When I was somewhat recovered, I had vast difficulty in getting him and his friends to come with me to search for Islam, but at last the sight of my money persuaded them. Following my tracks (by great good fortune the wind had dropped), we found Islam still breathing, but unconscious. Whether he was already weakly I cannot say, or whether the prolonged strain had been too much for him I know not, but he never recovered consciousness, and died that night. I could not induce them to go any farther, nor, indeed, was there any possibility of finding Arslan alive. I made my way back westward, and found that I had reached the road seventy miles from where we had set out, which accounted for the extra length of our journey. I picked up my other men and the rest of my gear. Since Islam and Arslan were dead, I said naught to any man of our adventures beyond our failure to discover any ruined city, and our terrible journey back. Some day I hope to go back and find out the secret of those unknown hills, but for the moment I feel drawn once more to look upon my kith and kin, and I shall make my way back to India and refit. Wrexham closed the ragged diary and looked up. “Well,” he said in his deliberate way, “and that is what I call the ‘once,’ which is nothing. When I’ve had a drink, I’ll tell you about ‘twice,’ which, according to the expert, is merely coincidence. Manœuvre the whiskey, will you, Alec?” Forsyth got up and opened the bottle and some sodas. “Your old great-great-uncle either ought to have been a journalist, or else he found something d----d quaint. Have you got the arrow at home?” “No. I suppose it was stolen from his kit. He evidently had it with him all right, unless, as my great-grandfather seemed to think, he invented the whole yarn under the influence of fever.” I filled my glass. “It’s the queerest tale I’ve heard for years. Of course, all deserts are full of fables, and I remember reading of the one your great-great-uncle mentions of the king and his army who were buried in the sand.” Wrexham sipped his drink. “Well, now, I’ll get on with the second part, which is where I come in.” CHAPTER III WREXHAM’S STORY We relit our pipes and settled back in our chairs, and Wrexham began: “As I told you, when I got near Hami last year, I pulled out the old diary and read it again, especially the part I’ve just read to you two fellows. “I won’t go into details of how I found the tiny village, which, from certain entries in the diary, I am sure must have been my great-great-uncle’s starting-point. I found the place, and there I decided to stop a bit. I can’t tell you why I should want to stop in a tiny little hole like that with nothing to see, not even any old ruins in the neighbourhood; but somehow my old relative’s story had taken hold of me, and I wanted to reconstruct it on the spot.