The Sheik

For a moment the Vicomte hesitated, but he knew that not even he was

wanted inside that empty tent, and a half-bitter, half-sad feeling that

the perfect friendship and confidence that had existed between them for

twenty years would never again be the same came to them, the regretful

sense of inevitable change, the consciousness of personal relegation.

Then fear for Diana drove out every other consideration, and he went to

his own quarters with a heavy heart.

When he came back in a few minutes with Henri following him the camp

had undergone a transformation. With the promptness of perfect

discipline the hundred men who had been chosen to go on the expedition

were already waiting, each man standing by his horse, and the Sheik,

quiet and impassive as usual, was superintending the distribution of

extra ammunition. A groom was walking The Hawk slowly up and down, and

Yusef, whose gloomy eyes had been fixed reproachfully on his chief,

chafing against the order to remain behind to take command of the

reinforcements should they be needed, went to him and took the horse's

bridle from him and brought him to the Sheik. Even as he held the

stirrup Saint Hubert could see that he was expostulating with an

unusual insistence, begging for permission to accompany them. But the

Sheik shook his head, and the young man stood sullenly aside to avoid

The Hawk's hoofs as he reared impatiently.

Ahmed Ben Hassan motioned Saint Hubert to his side and in silence the

cavalcade started at the usual swift gallop. The silence impressed

Raoul, who was accustomed to the Arab's usual clamour. It affected his

sensitive temperaments, filling him with a sinister foreboding. The

silent band of stern-faced horsemen riding in close and orderly

formation behind them suggested something more than a mere relief

party. The tradition of reckless courage and organised fighting

efficiency that had made the tribe known and feared for generations had

been always maintained, and under the leadership of the last two

holders of the hereditary name to so high a degree that the respect in

which it was held was such that no other tribe had ventured to dispute

its supremacy, and for many years its serious fighting capacities had

not been tested.

Even Ibraheim Omair had inherited a feud that was largely traditional.

Only once during the lifetime of the last Ahmed Ben Hassan had he dared

to come into open conflict, and the memory of it had lasted until now.

Skirmishes there had been and would always be inevitably sufficient to

keep the tribesmen in a state of perpetual expectancy, and for this

Ahmed Ben Hassan preserved the rigid discipline that prevailed in his

tribe, insisting on the high standard that had kept them famous. The

life-work that his predecessor had taken over from his father the

present Ahmed Ben Hassan had carried on and developed with autocratic

perseverance. The inborn love of fighting had been carefully fostered

in the tribe, the weapons with which they were armed were of the newest

pattern. Raoul knew with perfect certainty that to the picked men

following them this hasty expedition meant only one thing--war, the war

that they had looked forward to all their lives, precipitated now by an

accident that gave to a handful of them the chance that hundreds of

their fellow-tribesmen were longing for, a chance that sent them

joyfully behind their chief, careless whether the reinforcements that

had been sent for arrived in time or not. The smallness of their

numbers was a source of pleasure rather than otherwise; if they won

through to them would be the glory of victory; if they were annihilated

with them would rest the honour of dying with the leader whom they

worshipped, for not one of them doubted that Ahmed Ben Hassan would not

survive his bodyguard, the flower of his tribe, the carefully chosen

men from whose ranks his personal escort was always drawn. With them he

would crush his hereditary enemy or with them he would die.