The Sheik

Then above the clamour that was raging inside and out she heard

Saint Hubert's voice shouting, and with a shriek that seemed to rip her

tortured throat she called to him. The Sheik, too, heard, and with a

desperate effort for a moment won clear, but one of the Nubians was

behind him, and, as Saint Hubert and a crowd of the Sheik's own men

poured in through the opening, he brought down a heavy club with

crashing force on Ahmed Ben Hassan's head, and as he fell another drove

a broad knife deep into his back. For a few minutes more the tramping

feet surged backward and forward over the Sheik's prostrate body. Diana

tried to get to him, faint and stumbling, flung here and there by the

fighting, struggling men, until a strong hand caught her and drew her

aside. She strained against the detaining arm, but it was one of

Ahmed's men, and she gave in as a growing faintness came over her.

Mistily she saw Saint Hubert clear a way to his friend's side, and then

she fainted, but only for a few moments. Saint Hubert was still on his

knees beside the Sheik when she opened her eyes, and the tent was quite

quiet, filled with tribesmen waiting in stoical silence. The camp of

Ibraheim Omair had been wiped out, but Ahmed Ben Hassan's men looked

only at the unconscious figure of their leader.

Saint Hubert glanced up hastily as Diana came to his side. "You are all

right?" he asked anxiously, but she did not answer. What did it matter

about her?

"Is he going to die?" she said huskily, for speaking still hurt

horribly.

"I don't know--but we must get away from here. I need more appliances

than I have with me, and we are too few to stay and risk a possible

attack if there are others of Ibraheim Omair's men in the

neighbourhood."

Diana looked down on the wounded man fearfully. "But the ride--the

jolting," she gasped.

"It has got to be risked," replied Saint Hubert abruptly.

Of the long, terrible journey back to Ahmed Ben Hassan's camp Diana

never remembered very much. It was an agony of dread and apprehension,

of momentary waiting for some word or exclamation from the powerful

Arab who was holding him, or from Saint Hubert, who was riding beside

him, that would mean his death, and of momentary respites from fear and

faint glimmerings of hope as the minutes dragged past and the word she

was dreading did not come. Once a sudden halt seemed to stop her heart

beating, but it was only to give a moment's rest to the Arab whose

strength was taxed to the uttermost with the Sheik's inert weight, but

who refused to surrender his privilege to any other. Moments of

semi-unconsciousness, when she swayed against the arm of the watchful

tribesman riding beside her, and his muttered ejaculation of "Allah!

Allah!" sent a whispered supplication to her own lips to the God they

both worshipped so differently. He must not die. God would not be so

cruel.