For a moment the Vicomte hesitated, but he knew that not even he was
wanted inside that empty tent, and a half-bitter, half-sad feeling that
the perfect friendship and confidence that had existed between them for
twenty years would never again be the same came to them, the regretful
sense of inevitable change, the consciousness of personal relegation.
Then fear for Diana drove out every other consideration, and he went to
his own quarters with a heavy heart.
When he came back in a few minutes with Henri following him the camp
had undergone a transformation. With the promptness of perfect
discipline the hundred men who had been chosen to go on the expedition
were already waiting, each man standing by his horse, and the Sheik,
quiet and impassive as usual, was superintending the distribution of
extra ammunition. A groom was walking The Hawk slowly up and down, and
Yusef, whose gloomy eyes had been fixed reproachfully on his chief,
chafing against the order to remain behind to take command of the
reinforcements should they be needed, went to him and took the horse's
bridle from him and brought him to the Sheik. Even as he held the
stirrup Saint Hubert could see that he was expostulating with an
unusual insistence, begging for permission to accompany them. But the
Sheik shook his head, and the young man stood sullenly aside to avoid
The Hawk's hoofs as he reared impatiently.
Ahmed Ben Hassan motioned Saint Hubert to his side and in silence the
cavalcade started at the usual swift gallop. The silence impressed
Raoul, who was accustomed to the Arab's usual clamour. It affected his
sensitive temperaments, filling him with a sinister foreboding. The
silent band of stern-faced horsemen riding in close and orderly
formation behind them suggested something more than a mere relief
party. The tradition of reckless courage and organised fighting
efficiency that had made the tribe known and feared for generations had
been always maintained, and under the leadership of the last two
holders of the hereditary name to so high a degree that the respect in
which it was held was such that no other tribe had ventured to dispute
its supremacy, and for many years its serious fighting capacities had
not been tested.
Even Ibraheim Omair had inherited a feud that was largely traditional.
Only once during the lifetime of the last Ahmed Ben Hassan had he dared
to come into open conflict, and the memory of it had lasted until now.
Skirmishes there had been and would always be inevitably sufficient to
keep the tribesmen in a state of perpetual expectancy, and for this
Ahmed Ben Hassan preserved the rigid discipline that prevailed in his
tribe, insisting on the high standard that had kept them famous. The
life-work that his predecessor had taken over from his father the
present Ahmed Ben Hassan had carried on and developed with autocratic
perseverance. The inborn love of fighting had been carefully fostered
in the tribe, the weapons with which they were armed were of the newest
pattern. Raoul knew with perfect certainty that to the picked men
following them this hasty expedition meant only one thing--war, the war
that they had looked forward to all their lives, precipitated now by an
accident that gave to a handful of them the chance that hundreds of
their fellow-tribesmen were longing for, a chance that sent them
joyfully behind their chief, careless whether the reinforcements that
had been sent for arrived in time or not. The smallness of their
numbers was a source of pleasure rather than otherwise; if they won
through to them would be the glory of victory; if they were annihilated
with them would rest the honour of dying with the leader whom they
worshipped, for not one of them doubted that Ahmed Ben Hassan would not
survive his bodyguard, the flower of his tribe, the carefully chosen
men from whose ranks his personal escort was always drawn. With them he
would crush his hereditary enemy or with them he would die.