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“Doos ya lellee! Doos ya lellee!
Tread, O joy of my life, tread lightly!
Thy feet are the wings of a dove,
And thy heart is of fire. On thy wounds
I will pour the king’s salve. I will hang
On thy neck the long chain of wrought gold,
When the gates of Bagdad are before us–
Doos ya lellee! Doos ya lellee!”

He did not cease singing it until the camel had staggered in beneath the dom-trees where Ebn Mazar waited. Macnamara threw himself on the ground beside the prostrate camel which had carried him so well, and gasped, “Water!” He drank so long from Ebn Haraf’s water-bag that the Arab took it from him. Then he lay on the sands hugging the ground close like a dog, till the sheikh roused him with the word that he must mount another camel, this time with a guide, Mahmoud, a kinsman of his own, who must risk his life-at a price. Half the price was paid by Macnamara to the sheikh before they left the shade of the palm-trees, and, striking through the hills, emerged again into the desert farther north.

In the open waste the strain and the peril began again, but Mahmoud, though a boy in years, was a man in wisdom and a “brother of eagles” in endurance: and he was the second Arab who won Macnamara’s heart.

It was Mahmoud’s voice now that quavered over the heads of the camels and drove them on; it was his eye which watched the horizon. The hours went by, and no living thing appeared in the desert, save a small cloud of vultures, heavy from feasting on a camel dead in the waste, and a dark-brown snake flitting across their path. Nothing all day save these, and nothing all the sleepless night save a desert wolf stealing down the sands. Macnamara’s eyes burned in his head with weariness, his body became numb, but Mahommed Mahmoud would allow no pause. They must get so far ahead the first two days that Abdullah’s pursuers might not overtake them, he said. Beyond Dongola, at a place appointed, other camels would await them, if Mahmoud’s tribesmen there kept faith.

For two days and nights Macnamara had not slept, for forty-six hours he had been constantly in the saddle, but Mahommed Mahmoud allowed him neither sleep nor rest.

Dongola came at last, lying far away on their right. With Dongola, fresh camels; and the desert flight began again. Hour after hour, and not a living thing; and then, at last, a group of three Arabs on camels going south, far over to their right. These suddenly turned and rode down on them.

“We must fight,” said Mahmoud; “for they see you are no Arab.”

“I’ll take the one with the jibbeh,” said Macnamara coolly, with a pistol in his left hand and a sword in his right. “I’ll take him first. Here’s the tap off yer head, me darlin’s!” he added as they turned and faced the dervishes.

“We must kill them all, or be killed,” said Mahmoud, as the dervishes suddenly stopped, and the one with the jibbeh called to Mahmoud:

“Whither do you fly with the white Egyptian?”

“If you come and see you will know, by the mercy of God!” answered Mahmoud.

The next instant the dervishes charged. Macnamara marked his man, and the man with the jibbeh fell from his camel. Mahmoud fired his carbine, missed, and closed with his enemy. Macnamara, late of the 7th Hussars, swung his Arab sword as though it were the regulation blade and he in sword practice at Aldershot, and catching the blade of his desert foe, saved his own neck and gave the chance of a fair hand-to-hand combat.

He met the swift strokes of the dervish with a cool certainty. His weariness passed from him; the joy of battle was on him. He was wounded twice-in the shoulder and the head. Now he took the offensive. Once or twice he circled slowly round the dervish, whose eyes blazed, whose mouth was foaming with fury; then he came on him with all the knowledge and the skill he had got in little Indian wars. He came on him, and the dervish fell, his head cut through like a cheese.