“For my part,” said Cochrane, “I had as soon die now as be a slave in Khartoum.”

“What do you say, Norah?” asked Belmont.

“If we die together, John, I don’t think I shall be afraid.”

“It is absurd that I should die for that in which I have never had belief,” said Fardet.  “And yet it is not possible for the honour of a Frenchman that he should be converted in this fashion.”  He drew himself up, with his wounded wrist stuck into the front of his jacket, “Je suis Chretien.  J’y reste,” he cried, a gallant falsehood in each sentence.

“What do you say, Mr. Stephens?” asked Mansoor in a beseeching voice.  “If one of you would change, it might place them in a good humour.  I implore you that you do what they ask.”

“No, I can’t,” said the lawyer quietly.

“Well then, you, Miss Sadie?  You, Miss Adams?  It is only just to say it once, and you will be saved.”

“Oh, auntie, do you think we might?” whimpered the frightened girl.  “Would it be so very wrong if we said it?”

The old lady threw her arms round her.  “No, no, my own dear little Sadie,” she whispered.  “You’ll be strong!  You would just hate yourself for ever after.  Keep your grip of me, dear, and pray if you find your strength is leaving you.  Don’t forget that your old aunt Eliza has you all the time by the hand.”

For an instant they were heroic, this line of dishevelled, bedraggled pleasure-seekers.  They were all looking Death in the face, and the closer they looked the less they feared him.  They were conscious rather of a feeling of curiosity, together with the nervous tingling with which one approaches a dentist’s chair.  The dragoman made a motion of his hands and shoulders, as one who has tried and failed.  The Emir Abderrahman said something to a negro, who hurried away.

“What does he want a scissors for?” asked the Colonel.

“He is going to hurt the women,” said Mansoor, with the same gesture of impotence.

A cold chill fell upon them all.  They stared about them in helpless horror.  Death in the abstract was one thing, but these insufferable details were another.  Each had been braced to endure any evil in his own person, but their hearts were still soft for each other.  The women said nothing, but the men were all buzzing together.

“There’s the pistol, Miss Adams,” said Belmont.  “Give it here!  We won’t be tortured!  We won’t stand it!”

“Offer them money, Mansoor!  Offer them anything!” cried Stephens.  “Look here, I’ll turn Mohammedan if they’ll promise to leave the women alone.  After all, it isn’t binding—­it’s under compulsion.  But I can’t see the women hurt.”

“No, wait a bit, Stephens!” said the Colonel.  “We mustn’t lose our heads.  I think I see a way out.  See here, dragoman!  You tell that grey-bearded old devil that we know nothing about his cursed tinpot religion.  Put it smooth when you translate it.  Tell him that he cannot expect us to adopt it until we know what particular brand of rot it is that he wants us to believe.  Tell him that if he will instruct us, we are perfectly willing to listen to his teaching, and you can add that any creed which turns out such beauties as him, and that other bounder with the black beard, must claim the attention of every one.”