"Let the Sheik come in, Yoshio!" he called, and laughed at the weakness of his own voice. But it was strong enough to carry as far as the tent door, and, with a flutter of draperies, the Arab Chief strode in. He grasped Craven's outstretched hand and stood looking down on him for a moment with a broad smile on his handsome face. "Enfin, mon brave, I thought I should never see you! Always you were asleep, or so it was reported to me," he said with a laugh, dropping to his heels on the mat and lighting a cigarette. Then he gave a quick searching glance at the bandaged figure on the bed and laughed again.
"You ought to be dead, you know, would have been dead if it hadn't been for that man of yours," with a backward jerk of his head toward the door. "You owe him your life, my friend. You know he came with us that night, borrowed a horse and the burnous you wouldn't wear, and kept out of sight till the last minute. He was close behind you when we charged, lost you in the mêlée, and found you again just in the nick of time. I was cut off from you myself for the moment, but I saw you wounded, saw him break a way through to you and then saw you both go down. I thought you were done for. It was just then the tide turned in our favour and I managed to reach you, with no hope of finding you alive. I was never more astonished in my life than when I saw that little devil of a Japanese crawl out from under a heap of men and horses dragging you after him. He was bruised and dazed, he didn't know friend from foe, bu he had enough sense left to know that you were alive and he meant to keep you so. He laid you out on the sand and he sat on you--you can laugh, but it's true--and blazed away with his revolver at everybody who came near, howling his national war cry till I wept with laughter. And after it was all over he snarled like a panther when I tried to touch you, and, refusing any assistance, carried you back here on the saddle in front of him--and you were no light weight. A man, by Allah!" he concluded enthusiastically. Craven smiled at the Arab's graphic description, but he found it in his heart to wish that Yoshio's zeal had not been so forward and so successful. But there were other lives than his that had been involved.