A Turkish sentry plodded along the wall that faced the row of mansions, for many of the Turkish staff had their quarters in this neighborhood. Burke waited until the fellow had got well down to the end of his beat and then, crouching low, dashed forward. With a leap that took him several feet into the air he got a grip on the top of the wall and quickly dragged himself over its parapet. Dropping into the garden beyond, he proceeded to push his way through palm trees, acacias and shrubbery toward the house.

  A light shone from a window whose shutters had been thrown wide to let in the cool night breeze. Toward this he crept, but on reaching it found it some distance above his head. A vine climbed up the side of the house. He took hold of it, found it bore his weight, drew himself carefully up, peered in the corner of the window. On the floor within sat two men, a short, squat, evil-featured Arab, who would be el Kader, and Hussein ibn Zaid. They were smoking bubble-pipes and chatting. Burke caught odd words, but realized more from Abd el Kader’s manner than from what he said that he was trying to pump the Bedouin. Hussein wasn’t being pumped. That wily one trusted no man and knew that his host would doublecross him with the greatest of pleasure.

  Suddenly Burke heard a sound behind him. Dropping from the vine, he flung himself on the ground close to the wall and lay there palpitating. The crunch-crunch on a stick on the gravel walk came ever nearer. The muttering of a voice in guttural Arabic. Scarcely daring to breathe, he turned his head slightly, saw approaching a native with a long staff, one of those night watchmen the wealthier Arabs keep to guard their inner approaches. The fellow stopped directly opposite him, scarcely two yards away, and looked up at the window. The faint sound of voices within stirred in him that curiosity that is the mark of your true easterner. He took a couple of steps nearer, put his hand to his ear.

  Supposing he, too, decided to climb the vine and further satisfy his curiosity! Tense, breathless, Burke’s grip tightened on his revolver barrel. If need be that he had to come to grips with this fellow he must knock him out silently, and before he could make an outcry. There ensued a horrible two minutes of uncertainty. And then, still muttering under his breath, the fellow moved off.

  Rising to his knees Burke wiped the cold sweat from his dripping face and let out a sigh of relief. Once more he climbed the vine. Abd el Kader and his guest had risen, the former was saying: “In the morning, O sheik, we will go to Djevid Pasha and you will tell him your story.”

  “Aiee, by Allah, and he will spread gold before the Weled Ali!” answered Hussein, wetting his narrow lips.

  Abd el Kader took up the lamp and the two men moved out of the room. Hardly had the heavy curtains fallen behind them than Burke had drawn himself half in the window. A moment later he was standing in the dark room, listening tensely. He slipped across the floor stealthily, put his ear to the curtains. Voices were sounding fainter up the stairs and along an upper hall. He pushed through the curtains, crept along with a hand against the wall, until he came to steps.

  Above a door opened.

  “The sleep of Allah, O sheik.”

  “And the bounty of forgetfulness, O Abd el Kader.”

  The door closed. The light moved further along—disappeared.

  Suddenly Burke saw his problem unwinding itself. Presently he would ascend the stairs, enter Hussein ibn Zaid’s room, wake the fellow with his revolver to his head, bind and gag him and carry him back to Ali Bender’s place. Ali would produce camels. Then away out of Deraa. One snag, and one only, continued to trouble him. Hussein’s followers lay encamped beyond the railway. They, also, must know Lawrence’s plans. How could he deal with them single-handed?

  It was a question he could not answer. He must go on with what lay at hand and let the more distant problem rest in the meantime.

  * * * *

  A quarter of an hour later he stood outside the door that he had heard open and close in the hall above. The house lay shrouded in silence. Guest and host slept.

  The airman’s heart pounded against his breast. So much depended on the next few minutes. The slightest accident could spoil everything and put him into direst jeopardy. His hand went out stealthily toward the door, feeling for the handle. Suddenly he drew it back again, held his breath, listened intently. Had something moved behind him or was it his overstrained imagination? A minute passed. And slowly he got that ominous impression, that sensation that strikes some other than the ordinary senses, that he was not alone in that upper hall, that someone else in that upper hall knew he was there. He swung slowly around, his grip tight on his revolver.

  Not a sound broke the silence. His straining eyes saw no movement. Minutes passed. Finally, he told himself that he was fancying things. And then the urgency of his business faced him toward the door again. This time his hand reached out, touched the handle—and then again he heard that faint flutter of movement. Too late he swung. A pair of iron arms went about him, pinioning his own arms to his side. A voice hissed:

  “Yusef!”

  Curtains parted up the hall. An Arab servant appeared carrying a lamp in one hand and a long-bladed knife in the other. At the same moment the door alongside opened and Hussein’s face appeared in it.

  “By the life of Allah, what is this?”

  Although Burke had exerted his strength to the fullest he had not been able to break the grip of those iron arms. Suddenly they loosed—a hand found his wrist, twisted it, his revolver clattered to the floor. To his astonishment he found himself staring down into the evil face of the squat Abd el Kader. This potbellied, middle-aged town Arab had handled him as though he had been a child!

  The servant held the light into his face.

  Suddenly Hussein yelped: “By Allah and the prophet of Allah, it is the Inglezi birdman, el Bourque!”

  “What!” cried Abd el Kader. “That one?”

  “No other, O father of miracles!”

  “Then Allah be praised, the reward that Djevid has offered for his capture alive or dead is mine! Bind him, Yusef! And you, O sheik, watch the prowling Christian dog while I go to the headquarters of Djevid. By this time he has returned from Damascus. Wellah, I will not wait until morning lest he slip through my hands!”

  Five minutes later Burke found himself standing in the makad below, his arms bound tightly to his side. In front of him on the divan sat the Arab sheik, and Hussein’s crafty eyes were etched in cruelty. Abd el Kader had gone some minutes since into the night to bring a squad of Turkish gendarmerie. Under his breath the airman cursed steadily the damnable luck that had gotten him into this hole. He had failed utterly and disastrously. Within an hour he would pay the penalty of that failure.

  “Yah!” the Arab taunted him. “The Inglezi are fools and the sons of fools—may their plans come to destruction! I, Hussein, have made a laughing stock of that little cock of the dunghill, el Auruns. And now I will see you, the dropper of the eggs of death, hang on the gibbet.”

  Burke forced a mirthless laugh. “The stupid talk in their pride, O sheik,” he said, grimly. “But one day el Auruns and his followers will requite you fully for your treachery, dog that you are.”

  The Arab leaped to his feet, eyes blazing, the saliva slobbering from the corners of his thick-lipped, ugly mouth. In his hand he brandished his knife. “By Allah,” he bellowed, “I’ll cut your impudent tongue from your head!”

  Suddenly his eye lighted on the lamp. A sinister grimace swept across his face. “Aiee!” he cried. “Aiee—I shall have amusement! I will teach you to talk in folly to Hussein ibn Zaid!”

  Crossing to the lamp, he laid the blade of his knife across the top of the chimney and turned the wick up further. With a start of horror Burke realized what he was up to. Torture!

  He said grimly: “By the head of thy father, Hussein ib Zaid, if this comes to el Auruns’ ear the terrors of gehenna will fall on you and your people!”

  The Arab laughed, his lips twisting sinisterly over his dirty fangs of teeth. He lifted the knife from the chimney, tested its heat, put it back again. The watching airman knew what was in store for him. When that knife had taken on sufficient heat it would be used to mark him, and in the process he would suffer the tortures of hell. The Arabs were past masters in this sort of thing, had nothing to learn.

  Finally, Hussein took the knife up again, held it near to his cheek—chuckled—turned. “Now,” he cried, “now I will leave the mark of the Weled Ali upon the Christian pig!”

  * * * *

  He came closer. Standing a yard away, he moved the blade slowly toward Burke’s eyes. He would move it closer and closer until the heat seared through even closed eyelids, scorched the cornea, brought blindness.

  Burke stood his ground, realized that to struggle would be only to increase the agony. Nearer— nearer—already the pain was beginning to strike in toward his brain. Another minute or two and—

  Something moved beyond the Arab. Because of the burning knife so close to his eyes Burke saw only a shadow against the ceiling. But suddenly the knife blade was swept away. He found himself staring wide-eyed at the scene being enacted before him. A muffled gasp had croaked from Hussein ibn Zaid’s throat. His eyes darted from their sockets. And then a long knife blade flashed beneath his chin, opening his neck from ear to ear.

  As he plunged forward at Burke’s feet, a well-known voice cried:

  “Wellah, I am become a deliverer, el Bourque!”

  Beyond the fallen Arab stood Abdulla el Zaagi, the captain of Lawrence’s bodyguard and one of the wildest, quick-witted rascals in Arabia, showing his teeth in a wide grin.

  “How did you get here?” the astonished airman gasped.

  “Wellah, el Bourque, this afternoon when I was returning with el Ollafeel and his party from Amman we saw your bird fighting two Turkish birds. We were then on the other side of the hills to east of the railway and on our way back to Azrak. When your bird came down we hurried into the hills to succor you, but, wellah, you had vanished and there was nothing but that burning bird. Then I saw your footprints on the sand and I said to el Ollafeel: ‘El Bourque has gone in disguise to Minifer to get a camel!’ And then I mounted my hujun and set off after you. By Allah, I stood overlooking the railway shouting at the top of my voice when you leaped aboard the train. To el Ollafeel I said then: ‘He has gone to Deraa, on what business Allah knows, but I go after him!’ So I rode. And I rode straight to the house of Ali Bender, who told me you were here! But come, el Bourque, we must go!”

  He stooped, picked the lifeless Weled Ali up and heaved him over his shoulder.

  “What are you going to do with him?” Burke demanded.

  “Bear him as a gift to el Auruns!” chuckled the grinning Arab. “To the end, wellah, that the Weled Ali hear of it!”

  Out through the window. Through the garden. Over the wall. They were hurrying across the square when the sound of voices behind halted them. A group of shadows moved toward the house of Abd el Kader. Djevid and his staff! Before they reached the far side of the square the hue and cry rose behind them. The airman’s escape had been discovered. They hurried on to the house of Ali Bender.

  A quarter of an hour later they started out of the corn merchant’s yard on foot, and leading the Zaagi’s camel, across whose back, trussed up in a large canvas bag, rode Hussein ibn Zaid. But they had hardly got their nose through the gate when the shouts of soldiers hurrying down the road toward them drove them back. Ali Bender shot the gate to nervously behind them, and the Zaagi, turning on Burke, hissed: “You shall have to ride, el Bourque, as Hussein rides. Go, my uncle”—he swung on Ali—“and fetch another bag.”

  Burke had ridden in strange fashions, but never in one so strange as this. Tied up inside the big canvas bag and swaying against the hujun’s ribs, he was balanced on the other side by the Weled Ali sheik—the living and the dead—a grim cargo!

  Up the street the Zaagi led his mount “Yakh, O my uncle!” he encouraged it.

  Swaying with the camel’s movements and sweating from the close confinement, Burke kept wondering if after all he should have allowed the Zaagi to tie him up this way. He felt absolutely helpless—was absolutely helpless—could do nothing. A sense of apprehension—of dread—took possession of him. Through the night he could hear in various parts of the town the cries of the Turkish soldiers who were searching for him. The approaches to the town would be guarded. Could they get through?

  The Zaagi, under the guise of talking to his mount, cried out: “A stout heart, O my uncle! We are close to the square by the railway station. A little further now and there will be rest for tired bones.”

  And then suddenly the rattle of a gun and a voice: “Who goes?”

  “Bedu!” the Zaagi replied.

  “Halt!”

  The camel jerked to a stop.

  “Who are you?”

  “I,” replied the quick-witted Zaagi impudently, “am of the Weled Ali and return to my encampment beyond the railway.” Burke had told him about the Arab encampment and the clever fellow was using it after his own fashion to their advantage.

  “What have you got in those bags?”

  “Forage! Men must eat, O soldier!”

  Suddenly Burke got an awful prod in the stomach—a prod that almost knocked his wind out. The sentry had banged the butt of his rifle against the bag in which he was trussed.

  “You are Weled Ali, eh?” exclaimed the Turk. “By Allah, your sheik has disappeared with a captured Inglezi birdman—and there has been blood spilt.”

  “What!” yelped the Zaagi. “By the truth of Allah, I go to the encampment to rouse the tribe. They shall know whose blood it is that has been spilt. Yakh, O my uncle!” He gave the camel a thump on the rump, and the beast lurched forward, the soldier’s derisive laugh following.

  “Aiee, O my uncle,” said the Zaagi softly a little further on, “for stupidity, the Turk!”

  Presently the beast lumbered up and over the railway embankment, and Abdulla jerked her to a stop. A minute later Burke was free, wiping the sweat from his face. With a gasp of relief he said: “Thank God, that’s over!”

  * * * *

  They were at the foot of the hills beyond the railway. Suddenly he said: “We must find the Weled Ali, Abdulla! You say el Ollafeel and his men are on the other side of the hills. Let us hurry on and join them. They will help us search.”

  Abdulla shook his head. “It is too late for that, el Bourque. We cannot come by them short of another hour. By that time it will be dawn. Let us leave these Weled Ali to their dreams! Have we not got their sheik?”

  But Burke said grimly: “We can’t leave them while they have tongues in their head. If we do not take them with us all my work has been in vain.”

  The Zaagi shrugged impatiently. Arab-like, now that the excitement of the escape was over, he was all for the easiest way out. Burke stood there for a moment with his chin in his hand. And then he said: “Give me your rifle. We go to find the Weled Ali. Come softly after me.”

  There were three likely places on the western slopes of these hills where the Arab tribesmen might be encamped—three sets of wells. Burke led the way to the nearest, left the Zaagi a quarter of a mile short of it, and crept on his hands and knees. No houses of hair encircled the hard-baked hollow. Returning to the Arab, he ordered him to follow and made his way up the jagged basalt rocks towards the higher well. But it, too, was vacant. By this time a full half hour had passed and the sky above them was taking on the faint transparency of the dawn.

  Time was pressing. A little while now and the Arabs would waken—when that happened it would be too late to carry out the plan he had in mind. He hurried on up the hill to the third well—the Zaagi coming up well in the rear with the camel. And suddenly, topping a slight rise, he saw what he wanted. Tents in the shallow valley below. Camels tethered off to one side. He hurried back to the Zaagi, told him to leave his hujun there and led the way up again.

  “We’ll creep in on them while they sleep and put the gun to their heads. But first, before we waken them, we must snaffle their rifles. Come!”

  On hands and knees they made their way slowly towards the tents below. Every minute the sky was getting lighter. A slip now—a prematurely wakened Weled Ali—and the game would be up with success a hair’s breadth away. At the opening of the first tent Burke turned, pointed on to the next one, and, when the Zaagi slipped past him, stuck his head gingerly inside. Three shadowy figures slept side by side. He crawled further. The air was fetid from sleeping breath.

  He could hear his heart hammering again, could feel his body trembling. One thought kept ringing through his brain: “You mustn’t fumble now!” On he moved. At the sleeper’s heads he found what he sought—three rifles—Lee Enfield’s supplied by Lawrence to these treacherous devils. With infinite caution he took hold of them, started dragging them towards the entrance. He was almost out when one of the sleepers grunted—turned uneasily on his side. He flattened out—waited with taut breath. Would the fellow wake?

  With a gorgeous sensation of relief he heard the fellow’s breathing become regular again—crept outside. Ten minutes later they had a pile of rifles in the open ground between the tents—nineteen of them.

  “What now—into the well?” The Zaagi pointed towards the three holes a dozen yards further on. But Burke shook his head. These Lee Infield’s were too valuable to throw away. He said: “Come on—we’ll waken them now!”

  The Zaagi leapt with a laugh to his feet. “Ayah ho, ya Weled Ali!” he cried.

  Commotion within the tents. A voice: “It is Hussein returned!” Men with sleep in their eyes tumbled out—let out sudden squawks of amazement at the sight of Burke and the Zaagi— and came to a halt.

  Burke said grimly, his rifle pointed at them: “We march, O Weled Ali, back to Azrak! And you go on foot!”

  In the rapidly increasing light the cornered tribesmen glanced furtively from side to side for some avenue of escape. The presence of the Zaagi told them plainly that they were in for trouble, but, used to trouble, these sons of the desert were ready to seize any loophole.