oasis--bigger than any she had seen. In front of the tent there was an
open space with a thick belt of palm trees beyond. The rest of the camp
lay behind the Chief's tent. The place was alive with men and horses.
There were some camels in the distance, but it was the horses that
struck Diana principally. They were everywhere, some tethered; some
wandering loose, some exercising in the hands of grooms. Mounted Arabs
on the outskirts of the oasis crossed her view occasionally. There were
groups of men engaged on various duties all around her. Those who went
by near her salaamed as they passed, but took no further notice of her.
A strange look came into Diana's eyes. This was the desert indeed, the
desert as she had never expected to see it, the desert as few could
expect to see it. But the cost! She shuddered, then turned at a sudden
noise near her. A biting, screaming chestnut fury was coming past close
to the tent, taking complete charge of the two men who clung, yelling,
to his head. He was stripped, but Diana recognised him at once. The one
brief view she had had of his small, vicious head as he shot past her
elbow the evening before was written on her brain for all time. He came
to a halt opposite Diana, refusing to move, his ears laid close to his
head, quivering all over, snatching continually at his grooms, who
seemed unable to cope with him. Once he swung up on his hind legs and
his cruel teeth flashed almost into the face of one of the men, who was
taken off his guard, and who dropped on to the ground, rolling out of
the way with a howl that provoked a shout of laughter from a knot of
Arabs who had gathered to watch the usual evening eccentricities of the
chestnut. The French servant, coming from behind the tent, stopped to
speak to the man as he picked himself up and made a grab at the horse's
head, and then turned to Diana with his pleasant smile.

"He is rightly named Shaitan, Madame, for he is assuredly possessed of
a devil," he said, indicating the chestnut, who, at that moment, with a