empty-handed, with an anguished yelp.

"It wasn't exactly to pay you a polite call that I came ashore to this God-forsaken hole, Farish," the old man at last remarked, with uncompromising frankness. "The fact of the matter is—I'm in a bit of a bog just now. And I've come to get you to give me a hand out of it—if your price isn't too high for me to pay."

The Emir stared at him, open-mouthed.

"You were always the bold one, Captain Brown," said he, reminiscently, after a lengthy interval, "but this beats all! And it's to the man you set ashore here, alone, long years ago, to die in the desert like a mad dog, that you come demanding a hand to get you out of a bit of a bog! You've surely forgotten—"

"I'm not one who forgets," Captain Dove interrupted sourly. "And you'll maybe remember, since you think it's worth while to hark back to such old stories, that I didn't shoot you down at once, as I might have done—for disobedience of orders. I gave you a chance for your life, anyhow. And you've made a very good thing out of it. You've risen in the world, Farish, since you were the second mate of the old Fer de Lance—and I was Captain John Bunyan Brown. I'm Captain Dove now, by the way."

"And how did you know who it was would be here to-night?" the soi-disant Emir demanded, turning it all over in his own mind.

"The Spaniards at the Rio de Oro told me, when I called in there the other day, that they were expecting the Emir El Farish shortly, from this direction, and, of course, I pricked up my ears at the name. I asked a few simple questions about him, and it didn't take a great deal of brain-power to figure out that the famous Emir was just my old second mate turned land pirate on his own account. They wanted me to wait on the chance of a cargo from your caravan, but—I had other fish to fry at the time.

"Then, coming up the coast, I caught sight of your smoke from the steamer's bridge—at least I judged it would be yours. I reckoned you'd be camping here, you see, and, when you answered my signal, I was quite sure. So—I'm in a bit of a bog, as I told you. And it'll pay you to give me a hand out of it—if your price isn't too high."

"The price that you'll have to pay for my help you can guess now without my telling you," returned the Emir in a muffled whisper, and nodded meaningly over his shoulder. "And you'll find me a fair man to deal with, so long as you deal fairly by me."

Captain Dove signified his comprehension by means of a non-committal grunt. He stooped down and helped himself awkwardly to another drink before making any other answer.

"But—you've got a wife already," he whispered back, at a shrewd guess, as he sat up again, smiling blandly.

"I won't have her long, poor thing!" said the other, some tinge of real regret in his tone. "And I'll miss her, too, when she's gone, let me tell you." He sat silent for a moment, musing, and then, "'Twas a notable revenge that I took on them-all!" he muttered darkly. "But I'll miss her for herself as well—after all these years."

"It's the desert has killed her," he said, pulling at his moustache. "I've had a doctor-fellow with her for a while past—I saved him out of an exploring party we cut up near Jebado. 'Twas nearly three weeks ago he told me she hadn't a month to live. The sand's got into her lungs, he says—and I've promised to shovel him into a sand-pit alive the day she dies, to see how he likes the sand in his own lungs, the useless scum!"

He sighed stormily, and then seemed to bethink himself again of the girl listening behind. In answer to a call of his, in a caressing voice, there came from the big tent in the background a woman, veiled as Sallie was but clad in silk instead of cotton, who bowed submissively to what he had to say to her and then held out a slender, bloodless, burning hand to Sallie.

"Go with her," ordered Captain Dove. "You'll be all right. I'll shout for you when I want you again."

And Sallie, glad so to escape from the Emir's glance, went willingly enough. It would not have helped her in any way then to disobey Captain Dove. But her hand, within the other woman's, was as cold as ice.

CHAPTER IV

THE MASQUE OF DEATH

They passed together through the curtained porch of the pavilion, and Sallie looked about her with blinking eyes as the Emir's wife led her toward a long, low, cushioned divan, with a tall screen of black carved ebony behind it, which stood in one of the corners formed by the partitions within.

The entire interior of the tent was brilliantly lighted by many lamps of a dull yellow metal, swung from under the billowy silken ceiling. Underfoot were carpets and rugs of the most costly, chosen with taste. The inner divisions seemed almost solid behind their heavy hangings of embroidery and filigree work. About the couch in the corner were grouped a number of languorous women slaves, all very richly dressed. The whole effect was one of barbaric splendour and luxury.

Her women crossed their arms on their breasts and bowed before the Emir's wife, their golden bangles jingling. She drew Sallie down on the couch beside her and waved them away. They backed into another corner with heads still bent, but stealing furtive glances at the fair stranger. Sallie had let her veil fall; the heat was stifling.

The Emir's wife laid a hand on her heart and panted, as if she had been running. A hectic flush had coloured her sunken cheeks. Sallie saw that she must once have been a very good-looking girl.

"How did you come to our camp?" she asked, suppressing with a great effort the cough her labouring chest could scarcely contain. "Is there another caravan near, or—a ship?"

"A ship," Sallie answered gently, forgetting all her own urgent troubles in quick compassion for that poor soul. And the dying girl's feverish eyes grew suddenly eager.

"A ship!" she repeated breathlessly, and for a moment or two seemed to be searching Sallie's expressively pitiful features for some further information, which she found there. The anxiety in her eyes changed to appeal, and then certainty.

"You'll help—me," she whispered. "I know you will." And she began to cough.

Two or three of her women came running forward to offer her such first aid as lay in their power. Another had hurried off through a curtained doorway which led inward, and promptly returned, followed by two enormous negroes, vile-looking rascals, each wearing a scanty tunic of leopard-skins which hung from one shoulder and did not reach to his knees, with a broad waist-belt which also served to contain a short, heavy scimitar, in a metal scabbard. Between them walked a man, a white man to judge by his hands, since his head was completely masked in a hood of coarse scarlet cotton, with only a couple of careless eyelet-holes and a rough round mouth cut in it. He was dressed in a worn drill tunic and riding-breeches and pigskin puttees, and carried himself, a thin, limber, muscular figure, with careless ease.

Sallie took him to be that doctor of whom the Emir had spoken, and shuddered at thought of the dreadful death with which the Emir had threatened him. His guards' cruel faces grew still more watchful and grim as he hastened, limping a little, toward the couch, while they were still saluting its occupant.

Sallie had risen from it and was standing with one arm about the other girl's heaving shoulders, adjusting her veil. The cough had ceased again, but its victim had not yet recovered her voice. The man in the mask glanced most unhappily at her and then at Sallie. But it was not concern on his own account that his steady grey eyes expressed.

He was about to speak, when the Emir's wife held up a thin, transparent hand. "Wait," she begged weakly. "There is so little time—and my strength—"

He pulled a glass tube from one of his pockets and gave her a tabloid. She swallowed it down, with a mouthful of