And a cry of mortal agony rose for a moment on the heat-shimmering air--a cry echoed with derision by fifteen score barbarians behind their natural rampart.
There was now no more shooting from the liner.

What was there to shoot at, but sand?
The Arabs, warned by the death of the gaunt fellow in the burnous, had doffed their headgear.

Their brown heads, peeping intermittently from the wady and the dunes, were evasive as a mirage.
The Master laughed bitterly.
"A devil of a place!" he exclaimed, his blood up for a fight, but all circumstances baffling him.

A very different man, this, from the calm, impersonal victim of ennui at _Niss'rosh_, or even from the unmoved individual when the liner had first swooped away from New York.

His eye was sparkling now, his face was pale and drawn with anger; and the blood-soaked cotton and collodion gave a vivid touch of color to the ensemble.