“Do you realize what this thing is?” demanded the Master, turning the necklace in his hands.  “Do you understand?”

“I have heard of it, my Captain.  For years vague rumors have come to me from the desert-men, from far oases and cities of the Sahara.  Now here, now there, news has drifted in to Algiers—­not news, but rather fantastic tales.  Yes, I have often heard of the Kaukab el Durri.  But till now I have always believed it a story, a myth.”

“No myth, but solid fact!” exulted the Master, with a strange laugh.  “This, Lieutenant, is the very treasure that Mohammed gathered together during many years of looting caravans in the desert and of capturing sambuks on the Red Sea.  Arabia, India, and China all contributed to it.  The Prophet gave it to his favorite wife, Ayeshah, as he lay dying at Medina in the year 632, with his head in her lap.

“Next to the Black Stone, itself, it is possibly the most precious thing in Islam.  And now, now with this Great Pearl Star in our hands, what is impossible?”

Silence fell between the two men.  They still huddled there in the partial protection of the wady, while all the evil jinnee of the sand-storm shrieked blackly overhead.  With no further words they continued to study the wondrous thing.  The fire was dying, now, burned out by the fierce blast of the storm and blown away to sea in long spindrifts of spark and vapor, white as the sand-drive itself.  By the fading light little could now be seen of the Great Pearl Star.  The Master replaced it in its leather bag, knotted the cord securely about the mouth of the receptacle, and pocketed it.

A rattle of pebbles down the side of the wady, and a grunting call, told them Rrisa had returned.  Dimly they saw him dragging the old Sheik over the lip of the gully, down into its half-protection.  He brought the unconscious man to them, and—­though bowed by the frenzy of the storm—­managed a salute.

“Here, Master, I have saved him from the jinnee of the desert,” Rrisa pantingly announced.  His voice trembled with a passionate hate; his eyes gleamed with excitement; his nails dug into the palms of his hands.  “Now Master, gladden my eyes and expand my breast by letting me see this old jackal’s blood!”

“No, Rrisa,” the Master denied him.  “I have other use for the old jackal.  Other punishments await him than death at my hands.”

“What punishments, Master?” the Arab cried with terrible eagerness.

“Wait, and thou shalt see.  And remember always, I am thy sheik, thy preserver, with whom thou hast shared the salt.  ’He who violates the salt shall surely taste Jahannum!’”

“Death shall have me, first!” cried Rrisa, and fell silent.  And for a while the three men crouched in the wady with the two unconscious ones, torturer and victim.  At length the Master spoke: 

“This won’t do, Lieutenant.  We must be getting back.”