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The woman understood and went off, and presently returned with two of the pots. Boiling water was required. This is not an item to be found in an Arab tent. Edgar therefore boiled some in his own tin over the fire in front of the sheik's tent, and showed the woman how much of the paste was to be used and how much water.
The signal is repeated in the evening. Should an enemy attack the country, the sheik's big drum gives the alarm by a peculiar series of beats, which if once heard can easily be remembered. In a few seconds this loud alarm will be re-echoed by every drum throughout the numerous villages, and the news of the attack will thus spread by signal as fast as sound can travel.
Previously to their arrival at Lari, they came upon two encampments of the Traita Tibboos, calling themselves the sheik's people; their huts were not numerous, but very regularly built in a square, with a space left in the north and south faces of the quadrangle, for the use of the cattle. The huts were entirely of mats, which excluding the sun, yet admitted both the light and the air.
He had waited up until the return of the camels and women, had assisted to unload the animals with the sheik's tent and baggage, and to put things into something like order, and had then withdrawn himself from the groups of excited talkers by the fire, and thrown himself down among the bushes some distance away.
It seemed that hungry lions, two or three of them, had broken through the palm-leaf roof of the hut of one of the sheik's wives, she whose remains were stretched upon the door, and, in addition to killing her, had actually carried off his son.
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.
This cord in some way had been severed by the Sheik's rifle when the old man had fallen. The leather sack had rolled a few feet away. Now, with hands that shook so that the Arab could hardly control them, Rrisa was holding out this sack as he staggered through the blinding sand-storm towards his chief. "Al Hamdu Lillah!" "See see what I have found!"
At the sheik's side he observed, for the first time, Balthasar, leaning upon his staff, and two women closely veiled. At one of the latter he looked a second time, saying to himself, with a flutter about his heart, "'Tis she 'tis the Egyptian!" Ilderim picked up his broken sentence "The victory, and our revenge!" Then he said aloud, "I am not afraid; I am glad. Son of Arrius, thou art the man.
She did not flinch, and after a moment he dropped it with a horrible laugh. "No, afterwards," he said, and picked her up unresistingly. He flung her on the cushions and for one awful moment she felt his hands on her. Then from outside came a sudden uproar and the sharp crack of rifles. Then in a lull in the firing the Sheik's powerful voice: "Diane! Diane!"
She had grown tall and straight and slender toward maturity since he had seen her in The Sheik's village on that long gone day. For years she had represented to him a certain fabulous reward. In his thoughts she had been but the personification of the pleasures and luxuries that many francs would purchase.
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