SAVARAN AND

THE GREAT SAND

(The Devil Comes Aboard)

Douglas Newton

(1884-1951)

1938

Text from syndicated serial edition, published in the Daily Telegraph (Sydney)

12 May 1940 in a single supplement. (35,000 words)

Contents

Chapter 1 | Chapter 2

Chapter 3 | Chapter 4

Chapter 5 | Chapter 6

Chapter 7 | Chapter 8

Chapter 9 | Chapter 10

_____________

Chapter1

IN the Street of the Rose Bower, at a point in Kjweli's stenchy hide market, a lithe-limbed beggar, hiding his face in the hood of Africa's most tattered djellaba robe, stopped a holy man to ask the way to the house, of the illustrious Kadi Jilbis el Sifr.

Under his green Mecca turban the face of the holy man had geniality. Nevertheless, at the simple request the eyes goggled venom, and the beggar was consigned to the most painful torture chamber of Eblis for even uttering that name. The illustrious magistrate, el Sifr, was plainly not Kjweli's Popular Citizen No. 1. Still the beggar seemed more pleased than offended.

"Pray a hangman's blessing on me then, O Well Filled Sack of Virtue, and hasten he who has Allah's own gift for exterminating vermin," he said, with cheerful ferocity.

From the shadow of the hood came a flash of teeth so white and wolfish that the hakim stammered directions in haste and fled, certain he had encountered Shaitan himself on the way to collect his own.

Not that he was far wrong. The beggar not only had the air of a stalking Lucifer, but the intent. He was vengeance on the way, and the illustrious— and unsuspecting— Kadi el Sifr, merchant in money, intrigue, arms, slaves, drugs, and such assorted dirt, was the man who was going to regret it. That two warrants for his hanging ran in Kjweli City in no way blunted the strange beggar's zest. Was he not Savaran, known from Tunis to Table Bay as— among many things— the Whip of Kings, the Fear of Rogues, and the Heartbreak of Journeymen Jailers?

His limby stride swung him through the hide market, and across the Great Sok beyond, his garish figure melting into the crowds at the mere hint of a dogari (policeman).

On the other side of the market he plunged into the kennel-like alleys leading uphill to the citadel quarter. This was set about with the great houses and walled gardens of the wealthy, and shaded by close rows of sweet-smelling trees. Here was all the decorum proper to the larger swindlings of rich men. A dignified traffic in fine leather, inlaid weapons, silks, and goldsmithery went sleepily forward. Plump usurers lolled in inviting doorways. Here the higher fancies of drug smuggling and other viciousness could be attained without vulgar publicity. The lazy tapping of a coffin-maker under the citadel gave it almost the air of a place of gracious peace.

Half-way across, the beggar halted sharply amid the gold chequer leaves— he simply could not believe in the woman who had come out of the largest house on the far side.

Kjweli is no home for houris. Its name indicates that its inhabitants eat salt with the wrong hand; that is, are debased desperadoes and eternally damned. Kjweli owes its being as a moral blight to a single sun-scorched hill standing in a region of swamp and desert; its continued existence to a sand spit that provides the only decent anchorage on 400 miles of storm-gouged coast. The Mandatory Powers prefer to let it fester in sin and independence rather than allow any one of them to take it over. It elects its own Wali Kadi, and runs a dogari police, but mainly to protect its own brand of illegality against intruding criminals, whom it wipes out with swiftness and blood. All but master villains keep clear of the city. White men visit it only at perilous necessity— and white women never.

Yet it was a white woman the ragged man was now seeing. A white girl, rather; a well-built, bravely moving creature in the vigor of her early twenties; a girl with the cool, arrogant handsomeness that only Anglo-Saxon high-breeding can produce; a queen among women who made Savaran's eyes widen and shine.

She was either unaware of the distraction she caused, or, with the disdain of her kind, utterly indifferent. She moved, cool and white, out into the steamy heat of the Sok, even her garments looking like flawless models of what the Best People should wear in a temperature of over a hundred in the shade.

Behind her were two white men of the same well-creased breed. Both were young; one narrow, compact, tanned, with the whip-cord air and carefully emotionless good looks of a cavalryman. The other younger, thicker-set, taller; in him the comeliness of the girl had been turned into a pleasant ugliness. He was plainly her brother, as high-bred, but a more affable and ingenuous article.

The amazing trio moved into the gold-dappled shadows of the Sok, utterly indifferent to the unsavory beggars who immediately began to cluster about them. Only the brother seemed disturbed at the swiftness with which the rabble accumulated out of the shadows and began to hem them in— yet not so acutely as Savaran.

His lean form became tense, and his hands slipped instinctively under his robes to his pistol butt. His trained eyes saw something more than a casual massing of vagrants; and, as usual, his instinct was right.

Abruptly the riff-raff cohered into a mob, and, with the girl between them, the two Englishmen were fighting for life.

Savaran moved forward a couple of steps, then stopped with a sardonic laugh. He who was lord of many fights saw something odd in this one. The dark-skinned riff-raff, while making all the motions of a holy war, did it with empty hands. Where the fanatic blood of Africa should express itself with sticks, knives, and guns, these natives were taking on the accursed Bumi with naked fists. That was not only unnatural, it indicated some sly, double-crossing plot, probably planned by the merchant whose house they had just left. It was also a stupid one.

When it came to fists, white men knew all the punches. The boy swung and hooked like an expert, and if his companion lacked his slaughterhouse gusto, his neat finish was quite as deadly. When either hit, someone was always sorry, while in the wild melee of such an attack their cool discipline gave them the advantage.

Weedy ruffians, dropping like pole-axed cattle, or doubling and staggering in pain, hampered and confused the attack. And all the time the girl remained calm, not flustering her men either by cries or panic movements, but, suiting herself to their tactics, moved with them steadily back towards the door they had left.

A beauty as admirable as her looks, Savaran decided, and moved closer to the fight. He knew what this one-sided face banging must mean. Thin tropic blood must grow savage under hurts. A wiry, one-eyed negro in red turban, hovering on the edge of the fracas, like a man seeking his opportunity, screamed viciously for quicker action.

Startlingly, knives flashed, and sticks swung. The elder white man reeled against the girl; a patch of blood showed on the boy's arm; the girl broke her silence with a sharp cry, but of anger, not fear.

Savaran was already among the riff-raff. Spidery arms were shooting out with astonishing zest, gathering necks and cracking skulls with gusto, tossing the limp residue against the mass with his always unexpected strength. He went through the crowd like a reaping machine through grain, and the inspired ferocity of his warring swept like a wind of fear through the mob.

Then a stick knocked the hood from the eagle face. A man yelped,  "Zavarani!" A name of power, obviously, for immediately the crowd melted into the dappled shadows like smoke.

THE girl found herself looking into the face of a tall scarecrow of a man, with the air of a laughing Lucifer. But she still kept her nerve. Supporting the half -stunned cavalryman with her strong young arm, she cried imperatively:—

"My bag. A one-eyed negro... red turban... snatched it.... Get it... vital...."

The eagle-faced man had not overlooked the one-eyed negro and his intentions. The bright eyes swept the Sok, caught a glimpse of speeding red, loosed a flash of teeth, dazzling white in that dark face, at the girl, and was gone.

The one-eyed negro took a strange route for a bolting thief. Dodging from the Little Sok by a side alley, be doubled parallel with it at the first turning. Instead of trying to leave it behind, he seemed actually to be heading towards the house the girl had left.

Not that he reached it.

While still a hundred yards away, he had the sensation of a panther loping after him, and, looking round, saw the beggar at his heels. He leapt like a cat into an angle of the walls, facing about with an ugly automatic pistol In his hand.

The beggar stopped before him and laughed. It was a laugh whose mocking ferocity chilled all Africa. It chilled the one-eyed. His trigger finger went to water as the beggar said with iron contempt: "

"Fire that, O Mangy Dog of the Eternally Misbegotten, and I pluck your liver out and feed it to the crows?"

"Who are you?" the negro mumbled.

"Kings know my name without asking, and scum tremble at it," the bizarre man said, with, genial zest. "It is not a thing to bandy with, you of the stews."

"Zavarani!" gasped the negro, as though the very extravagance of this raking fellow prompted memory; his face went grey, and his pistol wobbled.

"Aye, Savaran, the doom of dogs. That bag you stole— quick!"

The whip-lash of the command sent the negro's band to the breast of his robe. Then, knowing he had been tricked into betrayal, he screamed: "Shaitan take thee!" and whipped up his pistol.

He was already too late. A steel-wire leg shot out, a sinewy foot took him piston-hard in the belly. He slammed against the wall and fell, winded. As he did, the lean man yanked the pistol from his hand, stunned him with his own butt, plucked what he sought from the man's robe, and, making sure there was nothing else of moment, was off as fast as he had come.

But not at once to the girl. Being a creature of no compunction whatsoever, he examined the bag and its contents in a safe shelter first. It was a smart bag, bearing the hall-mark of Paris, and it contained all the modern fittings, including a case full of cards belonging to a Miss Miriam Paston. Yet apart from a considerable sum of money, the only thing worth stealing was a sealed envelope.

Without a qualm, Savaran ripped this open. It held a single sheet of stout paper on which was drawn a map; a new drawing copying a very old map. It was of desert lands, but with place names so strange that he, who knew Africa better than any man, could make nothing of them at first.

It contained directions, compass bearings, and mileage figures (which be frowned over), leading to an unnamed point marked "X," set in the midst of. blank desert.

Following this line of route to where it began in a lower corner, he found a dot marked Yriate, and at once his eye gleamed understanding. Yriate was the ancient name of what was now the outpost of the Zem-Zem Arabs. It was one of those places, more conjectured known, that had lost contact with mankind by the steady encroachment of the desert. More, the Great Sand, as it was called here, was unmapped, unknown, and unexplored even by the Arab nomads, for it was a sea of rolling dunes, waterless, and impassable even for camels. Yet this map showed a route— sketchy enough, it was true— leading right into the heart of this empty and desolate place.

Why? What was at the point marked "X" on the map? To most men such a trail leading into the unknown might have seemed idiotic. Hot to Savaran. He knew Africa too well. He knew that even in our modern day there are still unplumbed pockets in the vast continent, unseen spots where even the incredible could be proved true. It quickened a more dangerous side of him, too— his self-interest.

At first be wondered how a map relating to Yriate and the Great Sand came to be not only in this white girl's purse, but in Kjweli, of all places. Then he saw one explained the other.

This Miriam Paston and her companions, being innocent of all practical knowledge of Africa, had looked Yriate up in an atlas and noted that, as mileage went, Kjweli was the nearest port. If they had consulted an expert they would have learned, that swamp and desert, mountain and jungle, made such a journey impossible. That they had not consulted an expert made the matter even more significant. They had preferred to trust the atlas rather than risk sharing their secret. A secret too precious to share—

It increased Savaran's conviction that there was something behind this; while the attempt to rob them of the map made it plain that even practical crooks felt it, too. There was something worth the risks of the Great Sand and the daggers of criminals at the point marked "X."

The scarecrow man became a very Lucifer as he thought, his eagle's nostrils dilating. Something big! Big wealth! Big loot! That certainly indicated Savaran. With his usual decision he realised that the half-dollar and four coppers he possessed were not enough to fit out an expedition on the scale needed; it would be sounder, therefore, to allow them to provide for their own plundering.

Also, there was the girl. Beauty such as hers would be a pleasant mitigation of the ardors and perils of the Great Sand. And who knew if, at the end, he might not find a nation needing a queen as well as a king.

He restored the map to the purse and turned back to the Little Sok.

Chapter 2

SAVARAN did not enter the Little Sok— or, rather, having put foot in it he most promptly side-stepped into the first gateway that gave him cover.

The Little Sok was yeasty with dogari, busy as only policemen can be in searching for the rioters who had long since vanished. It also amused him that he should hide from them under the very walls of their own kasbah, for the gateway led into the coffin-maker's yard against the citadel wall. In it were half a dozen men hammering away as though filling a rush order for the Last  Trump.

"Trade seems at its graveworn brightest," he said, genially, to the turbaned master undertaker.

"Pah," said the man, only pausing to flick sweat from his face. "A mere flash in the pan. I was fool enough to take a mosque contract for transporting all those who wished to expiate their sins by burial in Holy Ground— and a ship has arrived that sails tomorrow for Mecca."

"It is well they are embalmed mummies," Savaran said, examining the coffins, which were certainly cut-rate articles, all gaping seams and knot holes. "Riper corpses would not make any sea voyage a pleasure."

"As for that, it is but a Rumi ship, Allah bankrupt it," the man snarled and. returned to his hammering.

"A Rumi ship?" Savaran said quickly. "The one, perhaps, that brought the Rumi bibi and her two men."

"Even that. They were to land here with the goods they have in her hold, but their minds are changed. They go on at least to Bamikano, and so my coffins must stand the weather on deck— may Allah smite them for her unveiled wantonness."

Savaran's eyes glittered. So somebody had already put them wise to the real port for their journey to Yriate.

"Who changed their minds?" he asked, sharply.

"Him!" The man jerked his hammer towards the house where the woman was sheltered. "The Kadi el Sifr, may Shaitan choke him with gassy coals. They had a letter to him, poor fools. He has altered their plans, and they leave on the morning tide."

Savaran's gipsy face had taken on a look of savagery.

"EI Sifr," he said with such venom that the coffin-maker came upright with a touch of fear. "The dealer in arms and drugs?"

"Aie, and all other filthiness. A misbegotten jackal whose blood is greed—  do I find you love him as much as the rest of us?"

"With an affection that craves to get these fingers on his throat," the eagle-faced man cried, holding out steel-wire hands. "There was a tribe I might have made men and conquerors had he not meddled."

"Inshallah!" the man gaped. "How comes a festoon of rags to speak like Saladin himself?"

"I!" The bizarre adventurer seemed to tower in an imperial pride. "I who am the scourge of tribes and humbler of kings, what do mere rags matter on me?"

"Wa sidda, lord; you are a very lion among lions," the man muttered, cringing under the other's strange power. "It is perhaps this dung-dog, the Kadi el Sifr...?"

"Aie, Jilbis el Sifr!" the tattered terror of kings cried, then realising that this el Sifr must be double-crossing these whites, for the map, of course, he glanced through the gate, and. seeing that the dogari had gone, asked, "Is this white Bumi woman still in that house with el Sifr?"

"It is so," the coffin-maker said, and gaped in awe as Savaran lifted the hood of his robe over his face and strode out into the Little Sok towards the house of el Sifr.

THE Kadi Jilbis el Sifr, cream-colored, gross, and waddling, had the face of a Buddha and the mind of a thug, which suited the sympathy he pretended as Miriam Faston dealt with the hurts of Terry, her brother, and Captain Euan Amory.

As he listened to her story of the attack, his flaccid face adopted the correct cast of horror, though inwardly he preened himself and chuckled; it is always pleasant to learn that one's clever plans have been carried out efficiently.

"The dogs of dirt, to dare lay vile hands on so gracious a lady," he cried in his queer, lisping English. "They shall pay. I, Jilbis el Sifr will see to It. And they snatched your purse and the precious map! Wrath of Eblis— did you mark any of the scum?"

"The thief was a one-eyed negro," Miriam Paston said. "He wore a red turban."

"A negro— and the town is full of such!" The Kadi clicked his teeth in mock despair.

"There was another brute with him," Captain Euan Amory said in a still, dazed voice. "A tall, hop-pole of a blackguard, with a face like a fierce bird."

"What!" demanded the Kadi el Sifr, in sudden alarm.

"That chap was helping us, surely!" Terry Paston put in. "I mean, he broke up the mob and then went after the nigger when you told him about your purse, didn't he, Miriam?"

"I think so. I don't know." Miriam did not trust natives.

"Followed the negro!" El Sifr's voice was thick. "A tall, spider of a man?"

"That's the chap," Terry cried. "And, by jinks, didn't someone call him something like Zavarani?"

"Savaran!" The Kadi already sounded half-strangled, and his skin had the greenness of an unripe lemon. "Savaran here! That is terrible. That is quite bad!"

"You know him?" Miriam asked, anxiously.

"Who does not in Africa?" the Kadi almost yelped. "He is the most dangerous, the most unprincipled ruffian in the continent.... What is it?"

A cringing servant had slipped into the room, speaking in shaking Arabic. The green about el Sifr's gills deepened, his rat's eyes seemed ready to pop out.

"Bad news!" he muttered, in a stifled voice. Most bad. I go. I inquire." He shambled from the room like a man whose knees had become jelly.

Terry's frank young eyes watched, startled.

"By jinks, it must be bad if he takes it like that. But you know, Euan, you're wrong about that lank bird. I'm sure he was on our side."

"We can't, we mustn't trust any of these people," Miriam said. "They're all treacherous. And I hated the way that man looked at me. I'm glad we left the original of that map in the Allah-Din safe."

"Still, if he's got the copy I made, and is the sweep the Kadi says, it doesn't look too pretty," Euan Amory frowned. "I mean, if he organises a rival expedition...."

"He won't," Miriam said, firmly. "He can only hear what we've given out; that is, we're exploring solely to write a book about a lost city in the Great Sand...."

"Yes, but these fellows always suspect hidden treasure," Euan Amory frowned.

"Anyhow, why worry," Terry jerked cheerfully. "We've got old Giblets behind us, a most useful member, and thoroughly decent, I swear."

The Kadi Jilbis el Sifr was at that moment glaring at the one-eyed negro with a rage so devilish that Terry Paston would have been shocked to see it. The negro was even more overcome. His limbs grew so weak in terror that only the grasp of two servants saved him from collapsing at the Kadi's feet.

"You say this— this corruption who took the purse from you was Savaran? You make no mistake?" el Sifr demanded.

"It was the Fear of Warriors himself," the man wailed. "Did I not see him at the head of an impi of spears and demons sacking the impregnable city of Mbulamani? Who else but he who's eyes turn men to water could have mastered me? Lord, I was helpless...."

"Savaran!" The Kadi's voice  broke as ne recalled what he had done to a certain tribe. "Savaran here! Here and— and you, slime of the swamps, let him take that purse away."

"Lord! What can man do against that devil of men?"

"Take him from my sight," el Sifr snarled. "Take him into the cellars and let his death be slow— very slow. Savaran... here!"

He bit his fat knuckles, glaring round like a cornered rat. Yet when his eyes reached the windows, they stopped dead and his mouth fell open. He was seeing the lean adventurer crossing the Little Sok— towards his very house. The figure was not only unmistakable, but its very audacity nerved even el Sifr to action.

"Quick, fetch the dogari," he cried. "Bid them surround the house. But command them to come cunningly, only entering into me when I sound my footbell.  All our lives depend on their care. Do this well, if you value your hides."

He turned and re-entered the room where the whites waited. His face was sleeked into an air of anxious concern.

"It is most bad. It is this Savaran. It would seem that he has word of your venture, since he is in with that one-eyed dog...."

"Then why did he chase him?" Terry asked.

"It is that which makes me most anxious.... No honest man can understand the twists of this ruffian's trickery. It may have been a ruse to make good both their escapes. It may even be a slyer plan, a pretence to help you and so win you over, the better for his criminal ends. Who can say, when it is Savaran? All I can tell you is that there is no evil, no smooth vileness this man is not master of. He is notorious throughout Africa as a breeder of trouble, a begetter of strife among natives, a filibuster, a smuggler, a crook, a killer, a..."

"Do you recite the litany of your own vices, Jilbis el Sifr, or can there be another in Africa to equal you in dirt?" a mocking voice jeered from the doorway, and, even in spite of his preparedness, the Kadi cringed under the glance of the lean and doubting Lucifer who stood in the doorway.

"That is the man," said Miriam Paston, her beauty taking on an added coldness under his insolent glance.

"So he was only, giving me a character," the spindly man jeered. "Did he get as far as telling you that I am Savaran, before whom bad rulers wither, and even slime-minded Kadi wilt? Did he mention that I would be a king even now if a rotten-minded moneybag hadn't undermined my Igogo warriors for his own foul profit? Did he mention that I am in Kjweli to settle with that midden of greed for that?"

"By jinks," Terry asked. "Who was this swine?"

"It is as I warned you," the Kadi managed to croak, and he looked at Miriam Paston, who laid a quieting hand on her brother's arm, warning him against trickery. Savaran saw the gesture, and the fierce bird head went back in a flash of laughter.

"So beauty, as usual, judges by rags and the smooth tongue of this living dung-heap of lies. But I, Savaran, tell you...."

"You'll keep a clean tongue in your mouth," Euan Amory flared, "or, by heaven...."

"The drummer-boy will slap me," the limby man said with ferocious geniality. "Better defer such a miracle until Savaran has finished his say."

"That is enough," the girl cried, icy under the man's boasting. "Mr. El Sifr, it is time you ended this disgusting intrusion."

"Now!" spat El Sifr, with a triumph that made even the lean man stiffen. "Keep your hands from your robes, braggart. Move, and you are full of lead."

The Kadi had pressed his foot on the electric bell. The room was, therefore, now full of dogari, whose cruel black faces regarded Savaran over the sights of their workmanlike rifles. The gipsy face smiled largely round on the gun muzzles, and he... slowly raised his hands.

"Even Savaran cannot argue with twenty Mausers at five-foot range," he said. "One of your men might be quite a marksman. It would seem that the threat of Savaran made even your wits agile, El Sifr."

"Talk big." The fat Kadi was now all jeers. "It will not be for long. Put a gun against his spine, corporal, and search him." Amid the rags of his robes they found a couple of automatic pistols, so wicked looking and well cared for that even Terry's face blackened in anger. Also they found the girl's purse and the envelope containing the map.

"Opened, you see!" Jilbis el Sifr mouthed in pious horror. "It is as I feared, but, thank Allah, I have laid him by the heels in time." Savaran saw by the looks of anger In the white faces, especially the girl's, that he had played into the Kadi's hands, the ever-raw edge of his pride made him flare:—

"So I, Savaran, have been tricked into helping your thief's game to rob them? It is one more thing to remember, El Sifr."

The Kadi's face returned to its greeny tinge for a moment, and Miriam Paston frowned and asked coldly: "Surely he cannot still be dangerous?"

"He— never again!" El Sifr said, stiffening his courage with venom. "It is just his nature to boast."

"Tell the lovely lady what all Africa says of my boasts," the adventurer said, his bright eyes mocking the girl. "Savaran boasts— but his boasts come true."

"Take him away. Take him to the kasbah," the Kadi shouted.

Miriam Paston watched the bizarre creature's swaggering departure with a twinge of strange discomfort.

"Is it true what he says? Can he really make trouble?"

"Never again," Jilbis el Sifr said, contentedly. "There are two warrants out for him in Kjweli— both hanging charges."

SAVARAN, kicking his heels in a cell high up in the kasbah, was a prey to a notable rage. The hanging (with exotic local trimmings) that awaited him troubled a mind like his less than his private thoughts on Jilbis el Sifr, whom he had come here to punish, had, if that strange map meant anything, got the better of him in an affair of adventure and loot; above all else, El Sifr had belittled him, Savaran, in the eyes of a beautiful woman.

It was only when evening came, and Savaran's rage had merged into a speculation of the chances of putting a spoke in the Kadi's wheel before Miriam Paston and her party left, that he remembered the coffin-maker. The coffin-maker had told him that their ship left on next morning's tide, and the coffin-maker's yard was under the kasbah wall. Also the coffin-maker hated the Kadi el Sifr.

He sat still, listening. For a dreadful five minutes there was silence, then— tap-tap-tap; one man, at least, was working overtime on the coffins, getting them ready to go on the girl's ship.

Savaran's eyes gleamed as he stood up to study his window. It was closed with three straight bars. That did not worry him— he knew the rusts and neglects of Africa. It was high above his head, but that meant nothing to his cat-like strength.

A spring, and his iron hands had the bars, and his head was between them, surveying a steadily darkening world. The first thing he noted was that trees to the Little Sok screened him from all eyes; that was to the good. The next that the coffin-maker's yard was directly beneath him, with sixty feet of smooth stone wall between; that was not so good.

Savaran plucked a stout Arab shoe from his foot, and flung it into the yard. At the clatter the hammerer came into view; it was, as Savaran had felt sure, the coffin-maker himself. The man stared up at the eagle face . with some timidity, though the power of the face held him, while a tactful mention of El Sifr's name and evil won him.

After that it was a matter of persuasion, and to due course, a long rope was found, flung upward, and caught. By its aid the end of one of the rickety bars was wrenched from the sill and bent enough to allow the lank body to slip through.

It was characteristic of Savaran that, even at the risk of his neck, he managed to bend back the bar so that no one would suspect his way of escape. Also, he manipulated the rope so that he jerked it after him once he had slipped down it. Such things, he knew, would convince Kjweli that demons had whisked him away through the very air, and would help confuse his line of getaway.

That he had this all cut and dried from the first flash of Inspiration was plain from the way he walked into the sheds where the consignment of Mecca coffins were ranked ready for removal. He eyed these with chuckling satisfaction. They were fine, roomy, if ramshackle coffins, and three of them were yet unfilled. "You say that a ship sails on the morning tide," he said. "I shall travel by that."

"The Allah Din— impossible!" the man wailed. "She, like every gate and bolthole in Kjweli, will be searched and watched. Aie, she more than others, for the Kadi Jilbis el Sifr himself sails in her with the white Rumi."

"Better and better," the lean man cried. "I shall be able to deal with El Sifr more comfortably."

"But you will never get aboard," the coffin-maker wailed. "He will see to that for his own skin's sake. The guards already about the ship will be doubled, the search will be unrelenting. It will be death ..."

"Say merely a funereal," the eagle-smile flashed, and he looked at the large, empty coffin at his feet.

The coffin-maker looked too, looked back at Savaran, then a slow, sly grin began to spread, conquering his fear.

"By the Eye!" he guffawed. "By the Eye! Yes, that is the one way. Wa sidda— Is it surprising that Savaran should be known as the wonder of men?"

"Not to the least— merely a natural tribute," chuckled the lean adventurer, as he laid himself to the coffin.

SAVARAN left Kjweli to pomp and honor.

His escape was not discovered until the changing of the kasbah guard, somewhere about 2 am.  From that moment the city was in an uproar. Men scuttled all ways, crying, that Shaitan's most deadly ally was free. Gates were double guarded! Files of dogari hunted the alleys and stews.

They found no sign of the ragged adventurer. Even when he passed well under their very noses they merely gave him a respectful salute. He was in the fifth of the array of coffins borne solemnly through the city from the coffin-maker's to the steamship Allah-Din. The scallywag seamen of the Allah-Din, warned to have their knives ready to slaughter him on sight, manoeuvred him reverently as the derrick slung him to his resting-place on the after well deck. It was a glorious exhibition.

Savaran, following it all through the lavish knotholes of his coffin, felt that the city had paid him a worthy tribute. The crew of the Allah-Din were even more solicitous. Their mongrel tropic blood had to the full the ancient nautical distaste of corpses. Having set the cargo of coffins in a neat row on the deck, they took care to avoid them. So Savaran spent quite a restful first day at sea, for his coffin, to addition to being well-aired, was roomy enough not to be too restricting.

With darkness he accomplished his release. It was not hard. The friendly coffin-maker had provided him both with tools and the secrets of his crazy craftsmanship. Savaran hinged the head out of his casket, and stood free on a black and deserted deck. His sense of generalship carried him first on a complete survey of the vessel, his instinct accommodating his lean figure to every shadow as he explored.

He found the Allah-Din to be a wheezy and decrepit old tramp of the type condemned by every reputable marine board, and only fit for the fatalistic type of owner-skipper who has dropped so low that all that is left to him is to wander like a nautical rag-and-bone man, looking for chance cargoes among the ports no good ship visits. In the strengthening wind the wretched tub kicked, cracked, and groaned to every joint, while her six-knot wallow was reduced to a wheezy pug's crawl.

The tramp had other evils. The lean adventurer's nose took him unerringly to the crew's galley. But all he found there was the stench of former meals. So bare was the place that it was plain that the master cut rations to the bone, keeping his food stored in the officers' quarters. He fluttered, a shadow among shadows, along the greasy, buckling deck.

Only twice did he pause, both times at the lit portholes of deck cabins. Through the first he saw the Kadi Jilbis el Sifr squatting, bulbous and unseemly, on his bunk. With him was a stubble-chinned, crook-eyed man, whose cooked-liver skin proclaimed the blood of many nations, and greasy uniform and cap indicated the ship's captaincy. This creature listened while El Sifr laid down the law, and Savaran had only to note the cringing fear in his face to realise just how healthy was the position of the too trusting whites.

At the second porthole he was inclined to linger. Miriam Paston was beyond it, reading in her bunk. The tropic heat that kept her awake had also cut down her covering to the flimsiest of silk pyjamas. For a moment his expert appreciation of beauty at its best almost persuaded him that this was his moment for persuading her of the treachery of El Sifr and the chivalric magnificence of himself. But being above all a realist, food bulked more important than love at the moment. Also, he heard a deckhand approaching.

There was another such fellow who would lurk out of the wind by the companion door— until Savaran remembered the coffins and let out a couple of grave-yard groans that sent the fellow off to more companionable quarters. Between decks all went well.

Though Savaran found that the officers' galley was also locked, the coffin-maker's chisel made short work of the bolt. Inside no more than the next day's rations were laid out on the shelves, so that as he ate from the officers' portion, he searched for and found the trap-door of the lazaretto, bent on collecting a fuller supply, or even, perhaps, taking up lodgings there, to be sure of plenty.

Fate mid famine altered his plans. The largest and hungriest kind of negro fireman was also on the prowl for food. A desire as immense as his muscles had fobbed him of all fear, and he too meant to find satisfaction to the officers' pantry— or murder. His methods were so workmanlike that Savaran had only just time to switch off the light before the warring appetites were clashing to the dark.

Experience had taught the negro that strength like his needed no advertisement. He just reached out with hands like hams directly he felt contact with a foreign body. Gripping well and truly, he began to exert muscles like a baby elephant's in an effort to crack the spidery man's spine.

Savaran, who knew strength when it fractured, released his now well-rehearsed coffin groan and went slack within the monster grasp. The big buck, sure that the body power had conquered, and his spine chilled by that groan, relaxed ....

At once a ten-legged spider, each leg steel, wrapped itself about him. His feet were, jerked from under him' snake-like filaments gripped his throat and gouged his eyes. He opened his mouth to shout, an elbow (or was it a knee) like a piece of angle iron rammed his front teeth down his throat.

He tried to roll clear and scramble for the door. The Thing kicked him to the back of the neck and drove him on to his face. Then it leaped a mile into the air and came down on his loins with the impact of a cliff fall. At the same time the rest of the world crashed on to the back of his skull, and the negro went out.

The last was the butt of a heavy coffee pot that Savaran's hand had encountered in the melee. With a stunned man on his hands, Savaran had to change his mind. He gave the negro the use of the lazaretto instead, tying him up and tucking him comfortably behind some sacks of potatoes.

Then, having made a master's selection of foods, he returned to his coffin to sleep, though on the way. He gave a group of the deck watch the benefit of a few more sepulchral groans. From their reactions he judged that the voyage should be considerably enlivened.

Chapter 3

THE white passengers, at least, knew nothing of Savaran's efforts to increase the amenities of the voyage when they summoned the Kadi el Sifr to conference in the tramp's saloon.

When the Kadi arrived he seemed oddly unsettled. His eyes were inclined to stray toward the door and his hands pluck nervously inside his robe, where they caught sight of a gold-hilted dagger and something very like the butt of an automatic pistol. Yet his attention was as smooth as oil while Miriam spoke.

"We've already told you how we found the map and the story of a city hidden to the middle of the Great Sand, among my great-grand-father's papers," she said.

"It is a trust I will value with my life," El Sifr said unctuously, and sniggered to his heart at their fatuous innocence.

"To get down to facts," Euan Amory said. "It means we won't need you to hire camels and so forth at Bamikana, as we let you think. We are actually fully equipped down to a full petrol supply and spare parts. But you musn't feel you will suffer..."

"That is not to be mentioned. My humble efforts to serve so noble and beauteous a female is reward enough," the Kadi said, superbly.

He could afford to make gestures. The point marked "x" on the map, this lost city of Myssr, concealed a fortune, he was sure. How right he had been to take the plundering of these foolish infidels in hand himself.

"We shall, of course, need supplies for the trip," Euan Amory went on. "Water for the whole journey, and perishable foods to see us over the first stages. Servants, too, and— shall we need armed guards, do you think?"

"But most certainly!" cried the Kadi with unction. "There is much powder on the road (brigandage) from Bamikano to Yriate, and even to the edge of the Great Sand. But, never fear, I will see that you have strong el mzarog (protection of the lance, escort). I myself will choose your askari, and they will be answerable to me for your safety with their blood. I, Jilbis el Sifr, say it."

He beamed with the richest good will. He had already decided on the company of cutthroats he would send with them.

"But once we reach the Great Sand we will not need them, we can send them back?" Miriam said, anxiously.

"Oh, most certainly," the Kadi nodded in fatherly fashion. It amused him to see the innocent way she betrayed her desire to hide their real objective... gold, of course. And, anyhow, the edge of the Great Sand suited him. Its desolate loneliness made their complete disappearance so easy— except, perhaps, that he might take the girl with him on his expedition to Myssr— she was so comely, and he could always sell her to a rich Wali later.

"So, it is all settled," he smirked. "You are now entirely in the hands of Jilbis el Sifr, and thus have no more to worry you, and nothing to fear."

As he spoke there arose mob noises from the deck, even cries of panic. The Kadi with quite astonishing nimbleness was on his feet and facing the companion stair leading to the deck; also, a pistol appeared, startlingly, in his hands.

A moment later the whole crew came clattering down the brass-bound steps, their own captain leading them by a neck.

"It is true!" he screamed at El Sifr. "My ship is haunted. There is, veritably, a ghost aboard.

"Not a ghost," a man yelled, "a Jinni!"

"Nay, Shaitan himself," a fanatic-eyed half-caste bawled. "I, Hamsi, can swear it— I saw him!"

Turmoil had burst like a bomb in the close air of the saloon. Euan Amory pushed Miriam Paston into an alcove by a table, and he and Terry stood guard before her. Although he knew something of African dialects, he had but a confused idea of what was happening.

"It is true, Excellency," the captain mouthed, from shaking lips. "Did I not show you the evidence myself. The burst stewards' pantry, the coffee pot crumpled by no human hand?"

"Subhan Allah— ghosts do not break into pantries, nor devils play with coffee-pots," El Sifr cried. "It was a hungry man—"

"You forget Mustapha, the stoker."

"He is more likely your ghost," the Kadi sneered. "But he vanished from the ship."

"Into a corner where he could glut his belly unseen."

"No— because he has been found," the captain screeched.  "He who was stronger than three human men has been found stunned and tied and tossed into the lazaretto by a devil in giant shape."

"An excuse to cover his greed."

"Nay, Mustapha himself swears to the devil. He was attacked in the dark by a monster larger than a mountain, who yet melted right out of his hands as he grasped him. Then the fiend floated behind him, wrapped his body in limbs of burning fire, and, calling on seven other devils, crashed on his skull great boulders from Eblis."

"The limbs of Shaitan himself," the mad-eyed Hamsi yelped. "Don't I know? Did I not see the archfiend in person with my own eyes— his devil's face lit by the light from this white bibi's porthole?"

"You saw — what did you see?" the Kadi demanded, hoarsely.

"Shaitan!" Hamsi cried. "Shaitan, twice as tall as a human man, and thin, as only one whose flesh had been shrivelled by hell's fires could be. Aye, and for all that melting into his native darkness as no human flesh could when he heard me call on the protection of Allah. I saw the fiend plain, on his way to rendezvous with his own accursed infidel woman."

The wild-eyed Hamsi flung a look of venom and terror towards Miriam Paston, while the snarls of his companions were so plainly in agreement with him, that Euan Amory slipped his hand to his pistol butt and prepared to fight. The Kadi el Sifr quickened with a fear that was not at all the same as Hamsi's, demanded savagely:— "Can you describe the face of this scarecrow devil of yours, who also burst into a pantry to eat human food?"

"It torments my eyes still," Hamsi mouthed. "Excellency, I swear by the Stone that I saw what I saw. It was the face of Lucifer himself, as fierce and dark as a vulture's, with teeth as white as a wolf's as he smiled on his she-devil."

"It might have been a man— a stowaway," Jilbis el Sifr's growing suspicion had culminated in a sickening nausea. There was only one man with a face like that, only one man who could strike terror like that. Only Savaran, of all men, would have the audacity to hide himself in his enemy's pocket, as it were, after escaping from the prison. Yet how, with all those guards....?

"But, Excellency," the captain was saying. "Have we not searched the ship from keel to deck-boats? Not a square inch has been left un-searched — and yet there is no sign of a man."

"THERE is no man," Hamsi screamed. "It is a devil this white woman has brought aboard with her."

There were ugly growls, the beginning of a movement which El Sifr checked with a sudden gesture. He had remembered the coffin-maker's yard under the prison wall.

"Not a devil," he said slowly. "No, nor Shaitan. What you tell reveals this woeful thing to me. It is not the fiend himself, but one I knew well in Kjweli, a base wretch who had traffic with the Parent of all Evil. He died two moons' ago, and while in the terror of death ordered that his body should be shipped to Mecca, hoping that a burial in Holy Ground would enable him to escape his just punishment. Yes, I recall all now, since the face you describe is veritably his; and I understand what is happening to us. His unquiet spirit, aware of the crowning impiety of burying his sin-laden flesh in Mecca, is aboard us, striving to prevent that profanity of profanities."

The Kadi smiled sleekly within himself. He saw the way Savaran had managed to get aboard the Allah-Din.

"This body, then, is in the coffins on our deck," a man wailed. "Woe! Woe! I said it was fatal to carry such things."

"No, it is Shaitan," Hamsi shouted, furiously. "Shaitan naturally in the company of these infidel Rumi. Only by ridding ourselves of them, and especially the woman, can we save ourselves!"

"No!" the Kadi el Sifr thundered. "I, Jilbis el Sifr, tell you it is not so. It is a ghost haunting us from those coffins— demanding of us the prevention of this crowning sin. Only by obeying can we lay this wandering terror and protect ourselves."

The authority of the Kadi, his wealth, his wisdom, and his well-displayed pistol, mastered the men. They checked and listened. Only the captain asked:

"But how can we deal with such a spirit?"

"Ye-es," the captain mumbled. "But how can we tell which is the body among unnamed coffins? We cannot open all "

"No— never! It would be profanation," cried the crew.

"Assuredly," the Kadi nodded. "So we will cast all into the sea, unopened, now."

"Impiety!"

"Impiety!" a voice cried. "Desecrating the holy dead!"

"Will you be hounded to death by this unquiet, sinful spirit?" El Sifr cried.

"It is no man's spirit," Hamsi screamed. "It is Shaitan, the familiar of these Rumi. it is they who must be flung into the sea."

THE surge towards the whites was so definite that they produced their pistols. The display of weapons, however, cowed the weedy and cowardly crew, even if hate deepened in their eyes, and this fear the Kadi el Sifr drove home.

"Vermin and dirt!" he stormed, waving his own pistol in their faces. "You doubt the word of a True Believer like myself— a Kadi of the Prophet. You dare suggest that one of my sanctity is friendly with familiars of the Evil One! Out, before I call down the wrath of heaven to smite you. Out and heave those coffins overboard before I shoot you through the liver."

They crept reluctantly aft. They opened wide a cargo-port in the rail of the well deck. Moving cat-footed for very fear of waking the dead, they crawled to the coffins, cut their lashings, and with a panic softness hurled them in ones and pairs and threes into the sea.

Savaran watched his burial at sea with a bitter geniality. Savaran, of course, was not in his coffin. He was standing on the little deck behind the bridge and captain's quarters, and, carefully covered by one of the boats on the deck, was fully enjoying his own funeral....

If the Kadi el Sifr had been quick-witted, Savaran had been, undoubtedly, Savaran.

From his knot holes in the coffin he had observed the fear of the crew, more, he had listened to their talk about a ghost, even Hamsi's wilder convictions about Shaitan. He was flattered at the promotion, but not complaisant. Therefore, when the men rushed in a body to the saloon, he left his casket.

Thanks to his exploration last night the lean man knew all the best routes. First he slid like a shadow into El Sifr's cabin, and, after swift examination, took from a drawer the two automatics the Kadi had taken from him in Kjweli; also the spare packets of cartridges; also every cartridge belonging to the Kadi. The Kadi was employing his only pistol.

From there he went up the short after ladder to the captain's deck, and entered the cabin from the rear. Here, too, he took possession of all available cartridges, and the one antique revolver that went with them. Going forward, he entered the chart-house, which, fortunately, was cut off from the steersman on the bridge to which it led.

Here he put in a most profitable few minutes not only in noting the position of the ship, but in studying the captain's log-book. The captain was a conscientious recorder. He had entered all he had found out about the Pastons, the number of lorries they had in the hold of the ship, even the cases of petrol, lubricant, spare parts, arms, ammunition, and so forth.

Satisfied, he went back to the chart, studying it carefully, and then examining the landmarks of the distant coast across the sea. It was then that the crew came on deck to deal with the coffins, and Savaran, feeling that no man should miss his own burial, slipped back through the cabin to the shelter of the boat.

As the crew moved sullenly back to their duties, Savaran slipped aside the cover of the boat beside which he hid and with a nimble heave vanished inside. He knew that there would be no further search for him, and that this time he could sleep in safety until it was the moment for Shaitan to haunt again.

Chapter 4

VENGEANCE for impiety to the dead struck at the Allah-Din. The freshening wind stiffened to a gale. Savaran, indeed, had expected it to oblige; Heaven naturally favored master minds. It was not a bad gale, but bad enough for the leaky old tramp, and it seemed worse in the memory of those jettisoned coffins.

The crew shivered and whimpered under it, neglecting work to stand about in huddled and frightened groups.

Hamsi improved the hour. Shaitan, he told them, was still aboard, and determined to garner their souls to the hot-plates of Eblis.

The old ship began to labor badly and to take seas aboard. From the bridge came the shout of the officer of the watch ordering the hands to batten everything down. Even as he shouted, the first blinding flash of tropic lightning came, and Hamsi screamed that the legions of Hell had come aboard and that to work a ship so evil was a sin against Heaven.

The crew, with crawling panic in their hearts, listened to him rather than the officer, and he had to go down among them with knuckle-dusters on his fists. However, the display of knives that met him was so unanimous that he scuttled back to the bridge, calling the captain.

The captain appeared, only to hear the mad voice of Hamsi exhorting the increasingly willing crew to storm aft and throw the accursed whites— especially the woman— and those who protected them into the sea. The captain, his nerves never good, began to lose what he had of them. He doubled back into his cabin for his revolver, found it gone, and cracked completely.

When the Kadi el Sifr arrived to learn the reason for the rumpus, he found him grovelling on his knees between prayers and packing a bag. Even as the Kadi toed him well and truly in the pants, he yelped that it was undeniable that Satan had taken over his command, and it was time for him to leave.

The Kadi reached the bridge just as the men began to pour bridgeward in a body. Whatever else he was, Jilbis el Sifr knew how to save his own skin. His pistol came out, and he fired into the pack. He hit nobody, because of the kicking of the ship, but the crew checked. He fired again as Euan Amory and Terry ran to join him. He shouted at them to shoot into the brown, and, if possible, fill the mouthing Hamsi with lead. Euan Amory made the mistake of being the perfect gentleman.

"Don't be a fool. No need to kill," he shouted. "Fire above their heads, Terry."

The three pistols spat viciously together. Once again the ship made the Kadi's shot as harmless as the others. Yet the massed firing had its effect. The men bolted in a body to the fo'c'sle, slamming its iron door against the shooting. Not even Hamsi's fanatic declaration that Allah had plainly made them invulnerable against infidel bullets could induce them to go out and fight— but they remembered his words.

Things grew progressively unpleasant. With no man to steer, the Allah-Din yawed and took such a pounding from the seas that, for a minute or two, it seemed as though her decrepit hulk would .sink under the weight of water- that flooded her decks. Even when the second officer sprang to the wheel and got her head round, it was too late to escape the next disaster.

Her fiddleys being open in that tropic heat, a lavish proportion of the seas that came aboard had dropped like cataracts on to the men in the engine and boiler rooms. They, too, knew of the presence of Shaitan. They, too, saw that this must be the wrath of Heaven overtaking them. They downed tools to a man and fled to the deck.

A steward cowering in an alleyway gave the news of the shooting. They also dived for their quarters and shut themselves in. The ship was abandoned. She had only just enough way on her while her engines continued running, to keep her head to the seas.

Three officers only were left, the mate, the second mate, and the chief engineer, who had rushed to the bridge for information. Euan Amory persuaded the Kadi to get the second officer to take over the stoking while the chief managed the controls. Euan, Terry, and even Miriam, having had plenty of yachting experience, took the wheel in turn, while watching the decks for hostile movements when not steering. They had no other help.

The Kadi el Sifr, indeed, only by luck prevented the captain deserting the ship. The terrified man had actually swung out a boat by its patent davits. He even urged El Sifr to join him, saying that they could sail with no great danger up the coast to Nkenje, reaching it in a day or so, and from there it should be easy to get a motor car to Bamikano.

"By the bye, risk my body in that thimble! And when we still have a ship under us," the Kadi shivered. "And why, even at the worst, when we could reach good, solid land over there."

His hand pointed to the desert, and the captain wailed;— "You cannot land there. It is the Ibi-Iberi desert, the home of famine, thirst, and barbarians. They are killers and cannibals. It would be death to attempt it."

Savaran, lying snug in his boat heard the words, screamed as they were above the gale. His face grew genially savage. The captain had spoken the truth. The Ibi-Iberi nation were as dangerous as their land, and as little touched by civilisation. Nevertheless, having noted their proximity on the chart, Savaran had decided to risk landing there. There were distinct advantages in it, and, after all, he, Savaran, had mastered more deadly tribes.

FOR hours Hamsi had been working on the crew with a Mad Mullah fervor, and hunger increased his and their savagery. When Miriam began to cook an evening meal for the afterguard, the smell of it was wafted into the fo'c'sle, and the rage of the True Believers against these satellites of Satan, who could eat luxuriously while conveying them to Hell, became ravening.

Deckhands and stokers united as one wolf in a vow of death to infidels. They chose their moment of attack when storm clouds and night made an Egyptian darkness on the waters. They crept aft stealthily, knives and iron bars in their hands, murder in their hearts. Only a bash of lightning saved a massacre.

Terry, on the bridge with the mate, got a glimpse of the men as they reached the top of the ladder. He fired and jumped for the chart room, where the others were taking their meal.

The mate followed, slamming the door. In a moment the bridge deck was swarming with yelling men, battering at the doors,- thrusting through the -portholes as they strove to kill. Terry got a knife slice on the scalp as he wrestled with one porthole. Miriam behind him fired her revolver and drove the seamen off. As they shut the porthole they heard the Kadi's pistol yammering at another, then his howl of rage when he found he had fired his last cartridge.

Terry ran to him and got his porthole shut. They heard Euan Amory's pistol snapping in the captain's cabin behind, and went to his aid. They found him shooting into a mass of men who had flung open the door. They fired and drove the sailors back, though Euan was nearly spitted by a thrown knife as he heaved outside the bodies of two men who had fallen across the sill.

The Kadi came flinging in from the chart-house.

"Cartridges," he bellowed. "Quick, give me cartridges. They are breaking in the bridge door with axes. Cartridges, or we shall never beat the jackals off."

It was then that they realised there were no cartridges. The captain told how all his had been stolen. The rest of them cut off from their cabins had only those left in their weapons, except the Kadi, who had fired all his. Only Euan Ambry, the soldier, had a spare clip, but that fitted only his pistol, not El Sifr's. They were practically unarmed against half a hundred frenzied men.

They heard the axes thudding into the chart-house door, the splintering of its wood. They felt he had spoken the truth.

Savaran had left the shelter of his boat a bare minute before the attack bad started, choosing the moment of maximum darkness as the crew had; He slipped down to the main deck, working his way forward, for his plan was to make himself master of the ship by bolting the crew into their quarters before dealing, with the officers. For once his generalship went amiss. Cunning carried him unseen almost to the fo'c'sle, when the flare of lightning followed by Terry's shot warned him what had happened.

Like a cat he turned in his tracks, his long legs rushing him back to the bridge. Like a darting spider, he went up the companion so swiftly that his shoulders sent two laggard sailors flying in the dark. They cursed him, asking what was his hurry, since they had the infidels at their mercy.

"There are more Juicy souls to be carried to hell first," he said with Mephistophelian gusto, and laughed aloud as he heard their yelps of fear.

As they cried out that Shaitan had returned, he dived through the darkness, leapt for the top of the chart-house, hauling himself on to its roof. Dropping flat, he wriggled forward until he could look over its edge on to the bridge.

Beneath was a confused mob of men beating in the door, they were already cheering, in triumph. His hands flew to his lank hair, twisting it away from his temples in two horns; then he made a lightning grab at his pistols— the door had gone down with a crash. A voice bellowed:

"Stand back while they shoot, then rush."

"Why tarry when I am here to gather you all to the burning?" Savaran bawled downward, and from his lean hands the most terrible pistols in Africa began to speak. In the blaze of his firing they saw the horned face looming over them, just as the men he had jostled arrived screaming that the Evil One Himself was here. A most appropriate lightning flash left no doubt of his Lucifer glee.

Yelping: "Shaitan! Shaitan is among us!" the crew broke and ran.

Savaran dropped like a great bird on to the bridge, the whiplash of his pistols speeding the rout. He shoved his head through the door, shouting:— "Out, all of you! Knock hell into the scum while they're on the run."

A gross shadow filled the door, a voice cried: "Who gives El Sifr orders?"

Then screeching "Savarani!" the Kali el Sifr stabbed wildly with his dagger. The lean adventurer felt steel rip through the breast of his robe as he backed, but with amazing promptitude his foot rose to the vast belly and kicked. As the Kadi el Sifr went from sight, Savaran shouted again:— "Soldier, you'll at least have sense— come to me. The girl and one other hold the bridge. Jump lively, now."

Euan came out quickly, Terry joining him with a rush.

"Stand on the bridge deck, aft." Savaran snapped at the latter. "Shoot at anything. I want them driven below."

As he moved to the companion with Euan, Terry followed.

"I gave an order," he spat at the boy. "To hell," Terry jeered. "I'm not missing any fun— I come, too!"

"So," the eagle face glared within six inches of the boy's face. "Well, remember— when Savaran orders he is obeyed."

A piston-stem, of an arm rose and laid Terry flat on his back.

"Get sense into him when he comes round," the fiery fellow snapped at Miriam Paston, who had just appeared. "And hold this bridge like Horatius. You have a pistol?"

"With three shots only. My brother has none," the girl's voice came, surprisingly unflurried.

"Here's one of mine and. an extra clip. It will be enough. I, Savaran, will see to the rest. Has that soldier gone?"

"I'm ready. And you?" Euan Amory was reluctant to leave the bridge until this bizarre fellow was off it.

"I am among them now," Savaran cried, and they gasped as his spindly figure went clean over the rail, vaulting to the well-deck below.

Miriam cried out at the utter recklessness of that long drop. Savaran hoped she would— he never could resist an effective gesture. Especially now, when he knew that there was a cargo of hides piled up in the right place to break his fall.

"You'd shoot me with my own pistol? the one I actually gave you , to save your own life and your sister's?" Savaran mocked .

In that, his dramatics had most startling reactions. The men, having pulled themselves up after their first stampede, hesitated in a bunch just by the hides. Then, as Hamsi's frenzied exhortations lashed them, they turned, faced the bridge, were ready to rush again. The lightning flared. And there— right among them, having made a flight from the bridge, only possible to spirits, was Lucifer.

No mistaking that terrible outline against the blaze of white light, the lanky legs straggled, the spider arms outflung in menace— the hair streaming like horns. With a howl of final despair, the crew dived for the fo'c'sle once more, leaving only Hamsi to dare the fiend. Flourishing a great iron bar, he ran at the apparition, shouting frenziedly that all were to see and take heart at the way heaven protected the True Believer against the Powers of Darkness.

His shouts killed him. The ragged adventurer fired towards them, and shot again as the flash revealed the charging figure— Hamsi thereupon ceased to be the leader of a Holy War.

SAVARAN collected Euan Amory as he came aft from bolting the fo'c'sle. He also gave the cavalryman a lesson in practical war by bolting the various hatches Euan had overlooked.

"An efficient officer should never leave such details to chance," he said, in his large and arrogant way.

"I'm a soldier, I don't know ships," Euan said stiffly.

"I am Savaran. I know everything," the lean man said, affably, "after one- survey. It is the mark of first-rate minds."

At the sound of their voices Miriam came aft to them, leaving the mate to watch forward. At . the sight of her, Savaran could not forgo a gesture.

"It is finished," he said, loftily. "I have bolted the crew below. The deck is safe. I, Savaran, command the situation."

Terry snarled at his high-handedness. Euan Amory, more tactfully, but none the less resentfully, demanded acidly:—

"Does that help much? The engines have stopped."

"And will remain stopped," Terry snapped. "The chief engineer came up just now— wounded. He says the blighters shot the second -mate while he was stoking."

"That makes the ship helpless," Euan Amory went on. "The captain said we must go ashore with this drift. What then?"

"Why— then we go ashore," the lean man chuckled. "It is an excellent beach, according to the chart, and we should suffer no hint— if we do it in our own way."

"Go aground be damned," Terry raged at his cool manner. "Well soon stop that. I'll ask the captain."

"Do," the lean man chuckled, and as the boy ran to. the cabin, "Ask our brother the Kadi to join us in conference, too."

"El Sifr!" Euan Amory told, with a sudden anxiety. "What's become of him?"

"He's with the captain, naturally," Savaran grinned, for Terry was bursting from the cabin in headlong fashion.

"He's gone!" he shouted. "No sign of him or El Sifr."

"Impossible!" Euan Amory cried.

"Not at all," Savaran said, with bitter relish. "They left in the lee lifeboat. If you had any sort of eyes in your head you would have noted it gone."

They all swung to where the black gap in the rail and the swinging ropes of the patent davit told of a lowered boat.

"Ratted!" Terry shouted.

"Much cleverer than that," Savaran pointed out. "El Sifr has stolen a march on you. With the aid of the captain he will reach Nkenje in a day or two. From there he will get a motor to Bamikano, Within a week, he will have organised his lorry caravan and started for the point marked 'X' on your map. Not that time will bother him. He'll be quite sure that, even if you escape with your lives— which he doubts— you'll be marooned for months in the Ibi-Iberi over there: You'll even find he's stolen your map."

"Yes, the captain's safe is open, and all the papers gone— the lousy sweeps," began the furious boy, but Euan Amory snapped:— "Shut up, Terry.... Well, what do you make of this, my man?"

"My last rank was Major-General,'' Savaran said, with that ferocity that always came when his strange; raw pride was stung. "You will remember the difference in our rank when you address me, Captain."

"I heard it was King," Miriam Paston said, in a tone which left him wondering if it were respect or mockery. "But the ship drifts on shore, Major-General, and we are still to learn if we are to drown."

"Didn't I mention that an alternative was being killed and eaten," he retorted, acridly. "The Ibi-Iberi are quite celebrated cannibals."

"Do I wail in fear, or cry: 'But you, Savaran, can save us'?" the girl shrugged.

"No, you were hot born to wail," be said, with that flashing unexpectedness that was his charm. "That is why I decided to come along when I saw it was impossible to open your eyes to El Sifr's natural rottenness, the reason, also, I decided to put this sea hearse ashore here."

"Of all the damnable neck—"

"Say 'throat,' Terry. Yours is quite a handsome one, it seemed a shame to have it slit, if not, perhaps, really important. It was the prospect for your sister's quite adorable one that really outraged my sense of values," the gipsy man mocked.

"You think El Sifr would have done that?" the girl demanded.

"No. I know. Though he might have sold you into a harem, of course. Greed so often gets the better of that fat slug's discretion."

"But what about this Ibi-Iberi Desert," Euan Amory asked, hoarsely. "What are our chances there?"

"Early burial— if left to yourselves. But with me and our lorries, quite reasonably good."

"Can we land them on the open beach? The crew will take some coercing, and if the natives are hostile...." Euan frowned.

"Leave the crew— and the natives— to Savaran. A bad lot, both, but I have broken worse. The crew will fight for me, anyhow, if it is only to save themselves from the pot."

"And us?" asked Euan Amory, tersely.

"That includes you," the adventurer said calmly. "I think, with proper handling, you might even become useful."

"Damn you!" stormed Terry. "This is our expedition!"

"Was," the lean man said, with a deadly smoothness. "But, abhorring incompetence, a higher power has now taken over."

"Well, we land, and master the Ibi-Iberi— and what then?" Miriam said swiftly, knowing that the others, were on the verge of an explosion.

"Then we head for the Great Sand. We are actually on a closed and better line than we would be starting from Yirate. We should, in fact, reach the point marked 'X' on the map well ahead of El Sifr."

"The point marked 'X.'" Terry shouted. "You thief. You copied our map when you stole it."

"Another reason for your being thankful for my interest. With Savaran, to glance is to memorise."

Terry snorted, Euan Amory smirked— and then gaped. Coolly and without a falter, the amazing creature recited in order every landmark and mileage figure set down on the map between Yirate and the point "X." Terry gaped and grew scared.

"So that is the reason for your, interest. You thought there would be plunder and you meant to have if Miriam said coldly.

"But, of course," the bold laugh came. "What El Sifr meant to steal, I can steal better. Also, there was a reason for making him pay."

"Anything else?"

"The most important reason of all. You are very beautiful, and Savaran..." That was the last straw, Terry whipped out his pistol and in a voice choked with rage, snarled:

"That's enough, you sweep. Well put you in your proper place from now on...Up with your hands, or I drill you as you stand."

The lean man laughed in his face. And did not lift a finger.

"You'd shoot me with my own pistol, the one I actually gave you to save your own, life and that of your sister?" Savaran mocked. The boy glared into, the bird-bright eyes, dropped his own, muttered: "

"Well, damn it all. You shouldn't—" Even as he lowered his guard, the steel-wire hand had the weapon away in a swift twist.

"The old-school-tie code. It always works," he jeered.

"Not always " Euan Amory's voice came grimly. "Don't move. I'm a soldier, and— " his threat ended in a startled oath.

"Yes, I thought of that, too," the gipsy Lucifer said easily. "I slipped your pistol from your hip as we came up the companion."

They stood glaring at him, furious, but utterly beaten. And Savaran, tall, spare, and arrogant, seemed to grow even taller as lie quite brazenly enjoyed the triumph of himself.

"And now, having satisfied the heroics of the moment, we can get down to plain work," he said, at last. "You, Terry, go to the fo'c'sle head and stand by ready to knock out the shackles and let go the anchor when I order. You, Captain Amory, into the well-deck and make sure, those jackals don't break out of their quarters."

"Do I plug them all on the jaw with my bare hands?" he sneered.

"Here's El Sifr's automatic," Savaran said, fetching it from the boat he had hidden In. "And his supply of cartridges."

He chuckled as the soldier blinked. "Yes, this is your great chance to shoot me through the midriff, but you will undoubtedly drown without my peculiar skill— also, I might mention that I am the best pistol shot In Africa; Now, to your stations. The coast is already too close."

Miriam Paston said evenly: "And what odd job do you order for me?"

"Stop wondering whether the two cartridges in your revolver are enough to finish me, and come and admire a master craftsman at his work," he said, with a magnificent flare of teeth. "A beautiful woman always inspires me."

As even Miriam Paston's cold beauty flared at that, and her hand swept up to the bulge In her blouse, he turned an utterly unconcerned back on her and went to the bridge.

Savaran had boasted, but, as ever, he made his boasts good. Standing like some wild and alert bird at the rail, his quick, snapped orders to the mate at the wheel used the drift to bring the helpless ship almost miraculously towards the beach. With an audacity that sent their hearts into their mouths, he conned her round a reef of ugly rocks that seemed to be foaming in their eagerness to get them. An order brought the ship gently round, and in the smooth water under the reef she sidled slowly towards the land. Then the anchor splashed home.

Miriam could not refrain from crying, "Oh, splendid!"

"As sweet as a lassie's kiss," he smiled, and the bold look of his eyes stung color to her cheeks. Yet before she could freeze him: "But that is only the beginning of Savaran— look!"

He pointed to the sand dunes behind the beach. Silhouetted in the growing dawn were a number of tall black men, as naked as nature. They stood watching the ship like carven things, their long stabbing spears, the tufts of war feathers and their shields making them statues of dire menace. In her heart grew a cold terror.

"Under the carpet of .the captain's cabin you will find a trapdoor," Savaran said, affably. "It opens into the ship's armory. Bring all the weapons and cartridges you find here."

He left the bridge, went forward, flung open the fo'c'sle.

"Have you seen through your portholes what awaits you ashore?" he shouted.

"Allah defend us, yes," voices wailed.

"It is the Ibi-Iberi. It is death."

"Massacre!" he corrected, zestfully. "Slow torture for prisoners, the pot for all. Only I, Savaran, can save you. Do you fight under me— or die?"

"Zavarani! It is Zavarani!" mumbled a score of voices, then a roar... "Zavarani, you can save us. We will fight if you lead."

"It is well — come out one by one and get your arms."

the Ibi-Iberi was masterly. He himself allowed no one to doubt it. With as little public show as possible the rest of the crew were set to break out the Pastons' equipment from the holds.

Euan Amory, who had seen to the stowage, passed up Lewis guns and a box of hand-grenades. Then at the lean adventurer's. orders, the packing was Stripped off one of the light, semi-armored lorries, its tank filled with petrol, its tyres half-inflated, which is the best way to travel on sand, and a couple of machine guns mounted in it. Thus, even before the hard-worked derrick lifted it into view, it was ready for immediate action.

Thanks to their seeming weakness and lack of aggression, the local Ibi-Iberi were certain that the Allah-Din was just another half-deserted and unarmed wreck they could loot at their leisure. They did not bother to gather forces from other Villages— which meant sharing plunder.

They only realised that the wreck was not as scheduled when an. astonishing object soared up and outward from the tramp's deck. Savaran, the ever-dramatic, had made the most of the moment. Not only was the lorry being slung on to the beach fully manned, but he himself, like some huge, outlandish bat, stood on the ball over the lifting hook, the rope gripped by his arms to leave his hands free.

The Ibi-Iberi sprang alert with a yell, their astonishment not un-tinged with fear at the sight of this strange machine crowned by the bizarre, almost uncanny figure.

Hesitating between bolting and fighting, they chose the latter a fraction too late. Even as they heaved to fling their spears, Savaran's deadly pistols were spitting, picking off the leaders with an almost casual accuracy. The Allah-Din, too, burst into a crackle of machine-gun and rifle fire, which, if not so effective, helped to produce a massed shock too much for simple cut-throats.

The charge down the dunes wilted, stopped, and, as the most vigorous of the leaders dropped, broke and fled. Before the lorry touched the beach the last savage had already scuttled beyond the sandhill.

That meant no escape. With Savaran action was always as swift as a sword stroke. The half-dozen seamen in the lorry flung off the slings without dismounting. Their lean general dropped among them. Terry, at the wheel, opened out the engine, and charged the lorry at the dunes.

Their deflated tyres lifted them up and over the sandhills like a soaring bird. Machine-guns and rifles spat, while Savaran, straddling like an exultant Valkyrie, slung hand-grenades into the enemy's midst. As the Ibi-Iberi dodged back they ran into a wave of machine-gun and rifle fire from the crests. The whole desert was full of fleeing figures, casting their weapons away as they ran.

Savaran proceeded to drive home the folly of making war against a master. The lorry rounded up the natives like a sheepdog, heading them back to their village when they tried to spread over the sand, breaking, up groups that tried to stand, with a whip-lash of gun fire, and, when they were hounded among their huts, sweeping round, to prevent any flight on the farther side.

When Euan Amory and his men arrived the war was over; Savaran, like a rakish Francois Villon, was standing astrut before the king hut, his eagle fierceness thoroughly enjoying the grovelling of several hundred blacks, while six of his own tribesmen prepared to hang Mafuie, their chief, from his own roof beam.

Euan Amory protested against such drumhead justice.

"He and his tribe are notorious wreck robbers and murderers," the spidery man said acidly. "Worse, they have dared to attack Savaran— and all Africa knows the reward of that."

"It's illegal!" the soldier cried.

"I am the law," Savaran said, largely. "Also, the Allah-Din must be unloaded before the whole desert comes down on us; fear, alone will accomplish that."

He barked an order in a strange tongue as Mafuie, the chief, died, whereupon every Ibi-Iberi buck, and every Ibi-Iberi woman, rose and went ! shambling towards the tramp— this time without weapons in their hands.

"There are your stevedores," Savaran told Euan Amory. "Forget you are a pukka sahib, and get all your gear out of the holds as fast as whips can do it."

"I know how to handle men— decently," the soldier said stiffly.

"But not how to die , painlessly. Listen!"

From afar off in the desert distance came a faint mutter, beating like a pulse through the hot air. It puzzled Euan Amory until, from a bunch of dunes behind the village, the throbbing was answered by a sharper, clearer note.

"Drums!" he frowned.

"Drums!" Savaran repeated, fiercely. "Drums talking across the desert, raising the villages, calling the tribes. And an escaped villager among those dunes is reporting our numbers and movements in detail. Do you grasp it? By night there will be fifty thousand spears between us and the Great Sand, unless swiftness— and Savaran— can beat them to it. Any more debating points?"

Even the dignified Euan Amory went back to the Allah-Din at a run. Savaran vanished from the village, and, for a painful hour, Terry Paston worried as to how really well-bred conquerors should behave to a captured people. When the spidery Savaran returned the boy was inclined to express his opinion tersely, since Savaran had seemingly left him in the lurch solely to steal a gaudily painted drum.

SAVARAN shouted an order in their own tongue, and the Ibi-Iberi ancients and headmen shuffled fearfully out of the shadows of the king hut. They dropped eyes and shivered as the fierce bird-glance touched them, squirmed as he thrust the blade of a spear into the fire burning before the hut.

He said evenly after a telling pause: "Jackals and eaters of dirt, knowest who I am?"

"Wa! Wa! Thy men have passed on the fear," they muttered. "Thou art Zavarani, the Strength of Elephants, before whom nations go down in the dust."

"Also the death of the treacherous and the torment of liars. Sit. I will palaver."

They squatted, squirming under his whip-lash questions. At first they tried density and evasiveness, but the bright eyes seemed to bore into them a great fear, and they attempted more ancient tactics. The oldest and slyest seemed suddenly to break, pouring out a long singsong story with many motions of truth.

The gipsy face listened with so grim an intentness that presently the talker faltered to a stop.

"So you think that Savaran, the mind that masters all men, can be deceived so easily by boys' tricks." he said with a terrible gentleness, and his lean arm went out and plucked the red-hot spear-blade from the fire. The talker gave a screech of terror that drowned even Terry's cry, and, before the boy could speak, was grovelling on his face, babbling frantically.

Savaran listened like a carven vengeance, until presently the red-hot blade moved in the sand between them, drawing lines in swift, clean strokes.

"So, your king Kaums will march from here and here and here— and gather for battle there?"

Terry saw that the swift-moving blade had drawn a brilliantly clear map of the coast, the village they were in, the wide desert beyond with its distant villages, sand-dunes, gulleys, and roads. He could not understand the words of the talk, but he could easily gather what the lean adventurer was driving at, and his awe of this strange, extravagant, amazingly able scarecrow began to grow.

Savaran was saying to the now readily babbling elders: "And of the three caravan trails striking from this village to the desert edge, this one here is the one that your armies will block?"

"It is the most likely, O Lion," the elders declared. "This one to the east is too roundabout. Verily, it brings one to the fringes of the Great Sand, where the road runs from Yriate to Bamikano, but it is hard and painful. This one to the west is shorter, but between here and Bamikano it is waterless, none but the unwise would dare it. This centre road, through these valleys and wells, is truly the natural- road out."

"And your Kaums will therefore catch me at that oasis and slaughter us with ease. Well, Savaran is not that sort of sheep. Speak more of this shorter, western road leading to Bamikano. It is our best . way, since we can travel faster than horse or racing camel. Also, along it we can plainly get by and away while your king's army is still massing on that middle road."

Terry, watching the gestures over the sand map, and hearing the place names, began to understand Savaran's strategy. It seemed to him brilliant, until he noted the way the elders shot sly glances at each other when they were sure the eagle-man could not see.

Then he realised that Savaran was too cocksure about their terror and stupidity. He was telling too much of his plans to blackguards willing and perhaps able to double-cross him.

He said as much when the lean adventurer, having set a guard of three men in the village, mounted the lorry to drive back to the Allah-Din, but the man was too heady with his own sense of power. He would listen to nothing, but striking a conqueror's pose in the back of the lorry, bawled as it drove off:

"Water for thirty men for four days must be here by sundown. Woe to you if there is delay, for I leave tonight."

the Allah-Din Euan Amory had done wonders— he thought. Two of the remaining four lorries were already on the beach, stores were swinging out briskly. All the same the mere appearance of Savaran among the sweating natives was enough to double their output; even then Savaran's tongue cried for more.

"Get back into the hauling line— you," he snarled, fixing his glittering eyes on this fellow. "We'll have somebody who understands real work."

"I don't take orders from any lousy stowaway," the man spat, and his hand jerked to his hip.

"So," Savaran said sweetly, and as the fellow's knife flashed, his arms plucked him sheer off his feet and hurled him against the fo'c'sle bulkhead with an appalling crash.

"Now, back to your work, you dog," he said evenly. "And next time you take a knife to Savaran, you won't live long enough to know what happened to you."

"Was that natural brutality or merely for theatrical effect?" Miriam Paston asked with disgust.

"Inspired brutality, of course, it always looks theatrical to the over-civilised, but it impresses primitive natures all the same."

"I'm neither primitive nor impressed," she began coldly.

"You'll learn. We'll endure a liberal education in Nature's crass vulgarity before we're through. Even now a nation of experts in barbarity gather to give you your first lesson— and will, unless I knock energy into such louts as that to enable us to get clear before they begin."

"We all escape by lorry?"

"All that are necessary," his bright eyes twinkled.

"But the remainder? You'll leave them behind— at the mercy of the Ibi-Iberi?"

"There are the ship's boats," he flashed. "They can use those as the captain and your loyal friend Jilbis el Sifr used theirs, to sail to safety up the coast."

She stared at him, then smiled.

"Thank you, Mr. Savaran," she said quietly. "The first lesson— that of leaving things to one who knows how to grapple with them is hereby learnt. And your plans for our escape. will be as sound?"

"They are Savaran's, " he said, splendidly. "You need bother no more."

"I don't know so much," Terry burst in. "From what I made of it you gave the whole game away to those black headmen. They were fooling you, I know; I watched them, and—"

"Ah, that reminds me — quiet!"

The eagle glance compelled silence for a while, and presently over the rattle and bustle of the unloading they caught the mutter of drums— drums beating, beating distantly; calling across the endless reaches of the desert. Savaran listened, and his head went back in a silent chuckle.

"They're asking our village what has happened, why they don't answer, why they don't report at once what we are doing or which road we are travelling."

"You can read the drums?" Miriam gasped.

"A trifle among my many accomplishments," he shrugged. "But, it's amusing, isn't it? Our village can't answer because I took away their only drum. Perhaps Terry told you—"

"I gave your heroic deed full credit," the boy said, shortly. "But you don't seem to realise that they can send a messenger on foot to tell we're going by the western instead of the central road. And from what I saw of them, they will."

"Now I wonder why Savaran didn't think of that?" the lean adventurer said solemnly and left them, but not to go to the village, but, on his own testimony, to hunt for some more civilised clothes in the officers' cabins.

Chapter 5

THANKS to Savaran, the lorries were ready in every detail before daylight left them, as Savaran demonstrated after a searching inspection. Even the soldier, Euan Amory, had been awed by the bizarre man's drive and thoroughness. Savaran himself had selected from amongst the sturdiest and most reliable of the seamen, an armed team for each vehicle. He had even dug up extra drivers from the same unsavory source, they themselves provided most of the first string. They rattled through the village heading for that shorter western road Savaran had discussed with the tribal elders, pausing only to pick up the water the lean man had ordered. The tribal elders grovelled and squirmed under Savaran's eyes, but the sly leers they shot at each other when he was not looking mightily increased Terry's anxiety. Worse, Savaran's handling of his lorry was such that Terry, who prided himself on his driving, cursed him aloud for a mutton-handed cab-driver. It wasn't only that his lorry backfired continuously and outraged heaven with the grinding-of gears, but the fool seemed to have loosened his mudguards already if the horrible rattling and banging went for anything....

It was a ghastly misuse of a type of machine especially chosen for its silence. No wonder the chap had to stop when they reached the shelter of the sandhills. Terry then and there read him a lesson in the decent handling of a car, only to hear a sardonic chuckle from the darkness: "Well, we're quiet enough now. Not even the sound of drumming."

"There hasn't been for hours," Terry snorted. "They gave it up when they couldn't get an answer— or when a messenger arrived to tell 'em we're going by this western road."

"Both, probably," Savaran said, and on the heels of his words a clamorous Boom! Boom! Boom! burst out in their very midst. Savaran himself was using the drum. Through the black and eerie distance there leapt a flutter of sound.

The mutter of drumming answering their drumming. Savaran's hands beat short and sharp again; short and sharp came the answer.

"Bright lad, Terry, a messenger on foot did reach them. I've confirmed his story, now they know we have already taken the western road."

"But that drumming came from the west, too," Miriam said, quickly.

"Don't you get it? He's tricked them," Euan Amory put in, a little sheepishly. "What he's done is to line the Ibi-Iberi, by means of the elders and this drum-telegraphy, to mass on the western road. Practically all the tribesmen are hurrying there now, thus we ought to travel free of danger along the other neglected route."

"But— it's brilliant!" Miriam Paston cried.

"Isn't it? But then I invariably am," the unabashed fellow said. "You've marked your stars and landmarks, Amory? You can follow the route I set you?"

"I've scouted at night before. Don't worry about me."

"I won't. You really have the makings of a soldier in spite of your cavalry training," Savaran jeered. "Well, take the lead now and start— and drive like hell, all of us."

The cavalcade got under way at once, but now running towards the east and going over what was, fortunately, a vast tract of almost level sand. Euan Amory led, Miriam and her driver came second, the Chief Engineer third, then Terry, with Savaran as rearguard.

Terry was glad to note that his rebuke about noise had had effect. There was no sound behind him, none in his ears save the rush of the wind by them and the soft swish of the wheels on the sand. Their beautifully running engines gave out no more than a gentle purr that would certainly not carry to the far west where the enemy was massing. Nor could they be seen. All lights were cut off save the red rear lamps, and even those were half-hooded.

Only once did a qualm visit him. This was when the mounds of fresh sand dunes loomed up duskily in the night and Amory, recognising them as landmarks, swung a little west-by-north, using them as cover and then picking up pace on the firmer, stone-strewn surface beneath them. They had gained their eastern road.

It was as they swung round the dunes that Terry's heart gave a bump, for it seemed to him that he saw, far away across the desert, a white haze of light that struck him as devilishly like the headlights of a car seen miles away. The dunes blotted out the light as quickly as he saw it, and Terry told himself that either he had been mistaken— for the idea of another car in this desert was absurd— or the light had come from the fires of an Ibi-Iberi village, or even of the Ibi-Iberi army. It was in that direction, certainly. If so they were well clear of the massing host.

It was well after midnight when they plunged into a deep and rocky canyon, and Euan Amory's brake light signalled a halt. As they dismounted and gathered about him, he said:— "Savaran decided that we'd better halt here to cool engines, fill tanks and the rest. There's a ticklish stretch just ahead, where our road crosses the chief Ibi-Iberi east-to-west road. There's a group of villages there. They should all be empty of fighting men by now, but , it will save trouble to be able to rush them without any stoppages... The man's a marvel, anyhow. Every landmark and bearing he gave me has come pat, though he only got them in that one talk with the elders ..."

He seemed to be talking to save face, and actually stopped and stammered when Miriam asked sharply:— "Where is Mr. Savaran?"

"He's not here, missy," said one of the men who had hidden in the back of Terry's lorry. "He didn't come with us; he went off towards the west."

"The west!" Miriam was aghast. "But that's the road where the Ibi-Iberi are waiting for us."

"That's the way he went, all the same," the man said doggedly. "We couldn't miss him anyhow, because he had his lights on. We thought you knew."

Terry gave a gulp when he heard about the lights, but Miriam cried, swinging on the cavalryman: "Knew! Did you know, Euan?"

"Orders, my dear," he said gruffly.

"Listen!" a man cried. "Listen?" Far away, terribly far away, they heard a cracking, like the muffled sounds of a whip— but they knew it was rifle fire. Then the clumsier thudding of trade guns answering, and the sewing-machine rattle of a Lewis gun. The sounds mounted and fused together with the heavy door-thuds of exploding hand-grenades.

"Savaran!" a voice guffawed. "That's Savaran all right."

"Euan!" the girl cried. "Is that Savaran — fighting them?"

"Skirmishing," the soldier muttered. "He was going to stir up their outposts to draw them farther west— to make sure of making them concentrate their forces away from us."

"To make sure of our getting through— I say," Terry cried. "And was that infernal uproar from his car part of the plan?"

"That's it. He said that as they expected a train of lorries he'd better make a row like five."

"Gosh! What a man!" Terry burst out, in admiration.

"And you let him run all that risk for us, Euan?" the girl said, shakily. "No choice," the soldier's voice was stiff. "He was perfectly willing to let me do it, but decided I hadn't the experience, or dash—"

"No," Miriam breathed. "You wouldn't have. What other man would have?"

"He's an amazing merchant," Terry cried, "but you can't help believing in him. He's fixed a rendezvous. eh, Euan?"

"He's named a point on the Bamikano-Yriate road, on the border of the Great Sand itself," the soldier said, stiffly.

"He'll be there," Miriam cried. "Quick, let us fill up and get going. The sooner we're on the way the better."

SAVARAN got through. He was waiting at a water-hole on the edge of the Great Sand when the lorry party reached the rendezvous. Thanks to his strategy, their journey had been swift and almost free from danger. As his keen brain had foreseen, his ruse had drawn all the fighting men of the Ibi-Iberi to mass on the western road, leaving only a few old men and boys in the villages.

A few harmlessly flung spears and pot-shots from antique guns were all they experienced as they flashed by such villages as they could not avoid. Their speed always saved them, and their speed was due to Miriam Paston, for whom they could not travel fast enough.

Even Euan protested at this on the third day, saying: "If we drive on at this pace, we run the risk of being short of petrol for the exploration of the Great Sand."

"Does it matter?", the girl cried. "The real point now is to get to our rendezvous quickly."

"What's biting you, sis?" Terry demanded. "You don't usually get the jumps, and, anyhow, we're out of danger."

"Is Savaran?", she frowned. "They may have followed him to that waterhole, and, if he's attacked there, we can save him."

"Savaran— I pity the poor attackers," Terry grinned, then blinked at what he saw in his sister's face. "I say— is it only just keenness to meet our raggle-taggle Napoleon again?"

"Don't be a ridiculous child," she cried, with surprising heat, and turned away quickly to hide the high color of her face.

On the fifth day, following Savaran's directions, they arrived at a land of steadily growing sandhills, picked up the Bamikano-Yriate road, and followed it to the water-hole. Under its stunted palms stood Savaran's lorry and tents. The lorry showed distinct bullet marks and other signs of war and hard going, yet it, the tents, the very order of the camp, had a spit and polish neatness that made the cavalryman in Euan Amory open his eyes. They noted, also, that the gipsy adventurer had lost at least one man from his crew, and that two were wounded.

Even Savaran had a bandage round his head, but true to self he managed to make even that add to the rakish and extravagant glory of his getup. For it was a new Savaran they saw. He had shed his rags, and become resplendent. From his shoulders there flowed the gold-braided magnificence of an Arab chieftain's snowy white cloak. As he moved it fluttered aside to reveal the perfection of shining top-boots and a suit of tropical khaki that fitted his raking and sinewy figure with the distinction only possible to the most exclusive tailors. The braid on his arm indicated Field-Marshal rank.

With his high and dominant air, he looked all he boasted, a master soldier, a conqueror. Before all that dazzle, they could only gape awed, though the woman in Miriam showed a human anxiety about his wound.

"Just a memento," he said, with his large gusto. "I gave them more to keep me in mind. They will show a proper respect when I return."

He led them to a tent where a meal worthy of a city banquet was set out on a table extemporised from packing-cases. Terry cried out at the bottles of wine.

"I equipped myself fully from the ship before leaving," the lean rogue laughed. "It is only fitting that we should celebrate the beginning of our quest in style... Kabanga, fill the glasses. We'll drink to the Great Sand."

He raised his own in a magnificent gesture, and Captain Euan Amory, who had been dumb before his glitter, saw the uniform fully for the first time.

"That uniform," he spluttered, "if it wasn't for the fit, and those bands―"

"Both my work." Savaran said, with superb indifference. "That jackal, El Sifr, was over-fond of gold braid, and as you will gather from this cloak, that was his. Also I am, among other things, a genius in tailoring―"

"Then — damn you, that's my best uniform!" Euan Amory stormed. "You must have stolen it from my kit-box on the ship."

"Where else?" the unabashed smile flashed. "Why bother about trifles as long as Savaran is suitably clothed for the adventure before him and the company he keeps?"

Euan Amory flared in fury, but Terry began to laugh uncontrollably, and Miriam Paston, instead of showing disgust, said, unaccountably: "Why be so petty, Euan, in the face of what we have gone through and what we have before us? And — and remember all Mr. Savaran has done for us— and will yet do."

Chapter 6

CAPTAIN EUAN AMORY stared astonished at this attitude in the woman he had hoped to marry. This cold and fastidious girl had actually surrendered to this mountebank. He relapsed into sulks the more bitter since Savaran did not notice them.

Savaran, supreme with women as in war, took it as a matter of course. He drew the unresisting girl down to a seat beside him, and said genially: "Yes, O pearl of looks and brains, nothing matters except our enterprise. It is time for a real discussion of plans."

"So that is the outline as far as we gave it to the Kadi el Sifr," Miriam said, finishing her explanation. "That is, we are searching for this hidden city of Myssr, lost for centuries in the Great Sand, using as our basis the map and other particulars handed down to us by our great-grandfather— but, of course, there was more behind it than we could tell El Sifr."

"On whom be death on a dunghill," Savaran said, with pious venom. "But I  doubt whether he was so easily misled. I, naturally, never was."

"I suppose we're terribly innocent," she smiled. "Well, you're right. It's gold. A strange and tremendous amount of gold."

"There's nothing strange about gold, or the things men do with it, or for it," the gipsy man shrugged.

"Oddly, that is the basis of the whole strange business. As our great grandfather learnt the story, it was the things men did for this gold, the fear of worse things, that was responsible for this great hoard. It appears that this city of Myssr came into existence because of gold found on its site. In those days, centuries ago, the desert there was flatter, greener, easier, if you can believe that."

"Easily. All deserts, from the Sahara to the Sudan, have been encroaching steadily south through the ages," Savaran said. "More, all have left behind little pockets of ancient civilisation, cut off and marooned, as it were, by the sand.

"The lost city of Zerzura, for instance, that men have sought since Musa Ibu Nasr, the astrologer, wrote of it in A.D. 700. Then there's Kufra, which was rediscovered not so long ago, and Uweinat and scores of places. Have no fear of my disbelieving you. I, who know Africa better than any man, know that anything is possible in her unmapped wastes."

"Well, this city or Myssr, which rose to wealth because of its gold mines, must have become degenerate and luxury-loving through its riches, for when the sand began to overrun the neighborhood and it grew more difficult for caravans to reach it, there arose holy men and prophets who proclaimed that this invasion of the sand was a punishment for the sins their traffic in gold had caused to the world and themselves. These seers urged them to have nothing more to do with gold; more, to cast it out of sight as a thing accursed. And because the sand was then overwhelming them with a terrible rapidity— 'coming with great winds,' as my great-grandfather's statement put it— the people at last listened to their priests. The day came when the whole population of Myssr went in great ceremony to one of their vast, underground water-tanks and, as one person, flung into its depths every jewel and every particle of gold they possessed."

"But even that did not stay the curse," Savaran said, in a cynical flash. "There would be at least one woman to withhold her gewgaws."

"Why, yes," Miriam said, startled at his insight. "There was one— the queen. She was a defiant and head-strong creature, who absolutely refused to cast away her trinkets, and so the great winds blew more strongly, the sand rushed on them in waves, and the city was cut off from all human contacts for ever."

"With that mass of gold still drowned in the underground tank?"

"Naturally, it was too evil to touch. It is there to this day. My great-grandfather hadn't a doubt about it."

"And how did he learn all this?"

"One of the inhabitants of Myssr managed, by a miracle, to get through the Great Sand a hundred years ago."

"So there are still living inhabitants?" Savaran cried, with shining eyes.

"Apparently a city full of them, though they are dwindling," the girl told him. "It would seem that by some strange formation of the land, the city and quite a large area of cultivation were not, in fact, could not, be overwhelmed, I can't understand that myself, yet my great-grandfather believed it."

"Why not? The deserts are full of oases, you know," Savaran said. "But how did this man get away and how is it others have not?"

"It wasn't a man, it was a girl," Miriam said. "Her story was that many . have tried, especially men, but being without even camels, the attempts have always proved hopeless. She only succeeded because she was more desperate— and lucky—than others. It appears that every year there is a ceremony in  which the sin of their evil queen is expiated. This rite takes the form of casting another woman, a virgin, alive into the tank where the gold lies."

"Drowning her amid gold," Savaran said.

"Probably, though my grandfather wrote of it that she was cast into the water as a sacrifice to the Demon of the Gold. Well, this woman who escaped was the virgin chosen for her year, but she was in love with a man, and to avoid her fate both planned a flight across the sandhills.

"It was actually the man's sacrifice— he gave her all the water he carried for himself— that enabled her to get through, for he succumbed when a little more than half-way. She herself was near death when she was found, and actually died a few days later from her privations. But before she did she told her story to the chief of the Arab band who found her, and he happened to be a warm friend of my great-grandfather— and that is how the story was handed down to us."

"But the Arabs themselves might have gone after the gold," Savaran suggested.

"We think not. The chief told my great-grandfather that he thought the gold accursed and that the very nature of the Great Sand, which he held to be impassable, was proof of this. For that reason he had never told the story to another Arab.

"My great-grandfather, being an infidel, was in a different category; also the chief was sure that he was even less likely than Arabs to reach the city. The two attempts my great-grandfather made seemed to prove him right, for the manuscript ends with the assertion that the thing is hopeless, even with the best camel caravan. It still is that way, I fancy, but on the other hand we feel that this modern method of desert exploration gives us a real chance. What do you think, Mr. Savaran?"

"A much better chance even than you knew— for also you have Savaran with you," he said, largely. "I think you will see Myssr within a week."

He made a long arm for a portfolio, Terry's portfolio, extracted a sheet of paper and a pencil.

"Let us get the map on to paper again, and work out our distances," he said.

At once his pencil was reproducing their map with an accuracy that made them gasp, though Euan Amory did more. With a warning glance at Miriam he said, stiffly,

"Yes, you've got it marvellously," and then choked as the girl cried: "That map is false. We drew it inaccurately to mislead the Kadi el Sifr. Show Mr. Savaran the real map, Euan."

Savaran took the old stained bit of paper the soldier reluctantly produced, and examined it, his face twisting dryly.

"The wisdom of Captain Amory is only equalled by the candor of a queen among women.... Yes, this does explain the riddle."

"Riddle?" Euan Amory scowled.

"Yes. Though your map sets the city marked X beautifully wrong, your mileage figures place it beyond the Great Sand and in the millet garden of Sidi Muley Bu Riesh, a desert hermit and friend of my own. I have been wondering how I managed to overlook it on my last visit."

"You knew the map was a fake?" Terry gaped.

"There is little in Africa Savaran does not know," he said, thoroughly enjoying the astonishment he had caused. "I knew, even, that you would explain in time."

"And do you know if my great-grandfather's map is to be relied on?" Miriam asked.

"Enough for Savaran to lead you into the Great Sand at dawn," he said.

IT was a toilsome, bewildering and, but for the presence of Savaran, a terrifying experience. The Great Sand was a vast and lifeless desert, unlike anything they had ever seen. It was not flat sand, but made tip of an endless succession of ridges soaring high over their heads to heights rarely less than 100 feet high. It was like some titanic sea caught and petrified at its height by some stupendous calamity of nature.

Their route to the mysterious city lay obliquely across these dunes, but they used the firmer-surfaced gulleys mostly. It was like driving through a maze. The high dunes were the hedges cutting off all view save the sky above. Sometimes, too, the gulleys ended, as the pathways of mazes do. In the blind wall of a cul-de-sac. When they reached such points, they had to rush their lorries at the slope, too.  Always this was a moment of breathless excitement, and they would hang, clinging to their seats, sometimes at a dangerous tilt, wondering whether the lorry would reach the crest, the engine stall under the strain, the wheels sink Into the sand— or the machine turn tight over.

There was no variation in the stupendous monotony. No Sign of trees or even a blade of living green, no sign of man or man's passing. And day after day it was the same, until the harsh, hot and endless loneliness became a nightmare, and they began to ask themselves in secret fear if, in spite of travelling by compass, they weren't simply doubling and redoubling on themselves, as they might easily do.

The dunes played them strange tricks. Their sand was so fine and loose that a breath of wind could send it up like smoke, and though, as the pioneer motor explorers had found, their half-deflated tyres carried them over what seemed a loose surface almost magically, even then the sand could be impish. Let something disturb the surface, even the vibration of a footfall, and the packed grains seemed to collapse, and their wheels would sink to the bubs. There were also patches of more fluid grains, which, quite undetectable from the general mass, gave under their wheels like a sort of dry quicksand. In both cases it meant hard digging under a blazing sun, with the use of specially made channels and rope-mesh runs under the wheels to get them clear. With fatigue and exhaustion grew fear.

The utter emptiness of this dead and sinister sea in which nothing, not even a bird, moved but themselves, was increased by the appalling silences of night. Yet it was not a dead and unbroken silence— It could give tongue to moments of sheer horror. On their first night, just after the stillness had stricken them dumb, there came like a blow out of the blackness a cry so awful, so appalling that all leapt to their feet, grabbing their rifles. But that was all. One short and diabolical scream loosed in the distance, then the silence again, but now quickened with an expectant terror.

On the fourth night, however, the scream nearly stampeded them— it gave tongue in their very camp. It rent the silence with an outcry so diabolical, so close, so frightening that even Euan Amory gave a shout of alarm as he sprang to his feet, while the strong nerve of Miriam Paston broke for the first time, and she found herself crouching in Savaran's arms.

For a moment all stood aghast while the sinewy arms held her tight. Then Savaran chuckled, bent and kissed the girl full on the mouth and. called through the quivering silence.

"Turn lights on to that big dune to the left."

They manipulated the headlights until the great hill was stark with brightness. Putting Miriam aside, the limby adventurer walked dramatically across to the dune, thrust a long arm up to his shoulder into it, and withdrew it with violence. At once all the surface sand of the hill began to move downward, and as it moved there came again the eerie and terrible outcry— only now they saw it was the sand speaking.

"By gosh, who'd have thought It could make such a hullabaloo?" Terry shouted, but he tried it with his own arms, and found the sound repeated.

"I remember reading about it now," Euan Ambry said, when the sheepish laughter died down. "But you — you knew all the time, Savaran; yet you let us fear."

"We are now too deep in the Great Sand for the men to dare going back alone," Savaran said, indifferently.

"Was that the only reason?" the soldier asked, sourly. "Or couldn't yon resist the chance of posing as a miracle worker?"

"That, too," agreed the unabashed fellow. "The master-mind always foresees his opportunities— and makes the most of them when they arrive." His quizzing eyes looked straight into Miriam's, but now she met them with eyes as bright and laughed softly. She, at least, appreciated the way he made the most of his opportunities.

YET a few days later even she began to wonder if his leadership was the marvel he considered it. They were still running hopelessly between the scorching walls of sand, still charging to the top of dimes, only to see more hills stretching away, and away without break on every side. All were weary to their very bones, and utterly dejected at the absence of any sign of their goat while the terror of this vast emptiness was growing into a moral torture. Even their over-tired lorries were beginning to rattle and groan with the ominous warnings of breakdown. When, about midday, they put them at the highest nearby sandhill, and the second vehicle gave off a .crack and a lurch that betokened broken springs and another sweating replacement in the blazing sun, Euan Amory, dirty, unshaven, and more haggard than the rest, broke out violently:—

"Damn it, we've reached the limit. I knew from the first that the whole thing was folly, and that map a mare's nest."

"Or merely Inaccurate, as such are when drawn only from hearsay," said Savaran, to whom the strain and toil seemed only to have added a dry and fiercer spareness.

"So you said when we reached the point marked 'X days ago," Euan jeered. "Since then we've been circling and quartering this wilderness, on your fool plan to locate Myssr. Well, where is it?"

"Not a blink of it," Terry growled. "It's plain that some crook played our revered great-grandfather for a sucker."

"You both believed in it readily enough when we planned the expedition," Miriam said, faintly.

"Do you still?" Euan demanded harshly. "Savaran does," the girl murmured. and looked for support to the raking figure that had wandered to the edge of the dune and stood staring this way and that over the unending vista of sandhills.

"Savaran!" the soldier said contemptuously, as the lank figure vanished out of sight down the slope. "He'd believe in anything that took his crazy fancy. But we've got to be sensible. We can't risk going on looking for this— this myth any more. We're just about all in ourselves, and the men are ripe for mutiny. And I don't blame them. Half rations, especially or water, and back-breaking work in this heat is more than flesh and blood can stand."

"And there's the petrol," Terry barked in. "It's dangerously low, and. there's real danger of our being left helpless in the midst of this. Your gipsy Napoleon's stagy dash round the Ibi-Iberi used up more than we can spare."

"It saved all our lives," the girl protested.

"Did it? Or was it only his usual gallery play?" Euan Amory jeered. "Anyhow, that's no reason why we should lose our lives now. I say we must break off this fool hunt at once and head straight north for civilisation. Delay may be fatal. You, as owner, must tell the bounder at once."

"No need," said a mocking voice behind them. "You may consider that ultimatum delivered."

They turned to find the adventurer regarding them derisively, hands on hips.

"And your answer is?" Euan Amory demanded.

"No! The hunt goes on."

Euan Amory's hand flashed to his pistol. Terry drew his, and even the men bunched aggressively, fingering their arms. Only Savaran stood unperturbed, his smile deepening as it always did under greatest danger. Yet the very essence of that smile warned them of peril; they paused, glaring, and the scornful fellow said:— "How could perfect little gentlemen shoot the big, bad crook in the presence of a lady? Nay, nay, for blue blood still holds—"

"Blast you, you bounder, you go too far," Euan Amory burst out in fury.

"And a little farther," the bizarre man said, calmly. "We start up the lorries and head them south-southwest."

"Savaran!" Miriam cried. "Does that mean— you most explain!"

"Since loveliness insists," he said, with his inevitable gesture. "Here!" He thrust out a hand, and in the palm of it lay thin green shoots, the first herbage they had seen for days. Then he led them to where he had descended the dune, pointed. They saw what seemed no more than a mist of green tinging the sand. It stretched away south-south-west over the next dune.

"The beginning of growing things," Savaran said. "Follow it, and it will lead to cultivation, and where cultivation is..."

They did not have to be told. They ran shouting to the lorries. They repaired the damaged springs in record time. Following Savaran's car, they swooped down into the green, followed it up the far dime, and cheered wildly as they saw it deepening ahead.

Hope— but, perhaps, a wicked hope. All next day they toiled on, finding more and more growing things, and telling each other that from the next crest they must see the lost city looming up before them. But they never saw it. Only the same frozen ridges stretched ahead and around them, until excitement died, elation sank into exhaustion and despair, and when, in the last hours of the day, it became plain that even the vegetation, was thinning, even Miriam's spirit broke.

"We've circled the place," Savaran frowned. "It must be hidden somewhere in the centre."

"Hidden, be damned," Terry snapped. "Look for yourself, man! Only dunes as far as the eye can see. No breaks even— nothing!"

"Sandhills make for deception," Savaran muttered.

"It's no good, Savaran," Miriam put in. "I'm as ready as you to run risks— but we dare not now. We've used up too much petrol in today's search. It's actually a gamble getting back to safety on what's left. We can't delay any longer, we must start for civilisation tomorrow; even you must see that, Savaran."

They, waited, tense, even ready to fight, so desperate were they. Yet even the iron- willed adventurer had reached his limit, it seemed.

"Who is Savaran to argue against beauty," he said, with a shrug, and retired, like Achilles, to his tent.

Chapter 7

SAVARAN was visited by a strange, mad dream. A soft pattering and fluttering seemed to fill the world, a whispering of siren voices floated about him on the winds of sleep. He had the illusion of being awake; his eyes looking out through the open tent flap into a world strangely blanched by the light of the tropic half moon. Into this world came amazing, moon-white people. He knew them to be incredible things because they were all women and lovely. They moved in and out of his view, tall, strong, and swift. They were clad in brief garments, and so were revealed as white-skinned and as glorious as the maidens of Greek myth.

On the big sandhill commanding the camp stood a group as marvellous as classical statues, with, in their midst, a girl even taller, stronger, lovelier than the rest, the queen of them all. So amazing, so enchanting a sight could only be a dream, and though Savaran had a dream's odd sensation of being awake, he knew that, was only a trick of fancy.

But it did seem undreamlike that the women should be armed. They had tall, bright-bladed spears in their hands, square shields of painted hide, even short, classic swords girdled to their Venus de Milo waists. It was, he felt, a dream of fabled Amazons— until a man cried out.

The man gave tongue In terror and pain, and it was a human cry. There was tumult. Others cried out in alarm and fear. Savaran was on to his feet and out of his tent like a great cat, to learn it was reality and no dream. A dozen long spears glittered against his breast as he emerged. As his wrists flicked up his pistols he saw all about him the white, strong bodies of women— but women making no bones of killing. He saw the faces, beautiful indeed, but beautiful as hydras. He realised they meant to capture rather than kill; realised, as his quick mind could, who they were, and that it would be unwise to fight them. He lowered his weapons in the tried fighter's gesture of surrender. A strong cloth whipped over his head and was drawn tight about his arms with workmanlike dexterity.

The point of a spear prodded his back, sharp as a needle. As he took a blind step away from It, the haft of a spear between his legs sent him sprawling. Strong bodies flung themselves on to him as he . fell and he was bound as tightly as a market hen. From the sounds about him he knew that the others in the camp had fared as he.

The women had mastered the camp with first-rate efficiency. The siren voices became fuller and shriller now that caution was no longer needed. He caught many of the words. It was practically pure Greek of the classic period. He smiled at it. With his instinct for languages he had never forgotten the classics of his school and university days. He knew he could both understand and be understood.

There was no gentle-hand-on-the-fevered-brow methods about these women. A pole was thrust with a practical roughness through his bonds. It and he were lifted on to sturdy feminine shoulders. He was carried up and down sandhills until he was almost dizzy at the way blood rushed from his feet to his head and back again.

The march went on until the fierce glare of heat told of the rising sun. There was a challenge from guards, then the coldness of shade from walls or buildings closed about him They began to go down steps, hundreds of steps, but feet first now, thank heaven. Somewhere about halfway down they seemed to pause on a platform, and from below came the lowing of cattle, the baaing of sheep, even the bleating of goats. It came up as sounds do when looking down into a steep valley.

They went down again and again by some sort of staircase, and as they moved lower there arose a confused murmur of human voices; a great crowd of human voices, excited and gabbling— and all feminine. Abruptly they were on ground level, the chill of buildings deepened, he heard echoes from walls and the slap of hard, bare feet on stone floors.

He was dumped unceremoniously on that same hard stone; hands searched him shrewdly for weapons, and he was unbound. The cloth bag was dragged off his head, the point of a spear encouraged him to stand up; He was in a vast, dim chamber that at first seemed like the main room of a Norman castle, but gradually he saw that it had been carved, whole, out of living sandstone; and that its doors and windows and decorations had an odd, classical line, like Greek overlain by the massivity of Egypt.

Three sides of this room were filled with ranked women. The front lines were composed of splendid, pale-skinned girls, their semi-nude bodies protected by their locked shields, from which their bristling lances projected in gleaming menace. The girls of the second line were as young but of darker, warmer skins; they were scarcely clad at all, and all held crinkly Assyrian bows of horn, in which arrows were set at the ready. At military intervals in the ranks and in the open space before them were their officers; magnificent creatures, armed with swords and lances only.

With these in the open space were women of a more mature age, but of full and superb figure and hard handsomeness. They were clad in kilted, purple-edged robes that gave their splendid limbs full play. They seemed like political executives taking over the captives from the military.

Through wide, glassless windows Savaran caught a side-glimpse of some sort of palace, its heavy pediment of the same mingling of Greece and Egypt. Brightly painted houses, narrowing, from base to flat roofs, rose from what seemed extravagant bowers of sun-bright flowers and trees. Beyond were sloping green fields with a broad roadway striking through them, as straight as a spear shaft. Road and fields ended abruptly at cliffs that rose like a palisade of sheer sandstone, and in that amazing cliff was a structure that absolutely riveted his attention.

It was the towering front of a temple carved out of the stone of the cliff. It was narrow and pinched for its height, like some disease-burnt man. Vast gates filled the space at the lower end of its pillars, giving the empty portion above a depth and blackness that suggested the eyeless sockets of a death's head. There was, indeed, a darkness and malignance about the place that sent a chin even along Savaran's spine. And the strange hue of the road leading so straight to it emphasised this.

It was a queer road, a death's road, it seemed, for its surface was paved with slabs of jet black stone that stood out startlingly against the flowers and the green. Yet Savaran's face lit up as he saw that temple and road. He realised its secret. Both had been made terrible as symbols. There was the way that led to the underground tank of gold.

He turned with his flashing smile to Miriam, who, with Terry, Euan Amory, and what were left of their men, were lined up against the inner wall of this great chamber.

"Your great-grandfather— and Savaran, weren't so mad after all. Myssr, the Lost City of the Great Sand, does exist. And I have found it."

"It's mad enough, anyhow," Terry burst out. "Have you noticed— nothing but women?"

"Would Savaran overlook that?" he answered, with gusto. "But not women— goddesses, rather; a race of Dianas."

"Terrible creatures," Miriam said sharply. "Their faces— each as hard and cruel as a harpy's."

"And there are some men," Euan Amory put in grimly. "Look — the two coming in through the door— a sight for us to take to heart."

The two men who came in were abject and snuffling. They were pale-skinned and good-looking, but their faces were slack and hang-dog, their bodies weedy and scrimshanked. They were absurdly muffled in robes, as though so precious that they dared not risk the chills of this great chamber. Yet they were also chained by wrists and ankles in such a way that they could not stride more than a foot nor lift their hands farther than their mouths. Not only were their bodies degenerate, but their position was plainly of the lowest degradation. They brought in ewers and water jars, kneeling while the officers washed their hands. One, distracted by the sight of the captives, splashed water over the body of one of these imperial women.

She plucked a whip from her girdle, and slashed him across the face while the spineless wretch merely squirmed and whimpered. Suddenly, the chamber rang with shrill-edged words of command, the crash of spear-butts on stone, the shuffle and stamp of feet as the Amazons fell into columns. A leading company of spears wheeled and marched through the tall and massive arch of the door. They were followed by the lithe-moving archers.

Terry, entranced by the athletic swing of the girls, was awakened by a savage jolt in his ribs from a spear shaft. He leapt round to retaliate, gulped before the beauty of the striker, and fell into line with the others.

The others— but not Savaran. His limby and towering form stepped casually aside as they went I on. A spear butt jabbed at him, and a startled Amazon found it plucked from her hand and tossed casually aside.

A magnificent Boadicea of an officer strode forward plucking her man-taming whip from her girdle. In a moment she was nursing her wrist and gaping, open-mouthed like a hurt girl. Using no apparent violence, and smiling like a genial Lucifer, the lean man had the whip in his hand.

"I am a king among men. I am to be treated as a king, and I march as only kings may," he said, in their own clear Greek. That and his imperial gesture left nothing to doubt. He, even more than they, broke the column of spears bringing up the rear.

In the midst of a special guard, he became the high note of the procession. Even in captivity, Savaran could not forgo his gesture. They were marched, as in a Roman triumph, between crowds collected to stare, shout, and even scream at them— and again the crowd was all women.

It was a harem city of women. They were mainly white-skinned, though the whiteness shaded through biscuit into nut brown, but whatever the shading, beauty of body and face was universal. It was a classic handsomeness, with that hard, marbleoid inhumanity Miriam Paston had shuddered at.

Even the lovely children, again all girls, had this as they spat shrill venom at the captives, while the older women had a terrible, witch-like malignance. These greeted the prisoners with a terrible, hooting glee, especially Miriam, shouting at her that she was a pretty bride for the Thing. What the Thing was, Savaran could not guess, but the wickedness in the women's tones suggested horror.

Yet, although all the women in the city seemed to have gathered to stare at them, the shrewd, assessing eye of the soldier of fortune noted how few there were. There was no more than a single line of them on each side of the road, and sometimes not even that.

Big though the city seemed, it was a bigness of ancient days, and was now less than half inhabited. It was a dying race, dying as races will because it had ceased to breed men. There were a few men to be seen, but very few. They were always weedy-looking and treated as slaves, working In twos or threes at road-repairing, gardening, or removing the debris of some tumbledown house. Always these men were under the direction of strapping wenches armed with formidable whips.

The street led into an immense square that looked queerly empty, even though most of the people flocked into it after them. Two sides of the square were edged with tall and imposing buildings of the same type as the ominous temple, that is, they had not been built of stone or brick, but, like the deserted city of Petra, carved solid out of the living rock of the cliff itself. Here, again, the Greek style seemed fused into the pylon heaviness of Egypt. The town itself and brilliant open gardens filled the other sides of the square, though, facing the largest of the buildings was the broad, black road that ran to the temple in the cliff.

Savaran was now able to see that they were on the floor of a pit-like valley, hemmed in on all sides by the tall wall of cliff. The valley was several miles long, though no more and often far less than a mile wide. The cliffs that towered above it were never lower than a thousand feet, and it was their surface that trapped and reflected the sun, giving the valley its concentrated brightness and heat. The cliffs also cut off the valley from the outer world, for not even Savaran's keen eyes could discover a break in the giant wall, not even the hint of a path up. He doubted whether he would.

They had been brought in blindfolded, because the entrance of this valley was carefully concealed— even from the populace, he learnt later. Only a few picked Amazons of the guard knew its secret. His chief puzzle, at first, was to understand how he had failed to see these towering cliffs from the Great Sand. Then he saw the crests of a line of sandhills along the top of the cliffs and understood.

He had not seen the cliffs from the Great Sand, because they were below the ground level.

The strange thing was that it had never filled with sand, but obviously some freak of wind, ground or up-draught, was responsible for that, as such things were responsible for the numberless sand-free depressions and oases throughout the deserts of the world. Yet it was this unusual combination of accidents, that had given this lost valley almost complete immunity from discovery. Even if the waterless desert faded to keep men—like themselves— away, they might actually pass within a hundred feet of the place, and, because the sandhills cut off all views, never know it was there.

With this in his head, the lean adventurer scowled, already considering how he, Savaran, could use so perfect a base for conquering empires. There were certain difficulties. Amazons, however lusty, did not suggest themselves as Napoleonic material. He'd have to use men from the Allah-Din to master the Ibi-Iberi and other adjacent tribes by way of a beginning. Sun-reading and mapping would give him a safer road than the one they had travelled by, but he would need equipment and petrol.

He began to devise plans for surprising and capturing the force that the Kadi el Sifr would undoubtedly lead towards this city. He would have to act quickly, though. El Sifr had the advantage in speed over them, because all he had to do was to follow their wheel marks in the sand. That meant Savaran had to master the people of Myssr in the next few days if he were to lead out a party to ambush El Sifr.

A MOST unladylike voice bawled a command into his ear, and he came out of his dream of empires to realise that he and the other prisoners were being marched from the square into the biggest of the rock-carved buildings. Huge and heavy pillars soared to an immense roof and, beyond the pillars, vast glooms. Into the nave itself great bands of sunlight struck downwards from cunning windows in roof and walls; against the prevailing darkness these beams had an almost uncanny brilliance.

The largest beam was concentrated on a broad, raised dais which was covered with a cloth that glowed like bright blood. On the side steps of this stood the high officials of Myssr in glittering robes and equipment. In the middle of the dais was a bench draped in rich cloth, and on it an amazing woman.

She was taller, stronger, more gloriously built than any of the goddesses about her. She could not have been more than nineteen, and her youth added to her astounding loveliness. No woman of earthly flesh could compare with her; even Cleopatra might have envied such startling. physical perfection— and yet not envied. As her beauty was greater than any woman of her race, so her high, proud looks had a cold and graven hardness harsher than theirs.

Two figures alone shared the dais with the astonishing young queen. One, an old woman as tall and, in her long, straight-pleated robes, as narrow as a pillar. Her face was dry and thin, with the bitter handsomeness of an avenger. Her deep-set eyes, the only living things in her graven stillness, glittered with evil. She stood behind the queen, close to her right shoulder, and from the movements of the latter's head it was obvious that this sibyl prompted her every word and act. The old woman was plainly the real power behind the throne, the High Priestess of Myssr.

The other figure stood behind the queen's left hand. It was a man who was as astonishing as the rest of that strange community. He was a tremendous fellow. He was as tall as Savaran, but more than twice as bulky. His great body was a mass of hard muscle that stood out in intimidating ropes and plaits. He was a perfect, living model of masculine athleticism, and had been bred and trained to that end. He was not quite as white as the queen or her aristocrats. There was a tinge of darkness in his skin that hinted at negroid blood, a suggestion even more pronounced in the heavy, low browed, rather dull ferocity of his face. He was scantily clad to show his bull physique to advantage, yet his chains, girdle, and short apron, no less than his weapons, had a quality that made Euan Amory exclaim:

"Solid gold! See that— he's the only person we've seen who shows a sign of gold."

"With reason," Savaran said dryly. "Gold is the accursed thing to these people, and he is the servant of that curse— he's the public executioner!"

Staring at the gross brute with horrified eyes, they realised that Savaran was right. The, man carried wicked-looking butchers' knives with gold hafts in his belt; his great hands rested on the gold knob of a great axe, whose lethal, half-moon blade glittered from recent burnishing and sharpening.

The queen's hand motioned. A trumpet clanged and echoed through the vaults of the great hall. Such noises that even awe could not suppress died into dead stillness.

The queen began to speak. She had a full, clear voice, precise and emotionless, and she spoke in a classic Greek so measured that Savaran could understand her easily. Only now and then there was a youthful stumble which told she was merely repeating word for word what her high priestess was prompting. First she asked:—

"You strangers who, evilly, have penetrated my land against my laws and those of the gods, do you understand my words?"

She and all there were startled, when Savaran, making the most of his dramatic moment, paced up to the second step of the dais, and said loudly, but calmly:— "I, Savaran, master of tongues and nations, understand. Speak on, O queen-star of loveliness, my eyes as well as my ears attend the commands of so lustrous a pearl among women."

A gasp went up at the audacity of his compliment no less than the iron assurance of his manner.

The queen was actually more taken aback than her people. Her eyes widened as she regarded the tall and imperial man, and her mouth softened into girlishness as her easily fired tropic blood quickened under the bold admiration of his eyes.

The sibyl behind her had to hiss a venomous admonition before she recovered herself, stiffened to marble coldness, went on:—

"It is well. Listen then, and learn the pronouncement of Khadra, the queen. You have come unasked to Myssr, and have thus broken our tradition and our law. Drawn here only by evil "

"Can such beauty as yours and the desire to look at it be evil, O lily of women?" Savaran interrupted so unexpectedly that the girl caught her breath and floundered, while her eyes grew bright as they met this audacious lover's.

"Such— such meaningless words have no weight with us," she mumbled, unconvincingly, then steadied. "We know why you are here. It is for the gold. But we, more than any other great nation, know the curse as well as the lure of gold. Yet, because it has drawn you here, its curse will fall on you. Every―" she looked into Savaran's gleaming eyes, hesitated, and dropped her own. "Every second male among ye dies as a punishment for this lust of gold. You— the rest of the men will be put into chains and used in the slave house, to do our will until you die, as all living men must. The woman among you―" She looked at Miriam, and her face hardened to a vindictive pitilessness. "The woman among you shall be the bride of the Thing.

"Following our immemorial Custom, she will be maintained alive until the next full moon. Then, in full ritual, she will be taken in procession to the Temple of the Drowned Gold in the cliff. There she will be cast into the waters, to be consumed by the beast who guards it, as lust, for gold consumes her. So it is ordained by our tradition and law as reparation for the curse a woman brought on us. Let these things be done. I, Khadra, the queen, have said it."

She cast an odd look at Savaran, her eyes fled from his, and she sank back on her bench. Her hand was about to signal the trumpets when a shrill outcry made her look up.

Savaran, with that easy swiftness that always left others helpless, had mounted the steps and was facing her on her own dais. The high priestess was clamoring:

"Death! Strike the profaner of high places dead!"

But the queen did not stir, gave no orders for killing, only stared into the eagle face with an odd fascination in her eyes. And the lean man, making the most of himself and his moment, cried aloud:

"I, Savaran, equal to thrones, man above men, co-equal of queens, tell you more shall be said. For I say— No! I, who have led these, my people, through dangers no other man could compass, and brought them to this place no other man has seen, say to you that I will not hear or countenance these things. I, mightiest of warriors―"

The high priestess shrilled: "Goila, defend your queen."

Waking from the bewilderment into which the lean adventurer's audacity had flung him, the muscular executioner jerked himself forward, his great axe swinging. The gipsy kingmaker, who knew the value of flamboyant gestures, and who had even counted on this, swung to the man with that savage glee that always lit his face when danger was most eminent.

Savaran leapt lightly backward, as though scared, and the other, sure in his strength, slashed with such a stroke that the keen blade of the axe sang through the air. It was meant to sheer the lank body in twain, but Savaran and quicksilver rarely wait on the motions of the slow. Like a streak of lightning, the limby fellow ducked under the stroke, dived at the great body, gripping it in a way to make the axe useless, thrust an iron elbow up against the chin, and heeled the oak-thick leg with a savage heave.

There was a crash and a great outcry through the hall. The muscle-mountain had smashed so violently to the dais that even the great axe was jolted from his grip.

He came up sharply enough, since outraged pride made him almost nimble. Also, he had sense enough to recognise that an axe, if impressive, was no weapon to use against such a man as this. One of the great knives was in each hand as he faced Savaran with murder in his heavy face.

Savaran was on him even as he lunged, the thick arm was caught, and, by the very strength of the stroke, twisted with a Japanese viciousness. The huge man bellowed with pain and the arm dropped useless. Pain made him hang perceptibly before the left hand slashed.

He was all that too late.

Savaran's shoulders had dived between his spread legs, straightened and tossed. The heavy bulk soared in a monstrous arc and skull and neck struck the sharp stone edges of the steps with a resounding crack. There he lay, an inert mass, perhaps dead, but most decisively and spectacularly beaten.

And Savaran, who never missed such a cue, carried on the gesture. He lifted the great axe, and swinging it as easily as a toy, went back to the queen, smiling into her face. And the queen sat staring up at him, wonder in her eyes, color mantling her cheeks, and her lips parted in a lovely smile.

About her her officers, the whole hall, stood numb with awe. It was only after a minute that the high priestess began to clamor:

"Arrows! Spears! Kill the profaner! Defend your queen!"

Chapter 8

"YOU— and the queen will be the first to die under your arrows, old hag,"  Savaran mocked her. "And it is not meet, O Khadra, flower of women, that you should be massacred for an old harridan's ravings."

The queen, who had stiffened under the high priestess' cries, melted again at his scoffing contempt for the sibyl.

"Stay your hands!" her voice rang out. "Let no one stir unless the queen commands."

The Amazons of the guard became rigid in obedience, only the high priestess continued to rend the silence with her angry ravings:

"Death! They who break the law must die! Kill! Kill! Even the highest may not dare the law."

The girl looked at Savaran, half-frightened, half-rebellious.

"What do I do?" she cried. "Ngala has power."

"Not above a queen who is a queen," he said. "Be one. I, who have been king, know the worth of boldness. Order her out of the chamber."

The queen's eyes sparkled under this spur to power. She stood up, a superb and compelling figure, whose raised arm brought stillness and silence among the shuffling throng.

"The queen commands," she cried. "All will leave the Presence now. All! The prisoners will be kept in security until I, the queen, decide their fate. Go— I have said it."

The officers sprang to movement. The Amazons clanked to action, driving the crowd out, escorting their captives. Only Ngala, the high priestess, dark with rage, remained, her eyes vengeful with hate. The queen shivered as she glanced from her to Savaran.

"The queen said all," the lean adventurer said softly, his fierce eyes matching and mastering the priestess. "All! And I am now the right hand of the queen's obedience."

He lifted the great axe so that its wicked blade lay on his left palm. The high priestess mowed at him, met the ruthless hardness of his eye, turned, and, with a terrible gesture, hurried away.

"She is angered," the queen said edgily. "She is powerful — I fear."

"That old baggage— what is she beside Savaran?" he said genially. "Take heart, sweeting, Savaran is here, and fear ceases for those in the shelter of his arm."

"You talk, you look like a god," she whispered. "Yet how— "

"How?" he grinned largely, and dropped on to the sacred king bench beside her. "First come into the shelter of Savaran's arm, and I will demonstrate how..."

In the vast chamber, on the very throne of royalty, with a queen on his knees, Savaran could not resist being Savaran. The conqueror spirit had triumphed again. The power that gave him so strange a mastery over women as well as warriors had once more turned defeat into victory and more than victory. His keen, bird head went back in a laugh— he was a king once more.

The queen, Khadra, stirred within his arms at his laugh. Her young fear, reawakening, drove back the easy passion of exotic blood, that had made her surrender to this strange, compelling creature so swiftly. She thrust him away, sprang up, crying that this was the profanation of profanations. This was death.

"What is death beside the favors of such beauty?" the adventurer asked in his large way.

"But is my death!" she wailed. "Queens may not love."

"From my memory of history that has made little difference," he grinned. "Most queens, it seems, have also been women."

"But not I," she cried, her fist hammering the royal bench. "Our queen must be above all mating, even with the serf-males, which is allowed others of our women. Mere contact with man means death for her— for me. That is the law."

"Laws," he said easily, "can be broken by the strong "

"Not this; Ngala, the high priestess, who enforces the law, will see to it."

" Or got round," he said with splendid indifference, "I, who have made laws, tell you this."

"But how— how?" she moaned.

"You will probably find something in the constitution that exactly fits your case. There always is— if you are clever and powerful enough to enforce it."

She was calmed a little by his superman effrontery; he could almost see her quick and simple mind trying to remember things that might save her pretty neck. Yet fear of the priestess was too deep-rooted in her harsh and savage nature to be easily defied.

Ngala, who alone interpreted the laws and traditions of Myssr, had put her on the throne and could sweep her off it. Ngala had only to threaten the vengeance of the gods and the whole nation would support her in fear.

"Give me back my men and arms and I will end the power of Ngala and her gods," he told her.

"The gods!" she shivered at his impiety, even though a gleam of hope crept into her eyes. "Even the Thing; that will claim me."

"The Thing— or any other man or monster who dares claim one so peerless from me, Savaran," he cried, seeing his chance.

She told him of the Thing, fear and hope and admiration warring in her quick face. The Thing was the Beast, the Water God that dwelt in the great tanks of the dark cliff temple, protecting the hoard of ancient gold and taking tribute because of the curse that gold had brought upon Myssr.

She could not describe the nature of this Thing. It was a huge, mysterious and loathsome monster, who had existed from time beyond knowledge. All she knew was that it was fearsome, and especially to her, since it had to be constantly propitiated by the sacrifice of living virgins. That was why she, the queen, could never mate.

Like all other queens before her she had been chosen by the high priestess as the loveliest maiden of her time not only to be queen, but to be the destined offering to the Thing. She would enjoy the sweets of power for a few years only, for when she was thirty and her beauty, as was the way with Myssr women, began to dim, she would be taken in solemn procession to the cliff temple and cast alive into the tank where the Thing awaited her.

This sacrifice was linked with the wicked queen who had brought the disaster of the sand upon them by refusing to cast away her gold and jewels. That queen had been thirty when the vengeance of the gods had overtaken her, and she was the first to be flung to the Thing in the tank.

SAVARAN, knowing how powerful and unbreakable such traditions could be among primitive peoples, yet said magnificently: "It is a monstrous" crime. It is time it was ended, anyhow—"

"It can never end," she said. "It must go on unbroken until—"

Abruptly she was sitting, up staring at him with wide eyes of wonder. "Zavarani— are you the Destined One?"

"It sounds like me," he blinked. "Ten me more about— me."

"It is a legend, a promise," she cried eagerly, clutching two-handed at hope. "It is written on our sacred scrolls that in the day of our greatest extremity, when the curse of gold has reached its height and our nation seems dying — as, indeed, it is now— there will come out of the unknown, a great king, a warrior unsurpassable in war, mighty in wisdom, godlike in bearing "

"It is undoubtedly a prophecy of Savaran," he said with gusto.

"Yea," she breathed. "I had not guessed, but— you are indeed the Lord and Wonder of men."

"I can go even farther than that, myself," he grinned "—the Destined One—"

"And he will win the queen of his day who will be the loveliest maiden ever chosen for our throne—"

"That," the bizarre man said, kissing her hand, "makes it definite."

"Mating together," she cried, beaming on him, "they will destroy the curse, restore our people to strength and power and bring back its lost glory to our city Myssr."

"I've never heard a neater revelation of me," he said, without a qualm of doubt. "I have never doubted my destiny of greatness."

"It is you— you are sure?" she demanded, nervously.

"It would be impiety to doubt it," he said, spaciously. "Have I not come strangely, mysteriously out of the unknown? Am I not all these— er— other things you mentioned? Am I as ordinary men?"

"Nay," she breathed. "You are a lion, an eagle. Your very glance is the sword of power."

"Quite. And are you not the loveliest of all Myssr's queens?"

"Ah— but it does seem too wonderful to be true... And are you truly a king, Zavarani?"

"Truly— and often," he said superbly. "I have been an emperor, even, for a week. And then you feel destiny in me yourself? Why else did you forget all vows and break all laws at the sight of me? It was because your instinct knew me at once as the Destined One."

"Yes! Yes, I do feel it is so. If only Ngala, the high priestess, will see it, too."

"Ngala, the priestess, will see," he said grimly. "Come, sit with me on our throne again. Call one of your officers and bid her bring at once the small, dark, hand weapons that were taken from me."

He described his formidable pistols. "Then, when they are brought, summon those officers you can trust— only those, and when they are about you, call Ngala to you. If I know priestesses she will listen— for there is always the Thing!" Savaran was a king once more.

NGALA, the high priestess, listened. There was hate in her eyes but cunning, too. She glanced about her at the queen's chosen officers and knew there was no mercy for herself save that which her wits could win. She stared at the raking and formidable man who was already a power on the throne because of the infatuation of the pretty, brainless chit she herself had made, and knew that her peril lay in him.

Wise from long experience, Ngala, the priestess, veiled the rage in her soul and played for time. She had all the tricks in her hand there. While pretending to accept Savaran as the Destined One, she declared that nothing could be done officially until she had consulted deeply— and long— the passages in the Sacred scrolls relating to his coming.

Savaran smiled with sardonic blandness and suggested that an even surer test for doubters would be the Thing, itself. In other words that she Ngala, should be cast into the devilish tank into which her will had flung so many, leaving it to the Beast to spare her if the gods supported her point of view, or devour her if they did not.

Ngala knew the Thing too well to see any hope in that. Furious at the cunning of this adventurer who could be as ruthless as herself, wrung by her dread of the Beast, her memory marvellously revived. She recalled the prophecy of the Destined One so precisely that she no longer doubted that Savaran was indubitably he.

Indeed, when the trumpets rang out and the Amazons and the populace flocked in to gaze astounded at a king as well as a queen on the high royal bench, Ngala took the lead in proclaiming the good news. She did it so fervently that she actually robbed Savaran of his gesture. It was she, the high priestess of Myssr, who had actually brought about this wonder that was to be the saving of the people.

Khadra, the queen, rejoiced in this rejoicing, seeing Ngala, the priestess, as their ally. Savaran, more experienced in the goodwill of the wily, was not so happy. The old hag had adroitly won the queen as well as the people. She was in a strong position to make trouble, and trouble was her life's work.

She proved it at once. With the uttermost sweetness she proclaimed that Savaran, being the Deliverer, she, through her hieratic office, declared that he must be acclaimed and crowned as such with full traditional ceremonial. This ceremonial, together with his marriage to the queen, would take place on the sacred day of the full moon-in three days' time.

Savaran's smile glimmered dry and fierce at the delight of the populace, the council and the queen at such quick action. He knew better. The old harridan had outmanoeuvred him. She had made sure, even with the doting queen, that he, Savaran, should remain without any real power for those three critical days. For the council, and especially the queen, would think his demand for earlier power suspicious.

He was forced to smile acceptance, trusting that his domination over the girl would gain him all he needed— but having so cleverly established her legal position, Ngala meant to make the most of it. There was the little matter of the Destined One's followers— now prisoners. The law and tradition of Myssr was quite plain as to what their fate should normally be. As the queen herself had publicly proclaimed, one man in two should be slain, the rest used as slaves...

Savaran with a sharp word of warning got the queen on his side there. She intervened. She declared that the Destined One's personal followers naturally came under the same law as himself, and should be freed so that with him they might aid the restoration of Myssr.

Ngala, the cunning, had angled for just that. She was all sympathy. She agreed, or was willing to, if she could be certain of the favor of the gods. She skilfully stirred up doubts and fears that set the council in anxious debate, and when there seemed to be no way out, herself solved the difficulty by ruling that they, like Savaran, should be incorporated in the nation. That is, they should be initiated and accepted with him at his coronation ceremonies — in three days' time.

The queen sent a glance of triumph towards the eagle face. Her wonder man had won his point, they had defeated Ngala's attempt to rob them of a trusty bodyguard. Savaran smiled back with bitter gusto— he knew they hadn't. The high priestess had made certain that his men would remain prisoners and unarmed for three days.

In Miriam Paston's case there was nearly disaster. Ngala had no doubt in her mind what must happen to her— and she knew that the queen would support her. Law and tradition ordained that this strange woman must be cast to the Thing on the day of the full moon. The sacrifice would form the natural prelude to the coronation festivities. Ngala did not even have to argue this— she simply left it to the queen. At Savaran's objection, the cold and pitiless beauty took fire with an implacable, primitive jealousy. Savaran had arrived with this girl, so there might be something between them— she would not brook a rival.

"The woman goes to the Thing," she cried, with icy passion. "The very well-being of our land depends on it."

And as Savaran tried smoothness— "Is this woman anything to you that you seek to protect her? Is she before the queen in your eyes?"

Savaran was too old in the ways of women to make matters worse by insisting. But under the disarming smile he gave the queen, he knew he was facing a crisis such as even Savaran had not faced before. Ngala, the high priestess, had tied his hands through the queen, who was determined that Miriam Paston should die.

Ngala, the priestess, had done her work well. Even in his arms Khadra was suspicious of any approach to the subject, however diplomatically he suggested it.

Thrusting back from his embrace, her face as hard and as cruel as a Fury's, she demanded: "Why do you ask again and again for your men to be free at once and their arms given them? Is it the gold?"

"Gold! What is gold when I have more than that in my arms?" he laughed— for that at least was true, for she was conquest and power as well as the gold.

But the truth in his voice stung her more.

"It is the woman then?"

"Indeed it is the woman," he did not hesitate to say. "The woman of Women, Khadra, the queen. It is her sure safety I want."

"Her safety— in her own land, among her own people, who at this very moment rejoice and prepare to do her supreme honor? Where is danger there?"

"Not there, but in this palace, in the temple."

"Ngala, the priestess? Is Zavarani afraid of her?"

"Not afraid, but aware of her cunning."

"But she is on our side. It was she who made all things right for us."

"In three days' time. Much can happen in three days."

"What can?" she pouted, then her eyes narrowed harshly. "Though that woman might be rescued by your armed men in that time."

There is no arguing with even better women when jealousy is rampant, while the primitive savagery of this girl made her the deadliest of her species. Only to think of Miriam Paston made her determined on her death. She even gloated openly on her unique power of deposing her rival.

Savaran could do nothing but wait upon his chance. He did not make things happier by visiting the prisoners, but he had to do it. There was no one in this city of women he could trust— yet; and he had to warn at least Euan Amory and Terry what was going to happen.

The prison was a building near the palace. Like it, it was hewn out of the solid rock of the cliff. It was strong, well guarded, simple. A doorless arch led into a broad passage where stalwart Amazons, obviously hand-picked by Ngala, stood sentinel and also filled a big guardroom to the left. Their presence, their veiled hostility and the smirking contempt of their eyes told him how far the priestess had already worked for his undoing.

More satisfactory were the bad manners of the goddess-built flapper commanding the guard. She deliberately kept him waiting in the officers' quarters to the right of the passage.

He never enjoyed insults better. He was able to note that every rifle and pistol taken from his men were set out with spinsterish neatness on the wall shelves. Even the boxes of cartridges and the half-case of grenades that remained to them were prettily stacked beneath. Better still, the frozen virgin was so preoccupied with affronting him that it never occurred to her that eyes as keen as his would note the exact position of the niche near the door from which she took the big jail key.

With becoming meekness he followed her— chuckling in his soul— to where, at the end of the passage, there was one of the few doors in Myssr closed with something stronger than hanging draperies or skins.

It was a massive structure of thick wood and iron bands, yet simple again, for it was secured only by one stout wooden bar and the bolt of its massive antique lock. This, it is true gave rouble to the Amazon's wrists, but Savaran put his arm about her waist, drew her aside and with one twist of his sinewy fingers shot the monster bolt. The very hearty squeeze he gave the embattled lady as he passed on into the prison left her in a rich confusion of emotions, not all military.

His reception from the Pastons and his men were also mixed. The seamen of the Allah-Din hailed him as a deliverer, until they learnt that their day of freedom was postponed, when they denounced him with equal fervor as a treacherous, double-crossing jackal.

The Paston group plainly held the same sentiments.

Terry was blurtingly abusive; Euan Amory very cavalry and distant— Miriam turned her lovely back on him in frigid disgust. His methods with Khadra, the queen, had not gone unnoted.

"In other words," Euan Amory said distantly, when he had finished his say, "we depend for our lives solely on your being able to find a way to defeat this treachery."

"No, you count on it," the bizarre man said largely. "Savaran always finds a way."

"To feather his own nest, yes," Terry burst in. "You've seen your chance to grab everything through that pretty-faced Jezebel. You're playing your own dirty game— as El Sifr warned us."

"Terry," Miriam said coldly, "don't bandy words with the man."

"No, by Jove," Terry stormed. "He's not worth decent words, but, by heavens, if I could only meet you on equal terms, you crook; if I only had a weapon now I'd shoot you like the preying beast you are."

"Ah, a weapon," Savaran said with fierce savor. "Here's one."

From the sleeve of his robe he slid one of the two pistols the queen had restored and put it into the angry boy's hand. Taken utterly aback, Terry gaped at the weapon, glared at the scoffing face, looked wildly round for support.

Even Euan Amory and Miriam were struck dumb by that truly Savaran recklessness.

"Well, my Galahad, why don't you rid the world of its most illustrious crook? No, the old school tie forbids. Well, hide that gun quick." Savaran's tone changed from mockery to grimness. "It may be vital in a crisis— and you have your sister to think of. Good-bye, until Savaran makes good his promises."

"Savaran!" Miriam cried in a breaking voice.

But Savaran never spoilt an exit. He stalked through the door like a misunderstood emperor, leaving them to wonder how much they had wronged him.

He wondered rather a lot himself.

The days passed swiftly, and so cunning was the high priestess that even Savaran could see no way of making good his boasts. The feminine intriguing of Ngala was so clever that even though he was aware of it through scores of contemptuous insults, there was nothing he could act on. Above all, the crude yet consuming jealousy of the queen fettered him always.

THE day before the full moon he learnt that Miriam Paston had been taken from the common prison to the separate cell where the virgins doomed to be sacrificed to the Thing were always lodged. Terry, it seemed, had been wise enough not to resist with his pistol, perhaps Euan Amory had persuaded him.

Yet as the day went on and no opportunity for saving her presented itself, Savaran had a wild fancy of inarching boldly into the prison, holding up the guards with his remaining pistol and releasing and arming his men. But he hesitated. It would mean angering the queen, precipitating a crisis that Ngala, the priestess, was waiting to exploit— and the end of all his hopes of gold and empire.

Not for the first time Savaran found himself torn between ambition and a woman, but never so dangerously as this.

The day of the full moon came in a blaze of harsh sunlight. From before dawn Savaran saw that he was being more closely watched and guarded than ever. The most resolute Amazons of the spear-guard occupied the rooms and passages of the palace. They seemed to mass about him, watching him like cats. He was more than ever aware of the mockery in the sly smiles of the officers.

The glittering procession to the dark cliff temple formed up in the great square before the palace. He noted that few of the populace were there; they were massed farther along the straight black road near the temple itself, as though they knew they would enjoy a richer, rarer spectacle in the temple. Yet as he came out of the palace, glitteringly robed as a king beside the dazzling queen, there arose even from those few cries that were more of derision and hate than acclaim.

He saw a startled look leap to Khadra's eyes. He saw fear growing in her lovely face as she heard. Not that that helped— now. The chosen spearwomen of the royal guard were thick about them; there was no hope of escape.

"Zavarani," she whispered, huskily, as the procession began to move. "Did you hear? They shout death— for us!"

"It is too late to hear— or fear," he told her calmly. "Walk with a queen's pride and pray that Savaran may find his chance." He walked with the unconcern of an untamed lion himself. None could tell from his high, fierce smile, or the arrogance of his bearing, that even he was asking what Savaran could do.

Amazons of the spear and bow hedged them like a wall. Priestesses with flaming torches and swinging censers were everywhere, leading the procession, closing in round them in a fanatic mass. At their very backs walked Ngala, the high priestess, her face flaming with elated hate, the wild, high voice of her chanting made it plain that this was her moment of triumph.

With her strutted the new executioner, a man as powerful as the one Savaran had overthrown, but younger and more agile— and very much more alert. He carried the great half-moon axe on his shoulder, and the wicked glint in his eyes as they rested on Savaran proclaimed how eager he was to use it, and on whom.

The chanting, glittering procession moved steadily along the broad, black way of death, the populace closing In and crowding after. They came to the temple, dark and towering under the cliff. The trumpets blew and the great gates closing the lower half of the pillars clanged open.

They passed through the pillared porch into a nave so gigantic that it was almost an arena. Platforms were stepped up each side of it so that the priestesses and troops taking. part in the ceremonial should see everything. There were balustraded galleries all round into which the public hungrily poured. Nearly all the floor was given up to a great tank, like a giant's swimming pool, for here and there a flight of stone steps went down into it.

It went out of sight in a carven tunnel stretching deep into the cliff. The water had a dark, greasy, scummy look, and there came from it a whiff that made Savaran's hooked nostrils twitch and his hand reach for the pistol in the sleeve of his robe; yet no ripple disturbed the sleek, evil darkness of that water— yet.

Again the arrangements of windows let in tremendous beams of light! They played on the pool and concentrated particularly on two points. One was the royal dais at the very edge of the tank, and the royal bench on which they took their seats, the high priestess and executioner standing behind them. The other lit up a dazzling cage that was built out of the water nearby.

It was a strange cage.

Its bars and floor were of pure gold and in it stood Miriam Paston. Savaran's smile grew tight and dangerous as he saw her. Her clothes had been taken from her and she was clad in a tenuous version of the local costume, only she was bound, ankles and wrists, with cords.

Trumpets blared again. Silence fell upon the multitude. Priestesses carrying a golden tray on which was piled a mass of flesh moved to the' edge of the pool. The High Priestess led a wild, mad chant, and at the top of her scream took the meat and cast it far into the tank. At once there came a great swirling of the dark waters from the depths under the cliffs, it surged and burst apart in a white fury, as a vile head hurled itself into sight.

A great cry of awe arose:

"The Thing! He! The Beast!"

Savaran, on the royal bench, braced himself for swift action, and even his face stiffened in anxiety and disgust. The Thing was the largest crocodile he had ever seen— and the foulest. The mighty head and wicked jaws of the brute were as vast and unsightly as some prehistoric monster. Perhaps it was prehistoric, the father of all saurians, for it had a look of infinite and unseemly age, as though it had been trapped and imprisoned here for centuries. Its pallid slug-like flaccidity, its gross and bulging hugeness, and the slimy fungus about it made it the most obscene thing Savaran had ever looked upon.

The foul thing hurled itself at the meat, its eyes malignantly alert. Savaran's pistol, half out to shoot, was checked by the shaking touch of Khadra, the queen.

"Not yet," she muttered in a terrified voice. "It will come again."

Suspecting that the girl, though terrified at the sight of what was to be her own fate, was also willing in her jealousy to let Miriam Paston be sacrificed first, Savaran sat with every nerve keyed for instant action.

But Khadra was right. The great jaws snapped horridly on the meat, and, with a swirl, the monster sank from view.

An amazing ritual began and a strange one. From ledges hidden under the water and by some secret method Savaran was not then able to fathom (though he noted no use was made of the steps), priestesses drew into sight from under the water, one after one, the emblems of royalty.

There was a tall, barbaric crown of pure gold encrusted with precious stones; orbs of state, staffs and the rest; an outstanding collection worth a king's ransom. All these were taken from the water, were dried and polished by the priestesses, and then carried to the golden cage.

There, no doubt, in symbolic memory of the evil queen, they were placed by Ngala on the head and body of Miriam Paston— a bitter touch of irony. This was the gold she had come to find; it was to mock her death.

Savaran, following every movement, lynx-eyed, noted many things. One was that before Ngala trusted her person to the floor of the cage, which was obviously meant to drop downward, satellite priestesses made sure that both it and the lever that manipulated it from the outside were secure.

Again, as the queenly jewellery was set upon Miriam Paston's head and person, each piece was securely attached by a strong chain to the cage. Thus, when the moment came for the bottom of the cage to be released so that her body should be projected into the water, the regalia of royalty would be left behind, safe from the devouring Beast.

That Beast, trained through centimes of sacrifices, made no attempt to snap at the priestesses as they lifted out the jewels, and indeed gave no sign of life until Miriam was completely decked out as a queen. It was only as the door of the cage slammed at the end of this ceremonial that there came an ugly swirl of the dark waters, and the vile snout slid up and into sight.

That noise, or some note in the now frenzied chanting signalled to the beast's age-old instinct that his moment was at hand. The vile thing swam lazily to within a few feet of the cage, its eyes fixed in a glassy, waiting stare on the white figure within the bars.

The high priestess stepped back towards the lever that jerked down the bottom of the. cage, flinging a look full of hate and exultance towards the royal dais.

The muscular executioner left his place on that dais and moved down towards her side. It was he who manipulated the lever. Savaran knew that his moment had come.

Chapter 9

EVERY eye in the temple was fixed upon the executioner as, in a breathless silence, he approached the cage of gold in which Miriam Paston stood decked like a queen and bound helpless.

Savaran slipped his pistol from the wide sleeve of his robe, ready to fire the moment the man stretched his hand towards the lever that was to precipitate Miriam into the pool.

Before the man could reach the cage, before Savaran needed to shoot, something entirely unexpected and startling happened. There came a slash of rifle fire from the distant city.

The noise, so utterly unfamiliar to the ears of these people, and yet so ominous, threw the temple into an uproar. The guards instinctively turned towards the entrance. The women in the high galleries screamed, and some near the windows ran to see what was happening.

In a moment there was screaming that there was fighting, that the city had been attacked. Savaran laughed grimly. He was sure that Euan Amory and Terry Paston had broken out of prison, probably with the aid of the pistol he had given the boy. From the sound of it, too, they had recovered their weapons and, rearming the seamen of the Allah-Din were coming to the rescue; Khadra, the queen, after her first gasp of fear, saw the laughing zest in the eagle face and read hope in it.

But so did Ngala the high priestess.

She turned In fury towards Savaran, screaming that this was his treachery and demanding his instant death. The Amazons of the guard responded at once; they turned on the lean man, spears athrust. Khadra sprang to shield him with her own splendid young body, at the same time ordering them as their queen and commander to drop their spear-points.

Tradition and discipline checked them, and, for a moment, confusion reigned. The executioner did not hesitate. Primed by Ngala, the priestess, and eager to show that he, unlike his predecessor, was not so easily mastered by this spider of a man, he turned from the lever in a flash and sprang straight at Savaran. He was taking no chances. He made no attempt to use the cumbersome axe, but snatching the great knives from his girdle, came on, wary and cat-like, one in each hand.

At the height of his leap towards the top of the dais Savaran's bullet caught him in the middle of the forehead and he crashed, a twisted lump, on to the dais steps.

The explosion of the pistol within those walls had the clamor of a cannon. The women were terrorised at the appalling sound of it, and at the swiftness of the death it caused. Screams arose on all sides. Even the Amazons broke and ran as voices cried out that Savaran was veritably a god, since he slew with thunderbolts.

Ngala was too full of hate and madness at the threat of failure to her. Mouthing curses she ran up the steps of the dais, drawing a wicked-looking sword from her robes.

Savaran was intimidated by her crazy fury— she meant death, she would stop at nothing, yet even Savaran's realism in war had not made it any too easy for him to shoot women. Then as the infuriated sibyl was almost within effective distance, a swift, strong body swept by Savaran, powerful young arms caught and lifted the scraggy and venomous woman head high.

Poised like a veritable goddess of lovely young strength, Khadra, the queen, flung the priestess from the dais. A cry went up from all the watchers. It turned to a wailing shudder of superstitious horror as Ngala, instead of falling prone and safely on the stones that edged the tank, twisted in the air like a cat in her excess of hate, and tried to land on her feet.

Marvellously, she did get her feet to the stones, but only to stagger under the impulse of her fall. She stumbled sideways to the brink of the tank, threw out a hand to clutch at the bars of the gold cage, missed them and fell with a splash into the water.

And as the spray leapt there was a mighty swirl and upheaval of water as the waiting Thing hurled forward to take its victim. Even Khadra stood transfixed with superstitious dread as the great jaws seemed to snap off the high priestess' scream, and the caving waters rushed together to hide the Beast's sinking body. But she had the quick wits of Savaran beside her. He commanded swiftly:

"Cry out: The god has spoken... I, Khadra, the queen, so signally favored, order you, as you fear the wrath of the god, to obey me and stand silent, awaiting my will."

The effect was magical. The silence of awe swept over the gathering. The Amazon guards became rigid, the people were struck still, some of the priestesses, even, fell on to their faces adoring the chosen of the god.

"Zavarani," she breathed. "See, they obey as they have never obeyed a queen before. I have mastered them."

"We— my star flower," the gipsy Lucifer laughed softly. "Or, rather, Savaran— only Savaran, moulder of kings and fear of nations, could have mastered a god."

Khadra stared at him breathless, awed by this miracle man who could even bend gods to his purpose. Savaran merely took the admiration as due— after all, what was a mere god or two to a genius such as his? He stood by the royal bench on the dais, tall, raking, magnificent, breathing in the awe with glittering exultance. Another clash of gunfire came, but much nearer the temple now.

"What next, my king?" Khadra, the queen, cried. "Is it not time to send a message to your people to stop their fighting?"

Savaran nodded, turned towards the porch— and a wounded and panting Amazon burst in upon them with a startling story.

It was not Euan Amory and the imprisoned seamen who were shooting. It was a fresh invasion of strangers.

Last night, it seemed, the guard post on the cliff top had heard the noise of exploring lorries in the same way that they had heard the sound of the approach of Savaran's train. They had sent the alarm to the palace, but it had been intercepted by Ngala, the high priestess. She had sent back word that nothing was to be done until the great ceremonial of today was accomplished, not until after then could a strong force of Amazons be spared. They would be sent with orders to capture these intruders by night, as the others had been captured.

The guard had kept their watch without fear. They were sure that, as with the first, these newcomers would never discover the valley of Myssr, or, even if they did, would never find the secret of the way down to its floor. It was only at dawn that, too late, they realised that the secret entrance was no longer secret.

The new strangers having, it seemed, discovered the abandoned camp of Savaran's party, had followed the trail of footprints, which nobody had bothered to obliterate, and so found the concealed gateway to which they led.

Worse, they had gathered from the condition of Savaran's camp that that party must have been overwhelmed not only by numbers but with cunning. They had therefore themselves shown cunning, and had approached the secret entrance with so much stealth that before the guard realised what had happened, their post had been rushed and the stairs cut down through the cliff were at the mercy of the enemy. This Amazon alone of the Amazon guard had been able to escape down the steps, with orders to rouse Myssr to its peril.

What was her horror when on reaching the city she found it deserted, with all the people at the cliff temple, and all the troops there, too. The only Amazons left were the handful guarding the prison. These she had warned, and they had rushed to the defence works at the bottom of the staircase to beat back the intruders. These spear women had even attacked boldly as the enemy appeared, seeing that the invaders had neither spears nor bows. Yet even as they charged they had been smitten with fright, for the enemy flung lightning and thunder at them from strange instruments they carried in their hands, and many of the Amazons were thus struck dead before they could strike a blow. The whole body had then broken and fled in a panic towards the cliff temple.

On the black road they had met a company of Amazons set to guard that avenue, and with the aid of these they had re-formed and were now doing their best to hold back the attackers — but despair was in them as they fought; for the lightning these people flung could slay long before they could get to close quarters, long before they could get within arrow-range. Cries of horror and fear arose as the girl poured out her news.

Savaran listened with other emotions. He knew exactly what had happened. The Kadi Jilbis el Sifr with a party of hand-picked murderers had arrived at Myssr. As he had feared, the Kadi's party must have picked up their wheel-tracks almost as soon as they reached the Great Sand. After that they had only to follow the trail at top speed, ignoring the map. Thus without delays they had reached the valley more easily and quickly than Savaran— so they had loosed their ugly cut-throats on Myssr.

It was a black position— but, also it was fighting, and no man living knew how to make the best of fighting so well as Savaran. His great voice was compelling silence at once, was demanding of the messenger:

"And the captives, my companions — what of them?"

"They are still fast in prison." the Amazon told him.

"And alone. Every Amazon of the guard came out to fight these invaders."

"Did the invaders not find them, then?"

"Nay, lord. The whole body came after us as we ran. Some tried to enter the houses of the people to steal, but the great fat lord who is their general called out curses to them, even flung lightning from his hand at those who did not obey. So they left the houses and all followed to kill us first."

Savaran's teeth flashed in an exultant laugh. He-read the meaning of the Kadi el Sifr's behavior. The ruffian had not too strong a force, and wisely meant to shatter if not exterminate all opposition before risking any scattering among his gang of thieves.

The lean face lit as his fighting brain saw how even with a less effective number he could defeat these journeymen murderers.

"Are there places where you and your people can hide themselves in safety?" he demanded of Khadra, the queen.

"There are caverns in the cliff behind this temple," she said. "But it is the nature of the people of Myssr to fight rather than hide."

"You'll have all the fighting you want," the spare adventurer laughed. "But in the right style— the scientific style. Bid all your people hasten now to the caverns and hide. And your pretty spearwomen. Yes, even the picked guard of the lance— they look magnificent, but they are not war; not nowadays. The damsels of the bows— yes, they may be of use, properly handled. Fortunately, I am the one man who can do it."

Under his swift orders, a company of archers were sent to meet El Sifr's gangsters. They were not to stand up and fight, but to spread themselves through the fields, taking cover behind the trees and bushes. They were to wait concealed until El Sifr's men came within effective range, and only then were they to gall and check them with wasp flights of arrows.

So they were to fight a rearguard action, forcing the enemy to slow down his rush on the temple. They were not, themselves, to take refuge in the temple until they received Savaran's signal.

In the temple itself, Savaran stationed more archers in the galleries high up in the porch, and in the now deserted public galleries. These, too, had orders not to show a sign of themselves until Savaran gave the command.

This was only part of his planning, the test was also cut and dried, yet he pretended to frown, knowing that even in this crisis he was dealing with a jealous queen.

"Now," he frowned, "to get my companions out of their prison, restore their arms and bring them up to take these jackals in the rear and flank. Tell me, light of my eyes, how best to make my way unseen back to the city."

"Zavarani!" Khadra gasped. "You cannot go. You must not leave me."

"It must be done," he sighed. "I'd rather light here, at your side, O queen of queens, but I must release my men if we are to live—"

"I will send trusty messengers."

"No good," he shook' his head sadly. "I must instruct them exactly what they must do."

"We are lost against these men of thunder and lightning if you leave us," she wailed. "And I— I cannot bear thee from my side. See, if you will Instruct carefully; good messengers, it will be enough. The Way is not so difficult, they will be able to get by these men without being seen or hurt."

"Who of your people speaks their language?" he asked. "How can my instructions be conveyed to them without that? Nay, it is I alone who must go. If not all here, and you before all, will be slain. That I cannot face, O lotus flower. Go, I must."

She clung to him passionately, torn between fears.

"There must be some other way," she cried, "for I cannot let you go, my strength and life."

For the moment the situation seemed desperate, then Savaran loosed the suggestion he had been so carefully working up to. "Ah, I have it we're forgetting the white girl. She can carry my commands in my own language."

Khadra, the queen, stiffened, seeing in this Savaran's trick for saving Miriam Paston from the Thing. Her face grew tigerish:

"No!" she cried. "She is ordained for the sacrifice."

"Then we all die," he shrugged. "And soon— Listen, they are very close." The shooting, in fact, seemed louder than ever, for EI Sifr's band had just come under the attack of the archers and had halted to blaze away at them.

It was this concentration. of shooting that struck a deeper fear into the queen and served Savaran's ends.

"Quick, then," she wailed. "Since it is our only chance." Savaran with an inner grin, sprang down the steps to the diabolical cage of gold and released Miriam Paston.

Miriam was all that Savaran expected from her type. Shaken though she was by her experience, she was steadfast. She listened, quiet-eyed to his instructions, repeated them to make sure she had them right and at once with two of the queen's most expert officers left go make her way across the fields.

Just before she went Khadra said fiercely:

"How do you know that She and the others won't make the most of this chance of escaping, leaving us in the lurch?"

Savaran with a gleam In his eye repeated these words to Miriam.

"You use even that to serve your own ends, Savaran," the girl smiled bleakly. "You tell me only to make sure of my not letting you down."

"That and everything' else," he smiled. "Just as I made use of this situation to save you from that damnable beast. To minds like mine every opportunity is an occasion for serving an end."

"I wouldn't have overlooked the fact that I owe my life to you," she said. "You're a queer creature, Savaran, but I'm beginning to understand— and trust you."

Chapter 10

THE temple was now empty of all but a detachment of archers. Leaving a handful to guard the great gates, Savaran climbed by the galleries to the space over the high porch. Here he placed bows-women in positions from which they could shoot at El Sifr's men without being exposed to their fire. From this height, too, he had a clear view of the whole valley as far as the city. He was able to see how, following his instructions, the archers were fighting a clever retreating battle, edging steadily but not too rapidly back towards the temple.

Using cover infinitely better than the riff-raff under the Kadi's command, they had already learnt to wait until they had drawn the rifle fire before springing to their feet and galling the crooks with their stinging flights of arrows before vanishing to cover again.

Fine stuff, Savaran exulted. The nucleus— and the mothers of a race of conquerors. Already a trail of bodies, looking like bundles of shoddy clothes, showed that the crooks had suffered consistently in their advance. Yet they had the superior weapons; the victory was bound to be theirs on mere terms of fighting— and they knew it.

There were about thirty or forty of them, Savaran estimated; criminal scum, to a man. They fought as their sort always will, without discipline or real plan, each man blazing away independently and furiously. Give them one sharp, military, shock and they, would go to pieces as a fighting force. The Kadi moved like a panting mountain of lard, armed in every pore, as it were, and shouting his men on from a safe distance to the rear.

Jilbis el Sifr hadn't a doubt that all he had between him and his loot was a handful of savages, who were as good as assassinated already. If he wasted a thought on Savaran and his party, it was probably to congratulate himself that they had been surprised and all killed, as he, the clever fellow, had not. He was so certain of triumph that he did not waste a thought about his rear. But from his high perch Savaran saw, and chuckled, as a line of men came running from the great square of Myssr, spread themselves in extended order.

He knew that Euan Amory had listened carefully, to the instructions he had sent by Miriam Paston, and was now busy doing his stuff. He watched them move steadily closer, bobbing into sight by sections, running and dropping to cover. It was a bit of co-ordination Savaran felt proud of, for Euan Amory's men came within striking distance at just the right moment for him to call in his archers.

He spoke to Khadra and she blew her whistle. The women ran for the gates like does.

Thanks to Savaran's keen instinct, the moment was one in which the crooks were unsighted, so that though a few shots came after them, none was hit. Those of the crooks who did see the running women yelled and started to run after them, heading a wild chase, only depravity had no chance against those clean-run girls.

The great gates were slammed in the faces of the men by the archers on duty before the riff-raff could reach them. That mattered not a bit to the Kadi's mind. He bade his hell-hounds take cover and fall flat, which they did very casually, since no arrows came from the temple. But Savaran had already warned his archers to mark every man, and every one was covered from above as a ruffian ran forward, wedged a hand-grenade under the leaf of one of the gates, drew out the firing pin and flung himself behind a pillar.

Savaran counted four and signalled. The archers let fly at their prostrate targets and themselves dropped flat as Savaran had commanded. A split second later the grenade blew, the gate off its hinges with a roar that sent the archers screaming and scampering in a panic. But they had done their work.

Though the Kadi el Sifr and those immediately about him charged magnificently through the smoke, the Kadi yelling to his brave scum to follow and conquer, seventeen of his desperadoes were beyond the effort, being either dead or pinned through a limb by arrows, while those who came up late paused at the sight of the dead, fearful of an ambush within.

Unrealising, Jilbis el Sifr ran straight through to the tank chamber, and there the sight of the gold cage and the amazing crown jewels still hanging in it completed his undoing.

He had not wits enough to realise how terribly alone he was when he waddled to the cage and gloatingly fingered its bars and jewels. Only when his pudgy hand went out to pluck the great crown from its swinging chain did he begin to understand, and that was because of a mocking laugh that floated, down to him from the darkness above.

He sprang round yelping, "Savaran!" his eyes wildly probing the blackness of the roof.

Leaning casual elbows on the balcony above the door, the lean and mocking Lucifer jeered down at him.

"Well, my double-crossing maggot, you have got your cheat's gold. Are you pleased with it?"

"Savaran," the fat creature screeched, mouthing up helplessly, for though he had a pistol in his hand he dare not raise it, knowing the swift death that would follow such a challenge. "Savaran— I'll— I'll share half—"

"Why not make it ten per cent., with the usual moneylender's side  trimmings?" the lean man mocked.

"I mean it, Savaran," the fat Kadi quavered. "Half— two-thirds. There is enough for both—"

"Double would not be half enough, O slime of treachery," the mocking voice became steel hard. "Nor all you've ever taken by that robbery you call business. No, nor all the wealth of Africa, and the Bank of England tossed in as a makeweight. Nothing you can pay pays Savaran for the trickery you have done to him. Savaran has promised to repay, and Savaran always keeps a promise. Dance, jelly of iniquity. Dance! Hop high. Hop long!"

As Savaran spoke his pistol spoke, starring the pavement an inch from El Sifr's toes. The Kadi leapt high in the air, and even as he touched the ground leapt again and again as the pistol spat. And as he leapt at the fourth shot and then came down there was , no longer stone under him, only water.

He had danced his fat bulk into the tank.

He sank with a monstrous splash, came up spluttering, but with a light of hope in his streaming face. The water was luck after all— it might be his way of escape. He saw the stone steps in the tank; if he hid his body under them it would be covered from Savaran's deadly shooting.

He heaved himself round, began to splash towards the steps, and even as he turned the water heaved and swirled near him, and rising from it he saw the snout of the Beast. The scream he let go was cut short in a swirling bubble of water as the Thing sank, taking him to his deserts.

His men came running back from the hunt after the archers at the sound of Savaran's shooting. Some were bewildered at the disappearance. of their leader, others shot wildly upward into the darkness, but the limby man was already lost in the shadows, only his voice came down to them:

"Drop your arms, those who wish to remain, a little longer, outside hell— it is Savaran who commands."

Some arms clattered on to the stone, but some of the ruffians cursed and shot towards the sound— and Savaran's pistol spat and spat and those who had fired died. Those who had not surrendered turned in a body and rushed from the temple to join those, of their fellows who had remained outside.

As they fled there came the rip of shooting, and Savaran leapt to the gallery, over the porch, reloading his pistol as he went. Across the fields Euan Amory's men were, coming up bravely. With Euan himself and Terry taking  their wings they were already giving the little mob of ruffians who had  remained behind more than they, wanted, and these were now falling back in haste to the cover of the temple.

As they reached its steps the men who had fled from Savaran came; pouring out. For a moment both bodies of men milled in confusion, the fire of Euan Amory's men taking toll meanwhile. Then the captain of the Allah-Din, who was in command, shouted in desperation that they must form themselves into a compact body and shoot their way back to the city. He even lifted his own rifle to show the way, as Terry, with his usual impetuosity, charged headlong to finish the fight.

Savaran, with a brilliant snapshot, sent the rifle leaping from the man's hands. Howling under the shock to his wrists, the captain jumped round, saw Savaran, and the howl turned to a yelp of fear.

"Savaran!" he screamed. "It is death."

"Yes, Savaran," the lean man jibed; "Impress the good news on your brother jail-birds. For all except determined suicides the war is over."

Euan Amory and his men closed in. At a signal the Amazons of the spear and bow poured from the temple and surrounded the prisoners. Savaran, lounging down from the porch, met Euan Amory with a characteristic flourish:

"General Blucher, I believe— and quite a nice little Waterloo, too."

"Thanks to you," Euan Amory cried in frank admiration. "Your handling of the job was masterly."

A NEW era came to the lost city of Myssr.

Savaran's ability― as well as his strange power― completed his mastery over Khadra, the queen. And he, naturally, made the most of it. Next day he proclaimed what he called the Ceremonial of Freedom. With the whole of the Amazons and the populace he went in solemn procession to the temple again; and, standing tall and raking in his rich cloak, he declared from the royal dais that he was the deliverer, who had come not merely to make Myssr as great a city as it had been before, but to free its people from the dread thrall of the Thing.

The trumpets sounded. The cowed and obedient priestesses approached the edge of the tank with their golden tray and flung into the water the meat offering that always warned the Beast that a human victim was being prepared for it. As the filthy head rose amid the swirling waters to gulp the morsel, Miriam Paston thought Savaran would shoot It. But that was not Savaran's way. With a lordly gesture he loosed his cloak so that it dropped to his feet, showing him clad only in a short tunic.

With carefully measured stride he walked to the edge of the tank and down the steps into the water itself. As his feet sank into the water there came a gasp of terror from the assembled crowd. It was cut off by a shocked silence as, when Savaran was waist deep, the great crocodile, realising that its victim was coming to him by a new method, rose to sight. With a flick of his great tail and a vast surge of water it hurled straight at the spidery man. As it hurled, Savaran's hand jerked into his tunic and his pistol came out and spoke twice.

In a terrific smother of foam and spray the monster heaved itself high out of the water, crashed down within a foot of Savaran, turned over and lay with its foul white belly uppermost on the stone steps which led beneath the water.

Then, moving with the same leisured dignity, he paced back to the dais, back to the queen's side, and, with an imperial gesture, had an officer of state reinvest him with his robe. Lifting a lean arm on high he cried in a great voice:

"People of Myssr! I, Savaran, the Deliverer, have completed your freedom!"

Miriam Paston, standing close to the dais, cried, panting: "Why did you take so terrible a risk?"

"That is why," Savaran cried back, his exultant smile indicating the almost crazy tumult of cheering. "Theatrical, but effective— as I always am."

The gold they found after dredging the tank was all they expected and more— it was an amazing hoard, the accumulation of centuries of wealth. Also, with his new power over the queen and her people, Savaran was able to do as he willed with it.

Khadra was so eager to get Miriam Paston away from the city, that she readily agreed to Savaran's plan for sending her and her party back to civilisation at once with some of the gold on the plea of buying the necessary equipment for future empires. She even agreed to the Pastons having a share of the gold as a reward for aiding Savaran, the deliverer, to reach Myssr.

"YOU SHOULD MAKE a quick journey," he said on the morning when all were ready to start. "You just follow the lorry tracks until you come to the end of the Great Sand, there you have only to turn west along the Yirate-Bamikano road to make Bamikano in easy stages."

"El Sifr said there was much powder on the road," Euan said.

"El Sifr, on whom be red-hot clinkers, was a liar. Your worst danger is your own escort— seeing how much gold you carry. But I've picked the meekest of the bunch, and if you keep your eyes well skinned and remind them at their morning and evening prayers that Savaran will follow them to the very hob of Hades to deal with them if they try any dirty work, you'll have no trouble."

"I'll see to it," Euan Amory said. "I've had my training under Savaran."

"What about the rest of the ruffians you've kept?" Terry asked.  "They're dangerous jackals, most of 'em."

"What is a jackal when the lion roars?" the Lucifer face mocked. "Leave them to me, they'll make excellent sergeant-majors— and fathers of my kingdom to be."

"Savaran!" Miriam Paston broke in softly. "You've been so generous. You've given us so immense a share of the gold―"

"Don't remind me, for my extravagance may overwhelm even me," he grinned. "But I always have been a prey to generous gestures— especially with other people's property."

"It's a king's ransom," she breathed.

"Then my share's an emperor's dowry," he chuckled.

"You're bent on this?" she asked, shakily. "On staying and— and trying to realise your fantastic dreams?"

"I'm a fantastic fellow," he smiled. "And, my dear, I'd really look most odd as a country squire."

"But," she asked wistfully, looking at Khadra. "Do you love this girl?"

"Her— and you— and all women," he said genially. "Savaran's heart was always as large as his ambition."

The End

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10