"I do not understand why it happened," the Englishman observed plaintively. "We had given these men no cause to attack us. I believe they were not the same fellows who rushed us the night before. For one thing, these had no arms. There were women among them. They gave me the impression of dogs, hunting in a pack. They must have been waiting for us in cover." "What happened to the caravan?" "Rushed. The Sungan people got to it before Mary and I could gain the camp. Our boys were surprised. Only a few shots were fired. The camels took fright and ran through the tents. I saw Ram Singh and another try to get out to me with spare rifles. The Sikh, who had the rank of Rifleman, shot very accurately. But the Sunganis came between us, and I saw him go down fighting under a pack of men. Mary and I turned aside and tried to escape into the sand dunes." Sir Lionel raised himself unsteadily on an elbow. "Do not think, Captain Gray, that I abandoned Mary of my own will. It was dark by then. We could hear the men hunting us through the dunes. A party of them descended on me from a slope. My revolver was emptied by then. I knocked one or two of them down and called out for Mary. She did not answer. They had taken her away. If they had killed her, I would have come on her body. But she was gone." "Did you hear her call to you?" Gray asked from between set lips. "No. She is a plucky girl. In my search for her, I passed out of sight of the men who were tracking me. I could not remain there, for they were tracing out my footprints. They have an uncanny knack at that, Captain Gray. As I said, they reminded me of dogs." He looked at his companion, despair mirrored in his tired eyes. "I had two alternatives after that--to stay near Sungan, unarmed, or to return, in the hope of meeting you. I knew you would be likely to follow our tracks as far as you could. Possibly you would sight this brush. I made my way back here. A little while ago I sighted the dust of your caravan." Gray was silent, breaking little twigs from the bush under which they sat and throwing them from him as he thought. Sir Lionel's story was worse than he had expected. Mary Hastings was in the Sungan ruins. She might even now be dead. He put the thought from him by an effort of will. The full force of his feeling for the girl flooded in on him. From the night when her servants had seized him in the _aul_ she had been in his thoughts. It was this feeling--the binding love that sometimes falls to the lot of a man of solitary habits, whose character does not permit him to show it--that had led him to warn her against going into the Gobi. And it was this that had urged him after her with all possible haste. Now the Hastings' caravan had been wiped out and Mary was in the hands of the men of Sungan. "We'll start at once," he said quietly. "That is, if you feel up to it." The Englishman roused with an effort and tried to smile.