Then above the clamour that was raging inside and out she heard
Saint Hubert's voice shouting, and with a shriek that seemed to rip her
tortured throat she called to him. The Sheik, too, heard, and with a
desperate effort for a moment won clear, but one of the Nubians was
behind him, and, as Saint Hubert and a crowd of the Sheik's own men
poured in through the opening, he brought down a heavy club with
crashing force on Ahmed Ben Hassan's head, and as he fell another drove
a broad knife deep into his back. For a few minutes more the tramping
feet surged backward and forward over the Sheik's prostrate body. Diana
tried to get to him, faint and stumbling, flung here and there by the
fighting, struggling men, until a strong hand caught her and drew her
aside. She strained against the detaining arm, but it was one of
Ahmed's men, and she gave in as a growing faintness came over her.
Mistily she saw Saint Hubert clear a way to his friend's side, and then
she fainted, but only for a few moments. Saint Hubert was still on his
knees beside the Sheik when she opened her eyes, and the tent was quite
quiet, filled with tribesmen waiting in stoical silence. The camp of
Ibraheim Omair had been wiped out, but Ahmed Ben Hassan's men looked
only at the unconscious figure of their leader.
Saint Hubert glanced up hastily as Diana came to his side. "You are all
right?" he asked anxiously, but she did not answer. What did it matter
about her?
"Is he going to die?" she said huskily, for speaking still hurt
horribly.
"I don't know--but we must get away from here. I need more appliances
than I have with me, and we are too few to stay and risk a possible
attack if there are others of Ibraheim Omair's men in the
neighbourhood."
Diana looked down on the wounded man fearfully. "But the ride--the
jolting," she gasped.
"It has got to be risked," replied Saint Hubert abruptly.
Of the long, terrible journey back to Ahmed Ben Hassan's camp Diana
never remembered very much. It was an agony of dread and apprehension,
of momentary waiting for some word or exclamation from the powerful
Arab who was holding him, or from Saint Hubert, who was riding beside
him, that would mean his death, and of momentary respites from fear and
faint glimmerings of hope as the minutes dragged past and the word she
was dreading did not come. Once a sudden halt seemed to stop her heart
beating, but it was only to give a moment's rest to the Arab whose
strength was taxed to the uttermost with the Sheik's inert weight, but
who refused to surrender his privilege to any other. Moments of
semi-unconsciousness, when she swayed against the arm of the watchful
tribesman riding beside her, and his muttered ejaculation of "Allah!
Allah!" sent a whispered supplication to her own lips to the God they
both worshipped so differently. He must not die. God would not be so
cruel.