The chief stood for some minutes, stroking his black beard, while his
fierce eyes glanced from one pale face to another along the miserable
line of his captives. In a harsh, imperious voice he said something
which brought Mansoor, the dragoman, to the front, with bent back and
outstretched supplicating palms. To his employers there had always
seemed to be something comic in that flapping skirt and short cover-coat
above it; but now, under the glare of the mid-day sun, with those faces
gathered round them, it appeared rather to add a grotesque horror to the
scene. The dragoman salaamed and salaamed like some ungainly automatic
doll, and then, as the chief rasped out a curt word or two, he fell
suddenly upon his face, rubbing his forehead into the sand, and flapping
upon it with his hands.

"What's that, Cochrane?" asked Belmont. "Why is he making an exhibition
of himself?"

"As far as I can understand, it is all up with us," the Colonel
answered.

"But this is absurd," cried the Frenchman excitedly; "why should these
people wish any harm to me? I have never injured them. On the other
hand, I have always been their friend. If I could but speak to them, I
would make them comprehend. Hola, dragoman, Mansoor!"

The excited gestures of Monsieur Fardet drew the sinister eyes of the
Baggara chief upon him. Again he asked a curt question, and Mansoor,
kneeling in front of him, answered it.

"Tell him that I am a Frenchman, dragoman. Tell him that I am a friend
of the Khalifa. Tell him that my countrymen have never had any quarrel