Three black pearls and two white were strung on a fine chain of gold.  A gap in their succession told where the missing pearl formerly had been.  Each of the five pearls was of almost incalculable value; but one, an iridescent Oman, far surpassed the others.

This pearl was about the size of a man’s largest thumb-joint.  Its shape was a smooth oval; its hue, even in that dim, wind-tossed light, showed a wondrous, tender opalescence that seemed to change and blend into rainbow iridescences as the staring Legionaries peered at it.  The other pearls, black and white alike, ranked as marvelous gems; but this crown-jewel of the Great Pearl Star eclipsed anything the Master—­for all his wide travel and experience of life—­ever had seen.

By way of strange contrast in values the pearls were separated from each other by worthless, little, smooth lumps of madrepore, or unfossilized coral.  These lumps were covered with tiny black inscriptions in archaic Cufic characters; though what the significance of these might be, the Master could not—­in that gloom and howling drive of the sand-devils—­even begin to determine.

The whole adornment, as it lay in the Master’s palm, typified the Orient.  For there was gold; there were gems and bits of worthless dross intermingled; and there about it was drifting sand of infinite ages, darkness, flashes of light, color, mystery, wonder, beauty.

“God!  What this means!” the Master repeated, as the three men cringed in the wady.  “Success, dominion, power!”

“You mean—­” put in Leclair, his voice smitten away by the ever-increasing storm that ravened over the top of the gully.

“What do I not mean, Lieutenant?  No wonder the Apostate Sheik had to flee from Mecca and take refuge here in this impassable wilderness at the furthest rim of Islam!  No wonder he has been hounded and hunted!  The only miracle is that some of his own tribesmen have not betrayed him before now!”

“Master, no Arab betrays his own sheik, right or wrong!” said Rrisa in a strange voice.  “Before that, an Arab dies by his own hand!” He spoke in Arabic, with a peculiar inflection.

Their eyes met a second by the light of the gusting fire.

“Right or wrong, M’alme!” repeated the Arab.  Then he added:  “Shall I not now go to drag in the swine-brother Abd el Rahman?”

“Thou sayst, if he be left there—­”

“Yes, Master, he will surely die.  All who are not sheltered, now, will die.  All who lie there on the dune, will be drifted under, will breathe sand, will perish.”

“It is well, Rrisa.  Go, drag in the swine-brother.  But have a care to harm him not.  Thou wouldst gladly slay him, eh?”

“More gladly than to live myself!  Still, I obey.  I go, I bring him safe to you, O Master!”

He salaamed, turned, and vanished up over the edge of the wady.

The lieutenant, warned of the danger of sand-breathing by an unconscious man, drew the hood of the woollen za’abut up over the face of Lebon.  There was nothing more he could do for the poor fellow.  Only with the passage of time could he be reawakened.  The French ace turned again to where his chief was still scrutinizing the Pearl Star as he crouched in the wady, back to the storm-wind, face toward the fire on the beach.