Part 24 (1/2)
”What is the matter?”
Kennedy had uttered a cry of despair as he saw Joe fling hiround His horse, evidently exhausted, had just fallen headlong
”He sees us!” cried the doctor, ”and he ets upon his feet!”
”But the Arabs will overtake hi for? Ah! the brave lad! Huzza!” shouted the sportss
Joe, who had i up after his fall, just as one of the swiftest horsemen rushed upon hi to one side, jumped up behind hiling hi hiht
A trerossed by the pursuit, they had not taken notice of the balloon, which was now but five hundred paces behind theround On their part, they were not twenty lengths of their horses fro on Joe, and was about to pierce him with his lance, when Kennedy, with fixed eye and steady hand, stopped him short with a ball, that hurled him to the earth
Joe did not even turn his head at the report Some of the horsemen reined in their barbs, and fell on their faces in the dust as they caught sight of the Victoria; the rest continued their pursuit
”But what is Joe about?” said Kennedy; ”he don't stop!”
”He's doing better than that, dick! I understand hi on in the saence Ah! the noble fellow! We'll carry him off in the very teeth of those Arab rascals! We are not more than two hundred paces from him!”
”What are we to do?” asked Kennedy
”Lay aside your rifle, dick”
And the Scot obeyed the request at once
”Do you think that you can hold one hundred and fifty pounds of ballast in your arh!”
And the doctor proceeded to pile up bags of sand in Kennedy's arms
”Hold yourself in readiness in the back part of the car, and be prepared to throw out that ballast at a single effort But, for your life, don't do so until I give the word!”
”Be easy on that point”
”Otherwise, we should miss Joe, and he would be lost”
”Count upon me!”
The Victoria at that moment almost commanded the troop of horse their steeds at Joe's heels The doctor, standing in the front of the car, held the ladder clear, ready to throw it at any moment Meanwhile, Joe had still maintained the distance between himself and his pursuers-say about fifty feet The Victoria was now ahead of the party
”Attention!” exclaimed the doctor to Kennedy
”I'm ready!”
”Joe, look out for yourself!” shouted the doctor in his sonorous, ringing voice, as he flung out the ladder, the lowest ratlines of which tossed up the dust of the road
As the doctor shouted, Joe had turned his head, but without checking his horse The ladder dropped close to hiain shouted to Kennedy: ”Throw ballast!”
”It's done!”
And the Victoria, lightened by a weight greater than Joe's, shot up one hundred and fifty feet into the air
Joe clung with all his strength to the ladder during the wide oscillations that it had to describe, and thenwith the agility of aup to his companions, who received him with open are The fugitive had been snatched fro far beyond their reach
”Master! Kennedy!” ejaculated Joe, and overwhelue and emotion, the poor fellow fainted ahile Kennedy, al: ”Saved-saved!”
”Saved indeed!”arms, his body covered with cuts and bruises, told what his sufferings had been The doctor quietly dressed his wounds, and laid hi
Joe soon returned to consciousness, and asked for a glass of brandy, which the doctor did not see fit to refuse, as the faithful fellow had to be indulged
After he had sed the stirasped the hands of his two friends and announced that he was ready to relate what had happened to him
But they would not allow him to talk at that time, and he sank back into a profound sleep, of which he seereatest possible need
The Victoria was then taking an oblique line to the ard Driven by a teain approached the borders of the thorny desert, which the travellers descried over the tops of palJoe, it passed the tenth degree of east longitude about nightfall
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVENTH
The Western Route-Joe wakes up-His Obstinacy-End of Joe's Narrative-Tagelei-Kennedy's Anxieties-The Route to the North-A Night near Aghades
During the night the wind lulled as though reposing after the boisterousness of the day, and the Victoria remained quietly at the top of the tall sycamore The doctor and Kennedy kept watch by turns, and Joe availed himself of the chance to sleep most sturdily for twenty-four hours at a stretch
”That's the ree of his care”
With the dawn the wind sprang up again in quite strong, and usts It shi+fted abruptly from south to north, but finally the Victoria was carried away by it toward the west
The doctor, hou, an undulating region of great fertility, in which the huts that co reeds interwoven with branches of the asclepia The grain-mills were seen raised in the cultivated fields, upon ss or platfore ants of that country