“I’ve a pistol in me pocket,” said Belmont, looking up at his wife.  “I would give me soul to be able to pass it to you.”

“Keep it, John, and it may be useful yet.  I have no fears.  Ever since we prayed I have felt as if our guardian angels had their wings round us.”  She was like a guardian angel herself as she turned to the shrinking Sadie, and coaxed some little hope back into her despairing heart.

The short, thick Arab, who had been in command of Wad Ibrahim’s rearguard, had Joined the Emir and the Moolah; the three consulted together, with occasional oblique glances towards the prisoners.  Then the Emir spoke to Mansoor.

“The chief wishes to know which of you four is the richest man?” said the dragoman.  His fingers were twitching with nervousness and plucking incessantly at the front of his covercoat.

“Why does he wish to know?” asked the Colonel.

“I do not know.”

“But it is evident,” cried Monsieur Fardet.  “He wishes to know which is the best worth keeping for his ransom.”

“I think we should see this thing through together,” said the Colonel.  “It’s really for you to decide, Stephens, for I have no doubt that you are the richest of us.”

“I don’t know that I am,” the lawyer answered; “but in any case, I have no wish to be placed upon a different footing to the others.”

The Emir spoke again in his harsh rasping voice.

“He says,” Mansoor translated, “that the baggage-camels are spent, and that there is only one beast left which can keep up.  It is ready now for one of you, and you have to decide among yourselves which is to have it.  If one is richer than the others, he will have the preference.”

“Tell him that we are all equally rich.”

“In that case he says that you are to choose at once which is to have the camel.”

“And the others?”

The dragoman shrugged his shoulders.

“Well,” said the Colonel, “if only one of us is to escape, I think you fellows will agree with me that it ought to be Belmont, since he is the married man.”

“Yes, yes, let it be Monsieur Belmont,” cried Fardet.

“I think so also,” said Stephens.

But the Irishman would not hear of it.

“No, no, share and share alike,” he cried.  “All sink or all swim, and the devil take the flincher.”

They wrangled among themselves until they became quite heated in this struggle of unselfishness.  Some one had said that the Colonel should go because he was the oldest, and the Colonel was a very angry man.

“One would think I was an octogenarian,” he cried.  “These remarks are quite uncalled for.”

“Well, then,” said Belmont, “let us all refuse to go.”

“But this is not very wise,” cried the Frenchman.  “See, my friends!  Here are the ladies being carried off alone.  Surely it would be far better that one of us should be with them to advise them.”