The Tragedy of the Korosko

d orange sand which bordered the river had long been left behind, and everywhere now was the same brown, rolling, gravelly plain, the ground-swell with the shining rounded pebbles upon it

, pure air. The long caravan straggled along at the slow swing of the baggage-camels. Far out on the flanks rode the vedettes, halting at every rise, and peerin

Cochrane. He rode with his chin on his shoulder and

miles," Belm

than two and a half miles an hour unless it is trotting. That would only give about forty miles, but still it is, I fear, rather far fo

and they'll be after us like a streak. They'll have no baggage-camels to hold them back, you can lay your life on that! Little did I think, when I d

an before the women. I see that Tippy Tilly is as good as his word, for those five niggers and the two brown Johnnies

g mouth set like granite. "If they try any games on the women, I mean to sh

some narcotic drug-the merciful anodyne which Nature uses when a great crisis has fretted the nerves too far. They thought of their friends and of their past lives in the

"I always had an idea that I should like to die in a real,

d to have died in m

e up and find yoursel

Hetty Smith used to say

ome brighter world w

a. "It's a terrible thing to go unprepared

ont. "If we and those whom we loved all passed over simultaneou

id her husband. "We'll all go together, and we shall find

He chuckled to think of what his friends in the Cafe Cubat would say if they learned that he had laid down his life for the Christian faith. Sometimes it amused an

ers were astonished to observe that the Arabs pointed at this with an air of the utmost concern, and they halted when they came to the edge of it like men upon the brink of an unfordable river. It was very light, dusty sand, and every wandering breath of wind sent it dancing into the air like a

ont, who found the drago

going out of

haps there will not be one grain left, but all will be carried up into the air again. An Arab will sometimes have to go fifty or a

g will t

ne ca

nd for the hundredth time he looked back at the long, hard skyline behind them. There was the great, emp

till go for many hundreds of yards rather than risk the crossing. Then, with good, hard country before them once more, the tired beasts were whipped up, and they ambled on with a double-jointed jogtrot, which set the prisoners nodding and bowing in

d Miss Adams suddenly. "I've do

r limbs if you do. Hold up, just

e the strain." He took the puggaree from his hat, and tying the ends together, he slung it ov

of the weary doora camels came down with a crash, its limbs starred out as i

of drift sand?" asked

lmont. "Here, Mansoor, wh

agoman sho

is, sir. I never saw t

clear as if it had been slashed with chalk across a brown table. It was very thin, but it

caravan route,

es it whi

bon

heads were scattered everywhere, and the lines of ribs were so continuous that it looked in places like the framework of a monstrous serpent. The endless road gleamed in the sun as if it were paved with ivory. For thousands of years this had been the highw

Baedeker says that it has been disused on account of the cessation of all trade which followed the rise of the Dervi

aravan struck to the south along the old desert track, and this Golgotha of a road seemed to be a fitting avenue for t

the renegade dragoman. The fellow was a villain and a coward, but at least he was an Oriental, and he understood the Arab point of view. His change of religion had brought him into closer contact with the Dervishes, and he h

o keep things going for another twenty-four hours. After that it does not much matter what befall

u. If you will all become as I have, you will certainly be carried to Khartoum

ence for a little, for his Indian service had left him with a curried-prawn temper, which had had an extra tou

at last. "Some things are possib

d only p

," said the Co

rugged his

sking me, if you beco

do what I say, then

that I have not done a

give this priest, or Moolah, who is coming to us, a hint that we really are softening a bit upon the point. I don't think, considering the hole that we are in, that there can be very much objection

the fat, little man with the grey beard, upon the brown camel in front there. I may tell you that he has a name among them for converting the infi

gone so far, but now that he is dead I think we may stretch a point. You go to him, Mansoor, and i

together, but he does not unde

the Moolah, then, and I'll tell

used even to show any interest in the Mohammedan creed. "I guess I am too old to bow the knee to Baal," she said. The

e matter over. "It is very important that it should be done in a natural way, for if he th

d do it, as the proposa

olonel, but it is not possible that a man should be fitted for everything. It wil

id the Colone

ou are very wanting in sympathy for the ideas of other people,

itics!" cried Bel

on when, in effect, there is no religion in the world to him outside some little church in which he has been born and bred? I will say this for t

he blank face of a man who is not quite sure

ng yourself if you li

ry glad to be r

rested in all creeds. When I ask for information, it is becaus

Monsieur Fardet would undertake it," said Mrs. Be

the siphons upon the sideboard. Sadie, who had borne up so well, became suddenly hysterical, and her shrieks of senseless laughter jarred horribly upon their nerves. Her aunt on one side of her, and Mr. Stephens on the other, did all they could to soothe her, and at last the weary, overstrung girl relapsed into something between a sleep and a faint, hanging limp over her pommel, and only kept from falling b

e which was ridden by a wounded Soudanese soldier. It was limping badly with a strained tendon, and it was only by constant prodding that it could be kept with the others. The Emir Wad Ibrahim raised his Remington, as the creature hobbled past, and sent a bullet through it

trade route, had they been in a condition to take notice of them. Here and there along its course were the crumbling remains of ancient buildings, so old that no date could be assigned to them, but designed in some far-off civilisation to give the travellers shade from the sun or protection from the ever-lawless children of the desert. The mud bricks with which these refuges were constructed showed that the material had been carried over from the distant Nile. Once, upon the top of a little knoll, they saw the shattered plinth of a pillar of red Assouan granite, with the wide-winged symbol of the Egyp

on that brilliant patch of clear, restful colour, with the dark glow of the bare desert around it, made it shine like the purest emerald in a setting of burnished copper. And then it was not its beauty only, but its promise for the future: water, shade, all that weary travellers could ask for. Even Sadie was revived by the cheery sight, and the spent camels snorted and stepped out more briskly, stretching their long necks and snif

would during the heat of the day, and that the Moolah would come to them before sunset. The ladies were given the thicker shade of an acacia tree, and the men lay down under the palms. The great green leaves swished slowly above them; they heard the low hum of the Arab talk, and the dull champing of the camels, and then in an instant, by that most mysterious and least understood of miracles, one was in a green Irish valley, and another saw the long