--Aka, Mahmoud, Raschid, Selim, they with the bodies of Seti and the
faces of Rameses, in their blue yeleks and unsandalled feet--would go
into the desert as their forefathers did for the Shepherd Kings. But
there would be no spoil for them--no slaves with swelling breasts and
lips of honey; no straight-limbed servants of their pleasure to wait on
them with caressing fingers; no rich spoils carried back from the fields
of war to the mud hut, the earth oven, and the thatched roof; no rings of
soft gold and necklaces of amber snatched from the fingers and bosoms of
the captive and the dead. Those days were no more. No vision of loot or
luxury allured these. They saw only the yellow sand, the ever-receding
oasis, the brackish, undrinkable water, the withered and fruitless date-
tree, handfuls of dourha for their food by day, and the keen, sharp night
to chill their half-dead bodies in a half-waking sleep. And then the
savage struggle for life--with all the gain to the pashas and the beys,
and those who ruled over them; while their own wounds grew foul, and, in
the torturing noon-day heat of the white waste, Death reached out and
dragged them from the drooping lines to die. Fighting because they must
fight--not patriot love, nor understanding, nor sacrifice in their
hearts. War! War! War! War!

David had been too late to stop it. It had grown to a head with
revolution and conspiracy. For months before he came conscripts had been
gathered in the Nile country from Rosetta to Assouan, and here and there,
far south, tribes had revolted. He had come to power too late to devise
another course. One day, when this war was over, he would go alone, save
for a faithful few, to deal with these tribes and peoples upon another
plane than war; but here and now the only course was that which had been
planned by Kaid and those who counselled him. Troubled by a deep danger
drawing near, Kaid had drawn him into his tough service, half-blindly
catching at his help, with a strange, almost superstitious belief that