Hour after hour he sat thinking. There was no getting away from it--it was only despicable that he had not himself recognised it earlier. The narrow path of duty lay before him from which he might not turn aside to ease the burden of a private grief. He was bound to the men who trusted him. Honour demanded that he should forego the project he had formed--until his obligation had been discharged. Loyalty to his companions must come before every selfish consideration. After all it was only a postponement, he reflected with a kind of grim satisfaction. The residue of the mission once safely conducted to the coast his responsibility would end and he would be free to pursue the course that would liberate the woman he loved.
In the chill silence of the hour that precedes the dawn he had risen cramped and shivering from his seat by the dying fire and too late then to take the rest he had neglected, had roused Yoshio and started on the usual foraging expedition that was his daily occupation. And from that time he had been careful of a life which, though valueless to him, was invaluable to his companions. From that time, too, the ill-luck that had pursued them ceased. There had been no more deaths, no more desertions from the already depleted train of carriers. The work had gone forward with continuing success and, six months ago, after a hazardous march through a hostile country, Craven had led the remnant of the expedition safely to the coast. He had waited for some weeks at the African port after the mission had returned to England, and then embarking on a small trading steamer, had made his way northward to an obscure station on the Moroccan seaboard, when by a leisurely and indirect route he had slowly crossed the desert to the district where he now was and which he had reached only a week ago. Twice before he had visited the tribe as the guest of the Sheik Mukair Ibn Zarrarah's younger son, an officer of Spahis whom he had met in Paris, and the warm hospitality shown him had left a deep impression.
A sudden unaccountable impulse had led him to revisit a locality where he had spent some of the happiest months of his life. He had conceived an intense admiration and liking for the stern old Arab Chief and his two utterly dissimilar sons; the elder a grave habitually silent man, who clung to the old traditions with the rigid tenacity of the orthodox Mohammedan, disdainful of the French jurisdiction under which he was compelled to live, and occupied solely with the affairs of the tribe and his beautiful and adored wife who reigned alone in his harem, despite the fact that she had given him no child; the younger in total contrast to his brother, a dashing ultra-modern young Arab as deeply imbued with French tendencies as the conservative Omar was opposed to them. The wealthy and powerful old Sheik, whose friendship had been assiduously sought by the French Administration to ensure the co-operation of a tribe that with its far reaching influence might have proved a dangerous element in an unsettled district, shared in his inmost heart the sentiments of his heir, but with a larger and more discriminating wisdom saw the desirability of associating at least one of his family with the Government he was obliged, though grudgingly and half contemptuously, to acknowledge. He had hovered long between prejudice and policy before he reluctantly gave his consent for Saïd to be placed on the roll of the regiment of Spahis. And the unusual love existing between the two brothers had survived a test that might have proved too strong for its continuance; Omar, bowing to the decision of the autocratic old Chief, had refrained even from comment, and Saïd, despite his enthusiasm, had carefully avoided inflaming his brother's deeply rooted hatred of the nation the younger man was proud to serve. His easy-going nature adapted itself readily to the two wholly separate lives he lived, and though secretly preferring the months spent with his regiment he contrived to extract every possible enjoyment from the periods of leave for which he returned to the tribe where, laying aside the picturesque uniform his ardent soul rejoiced in and scrupulously suppressing every indication of his Francophile inclinations he resumed with consummate tact the somewhat invidious position of younger son of the house.