"
The dragoman shrugged his shoulders.
"Well," said the Colonel, "if only one of us is to escape, I think you fellows will agree with me that it ought to be Belmont, since he is the married man."
"Yes, yes, let it be Monsieur Belmont," cried Fardet.
"I think so also," said Stephens.
But the Irishman would not hear of it.
"No, no, share and share alike," he cried. "All sink or all swim, and the devil take the flincher."
They wrangled among themselves until they became quite heated in this struggle of unselfishness. Some one had said that the Colonel should go because he was the oldest, and the Colonel was a very angry man.
"One would think I was an octogenarian," he cried. "These remarks are quite uncalled for."
"Well, then," said Belmont, "let us all refuse to go."
"But this is not very wise," cried the Frenchman. "See, my friends! Here are the ladies being carried off alone. Surely it would be far better that one of us should be with them to advise them."
They looked at one another in perplexity. What Fardet said was obviously true, but how could one of them desert his comrades? The Emir himself suggested the solution.
"The chief says," said Mansoor, "that if you cannot settle who is to go, you had better leave it to Allah and draw lots."
"I don't think we can do better," said the Colonel, and his three companions nodded their assent.
It was the Moolah who approached them with four splinters of palm-bark protruding from between his fingers.
"He says that he who draws the longest has the camel," said Mansoor.
"We must agree to abide absolutely by this," said Cochrane, and again his companions nodded.
The Dervishes had formed a semicircle in front of them, with a fringe of the oscillating heads of the camels. Before them was a cooking fire, which threw its red light over the group. The Emir was standing with his back to it, and his fierce face towards the prisoners. Behind the four men was a line of guards, and behind them again the three women, who looked down from their camels upon this tragedy. With a malicious smile, the fat, one-eyed Moolah advanced with his fist closed, and the four little brown spicules protruding from between his fingers.
It was to Belmont that he held them first. The Irishman gave an involuntary groan, and his wife gasped behind him, for the splinter came away in his hand. Then it was the Frenchman's turn, and his was half an inch longer than Belmont's.