"Where is the phantom bird? Where is the great white sheik?" and they would have dashed out into the desert on their fiery steeds, for they were already mounted, but the German restrained them, saying:-- "There is no need to hunt the quarry. The great white sheik will bring down the airship on this very spot. Be ready, when I give the signal, to surround it." Another anxious moment passed, and the airship, travelling rapidly at some three thousand feet above the ground, would have passed them by some few miles to the south, but at that instant, the Indian judge caught sight of the picturesque oasis with its cluster of palms far down below, and said to his soldier companion:-- "Look, Colonel Wilson! Just look at that beauty spot after two hundred miles of yellow desert." "Ah, wonderful!" exclaimed the delighted soldier. "It is a little garden planted by Nature in the solitary wastes." "How picturesque! I should like to land there," returned the other. "Let us ask the captain at least to change his course slightly, so that we may pass over it and photograph it as a souvenir of our pleasant journey," said the officer. At that moment the captain, passing down the gangway, overheard the remark, and being eager to oblige his distinguished passengers, he telephoned his orders to the navigating officer, who slightly altered the ship’s course, so as to pass almost directly over the oasis. It was while they were engaged in delightful contemplation of this emerald isle embedded in the gold of the desert, that another object attracted the attention of the judge. Chancing to glance upwards, he caught sight of a silvery speck six thousand feet above them, and a little way on their beam. "See, a tiny cloudlet in the sky; the first I have ever seen in crossing these deserts." "A cloud, where?" asked his companion. "There, right up in the blue vault of heaven," said the judge, pointing out the speck which now seemed to have grown larger. "Why, it is a bird; some great vulture of the desert. It seems to be diving right down upon us! These vultures, I hear, have often attacked the airships in the desert. It evidently takes us for some new kind of prey." "A bird!" cried the captain, who had now joined the speakers. "Let me see it?" "There it is!" cried the two men simultaneously, pointing out the grey, swift phantom. The captain saw the bird-like object, and one glance sufficed. "It is an aeroplane," he said, and there was just a touch of uneasiness in his voice. "An aeroplane?" echoed the others, and an instant later, viewing it through his glasses, the colonel added:-- "Why, so it is; but I say, Captain, what a peculiar type of aeroplane! It is one of the patrols, I expect, come to meet us." "Your glasses, if you please, for one moment," asked the captain, and he almost snatched them from the hands of the officer. The next instant a violent expletive burst from the captain’s lips.