"To the Sultan Casim Ammeh.
Perhaps you do not know that I am very rich. Any price you may ask I am prepared to give for my father's life and freedom, for the lives and freedom of my English friends who are also your prisoners, and for my own. The ransom will be paid to you in gold. All you will have to do will be to mention the sum you want, and allow me to send a message through to my bank in England.
Pansy Langham Barclay."
The note was put into an envelope, sealed, addressed and taken out to Edouard.
On handing it over, however, Pansy suddenly recollected that the Sultan, for all his wealth and power, might be ignorant of the arts of reading and writing.
"Can he read French?" she asked.
An amused look came to the doctor's face.
"If he can't make it out, I'll read it to him," he replied.
It was evening before Le Breton got the note. Le Breton again as Pansy knew him, in khaki riding-suit, just as he had returned from a ride on her old race-horse, that had been brought to his camp the day of her capture, and was now in the palace stables.
The note was lying on his desk, with the name that Pansy now hated—the Sultan Casim Ammeh—written on the envelope in her pretty hand.
A tender look hovered about his mouth as he picked up the letter and read it. Again the girl was "doing her best" for some helpless creatures—his prisoners. Although the fact filled him with an even greater admiration for Pansy, it did not lessen his hatred for her father.
He sat down and dashed off a brief reply in an assumed hand.
"All the gold in Africa will not buy my vengeance from me.
Casim Ammeh."
His answer reached Pansy with her dinner, reducing her to despair.
It seemed that nothing she could do would have any influence with this savage ruler.
Hopeless days followed; days that brought her nothing but a series of elaborate meals. Yet she knew that life went on around her; a life quite different from any she had been accustomed to.
Morning and night she heard faint voices wailing from unseen minarets. Over the high walls of her garden came the hum of a crowded city. From her screened gallery she saw camel trains loom out of the haze of distance to El-Ammeh, with a wrangle of sweet bells; camels that came from some vast unknown.
And there was another sound that Pansy heard; a sound that hailed from somewhere within the Palace; that always came about bedtime, and always set her shivering; the sound of a girl screaming.
Each morning with her early tea there was a basket of rare flowers, flowers she did not trouble to tell Alice to move now; she put them down to some palace custom, nothing that had any bearing on the Sultan. She never thought of Le Breton's words:
"Still only a few flowers, Pansy?"
And each evening she sat in the dim, scented room and waited for those muffled screams. She knew where they came from now; from somewhere behind one of the locked doors leading into her room.
Limp and listless, she dragged through the hot, monotonous days, brooding on her own fate and her father's, envying the ragged black crows that flew, free, like bits of burnt paper, high in the scorching sky.
Pansy had been about a fortnight in El-Ammeh, when something happened.
One morning, as she stood by the sunken pond, feeding the greedy carp with rolls she was too miserable to eat, Alice came to her round-eyed and startled-looking.
"Oh, Miss Pansy, dey hab come for you," she gasped
"Who?" Pansy asked quickly.
"De Sultan's soldiers."
"Are they going to take me to him?" she asked, feeling the interview she desired and dreaded was now at hand.
"Dey take you to de slave market. To be sold. Oh, oh!" the girl wailed.
Alice's hysterical sobs followed Pansy down the dim passage some minutes later, when, with strained face and tortured eyes, she went with a guard of eight Arab soldiers to meet the fate the Sultan Casim Ammeh had promised for her more than sixteen years before.
Sir George Barclay and most of his staff had a knowledge of Eastern prisons from the outside. They knew them to be abodes of misery; dark, insanitary dens, alive with vermin, squalid and filthy, filled with a gaunt, ragged crowd who, all day long, held piteous hands through iron bars, begging for food from the passers-by, the only food they were given.
The Governor's staff did not look forward to a sojourn in El-Ammeh. As for Sir George himself, he had other matters than his own personal comfort to dwell on.
His thoughts were always with Pansy, and always in his heart was the prayer that she would succumb to the effects of Cameron's bullet, and not have to meet the fate his enemy had in store for her.
After the one interview the Sultan had ignored Barclay. But during the long journey, Sir George often saw his enemy, and if he thought of anything outside of his daughter's fate, it was to wonder why Casim Ammeh looked so different from the wild hordes he ruled. Exactly like a man of the well-bred, darker, Latin type, certainly not the son of the savage marauder whom he, Barclay, had had to condemn to death.
On reaching El-Ammeh, the Europeans found the quarters awaiting them very different from what experience had led them to expect.
They were ushered into a large courtyard dotted with trees and surrounded by high walls. Into it a dozen little cells opened. Within the enclosure they were free to wander as they pleased; a glance around the place showed them why. The walls were twenty feet high, and as smooth as glass, and there were always a dozen Arabs stationed by the gate, watching all they did. At night they were each locked in separate cells.
It was impossible to bribe the guards, as Cameron and his fellow officers discovered before a week had passed.
For the imprisoned Englishmen the time passed slowly. Often they speculated on their own ultimate fate. Whether death would be their portion, or whether they would be left there to stew for years, after the manner of more than one European who had had the misfortune to fall into the clutches of some desert chief.
They all knew the reason of their capture—merely because they happened to be on the Governor's staff. He had told them the story of Casim Ammeh, and the promised revenge. They never thought of blaming Barclay. What the present Sultan of El-Ammeh called "murder" was the sort of thing any one of them might be called upon to do.
A day came when it seemed to Barclay that the fate that wild youth had promised him long years ago was at hand.
One morning an escort came for him.
In their company he was led out of prison, to his execution, he expected. His staff thought so too; for they took a brief, unemotional farewell of him. They expected the same fate themselves at any moment.
However, Barclay was not led to his death. The escort took him through a twist of narrow streets, into a house and up a flight of dark stairs. He was left alone in an upper room, with a heavily barred window, through which came a hum of wild voices, with an occasional loud, guttural, excited call.
He crossed to the window, and stood there, riveted.
There was a big square beneath, seething with dark-faced, white-robed men, all gazing in one direction—in the direction of a raised platform where a girl stood. A slim, white girl.
It would have been much easier for Sir George to have faced death than the sight before him.
Pansy was on the platform. His daughter! Standing there in full view of the wild crowd. Being sold as a slave in the market of this desert city. To become the property of one of those savages.
Barclay's hand went across his anguished face, to try and shut out the horrible sight.
It could not be true! It must be some hideous nightmare.
Yet there she was, with white face and strained eyes, meeting her fate bravely, as his daughter would. Pansy, as he had often seen her, in a simple white muslin dress, and a wide white, drooping hat with a long, blue, floating veil. Garbed as she had gone about his camp during his fatal tour.
Even as Sir George looked, Pansy's tortured eyes met his, and she tried to smile.
The sight broke him utterly, bringing a groan to his lips.
At the sound a voice said in French, with a note of savage triumph:
"Now perhapsyouunderstand whatIsuffered when you shot my father?"
Standing behind him was a big man in a khaki riding-suit, a European, he looked. For the moment Barclay did not know him for his enemy, the Sultan Casim Ammeh.
When he recognised him he did for Pansy what he would never have done for himself—he begged for mercy.
"For God's sake, for the sake of the civilisation you know, don't condemn my child to such a fate!" he entreated in a voice hoarse with agony.
"You showed my father no mercy. Why should I show you any now?" the Sultan asked coldly.
"At least have pity on the girl. Do what you like with me, but spare my daughter."
"Did you show me any pity when I begged for my father's life? 'As ye sow, so shall ye reap.' Isn't that what you Christians say? There is your harvest. A pleasing sight for me, when I think of my father."
The Sultan's gaze went to the window, but there was more tenderness than anything else in his eyes as they rested on the slim girl who faced the crowd with such white courage.
Now one figure stood out from the surge, that of a big, lean man in turban and loin-cloth, with long matted hair and beard, the latter foam-flecked. He stood at the foot of the platform, and his eyes never left the girl as he bid up and up against the other competitors; cursing everyone who bid against him, yet always going higher.
"Look at that wild man from the desert," the Sultan said. "I know him. He is a feather merchant. A miser. His home is a squalid tent, yet he has more money than any man who comes to El-Ammeh. Love has unlocked his heart. He will give all his hoarded wealth to possess that pretty slave on the platform there. He will be a fitting mate for your daughter. Think of her in his arms, and remember the man you murdered—my father, the Sultan Casim Ammeh, whom I have now avenged."
At the taunts, despite the difference in their years and physique, George Barclay turned on his tormentor.
"You brute! You devil!" he cried, springing at him.
With easy strength the Sultan caught and held him.
"You misjudge me," he said; "it's justice—merely 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'"
Then he pushed the older man from him and, turning on his heel, went from the room.
The market of El-Ammeh was situated in the centre of the city. It was surrounded by a huddle of whitewashed houses, of varying heights and shapes, leaning one against the other, with here and there, over some high wall, a glimpse of greenery—the feathery head of a palm, the shiny leaves of a camphor tree, a pomegranate, an orange or a fig tree. On the side overlooking the square the houses were practically without windows, and the few there were were small and iron-barred.
Under most of the buildings were dim, cave-like shops hung with rare silks and ostrich feathers, or littered with articles in beaten silver, copper, and iron. There was quaint leatherwork and coarse pottery and a good sprinkling of European goods.
Several narrow, passage-like streets led into the square, entering it, in some cases, under dark archways. Sometimes these ways were barred to the mere public—the poorer people who daily sold produce in the square—and only those with special permits were allowed to enter: men of wealth and substance.
Every month a sale of slaves was held in the market, generally of Arab and negro girls; but occasionally something very different figured there—perhaps some black-haired, black-eyed, creamy beauty brought right across the Sahara from the Barbary States, a thousand miles away; or some half-caste girl from the Soudan, even further afield.
When this happened there were always plenty of buyers. Men of wealth flocked in from hundreds of miles around, for any skin lighter than brown was a rarity.
Within the last few weeks word had gone round the district, blown hither and thither in the desert, that a girl even more beautiful than those creamy beauties from the Barbary States was to be on sale at the next auction—a girl hailing from, Allah alone knew, what far land—Paradise, if her description were a true one. A girl with a skin white as milk, hair golden as the sunshine, and eyes of a blue deep as desert night; a maid, moreover, not another man's discarded fancy.
For days before the sale, as flies are drawn towards a honey-pot, the caravans of wealthy merchants came trickling in from the desert.
When the day itself arrived they hurried with their retinues to the square; some to buy, if possible; others, less wealthy, to see if the maid were as beautiful as report said.
On one side of the market square was a raised platform. From the house behind a room opened on it, a big, shadowy room, whitewashed and stone-flagged, with a barred window high up near the ceiling.
Into that room Pansy was taken by her escort in a curtained litter.
During the journey to the market she had had the sensation of moving in some ghastly nightmare from which she could not wake herself, much as she tried.
It could not be possible that she, Pansy Langham, the fêted and much-courted heiress, was to be sold as one might sell a horse or a cow.
She had the horrible feeling of having lost her own identity and taken on someone else's, yet all the time remembering what had happened when she was Pansy Langham. She felt she must have slipped back hundreds of years to some previous existence, when girls were sold as slaves; for surely this appalling fate could not be happening to her in the twentieth century?
A riot of thought ran through the girl's head during the journey from the palace to the market; a riot of numb, sickly terror, the outstanding feature of which was an inability to credit the fate before her.
When Pansy reached the room she gave up all hope. She knew she was awake—painfully, horribly wide awake, with a future before her that made her shudder to contemplate.
There were a dozen or more girls in the room, but they were railed off from Pansy by a thick wooden trellis, like sheep in a pen; brown and black girls, the majority attired in nothing more than a cloth reaching from waist to knee. They had been chattering shrilly among themselves at her entry, apparently in no way appalled at the fate before them; but they broke off when she came in, and crowded to the lattice to get a closer view, gazing at the newcomer and giving vent to little exclamations of awe and envy and admiration.
Pansy's arrival brought a stout, bearded man in white burnoose in from the house behind.
His glance ran over the English girl, but he made no attempt to touch her. Then he looked at her escort, who had stationed themselves on either side of her.
"By Allah!" he exclaimed. "This is a houri straight from Paradise you have brought me. Never have I sold such loveliness. There will be high bidding in the market of El-Ammeh this morning."
"I, for one, can't understand why the Sultan has not kept this pearl for himself," the leader of the escort said.
The auctioneer smiled in a peculiar, knowing fashion.
"Our Sultan has been in lands where there are many such," he replied. "Now he gives his subjects a chance to revel in delights that have been his."
Other men appeared from behind, negroes.
At a word from their master they opened the door leading out on the platform. Then they stood on either side whilst he passed through.
Through the open door came a blaze of sunshine, the buzz of a multitude, and presently a long declamation in Arabic as the auctioneer enlarged upon the quality of his wares.
The girls behind the trellis craned their necks to see what was going on, chattering shrilly among themselves.
From where Pansy stood she could see nothing. She did not want to see anything. The horror would be upon her quite soon enough.
One of the negro assistants opened a gate in the trellis and motioned to a girl. As she appeared on the platform, from outside there came a sigh of disappointment, then guttural voices bidding.
Another and another of the girls passed out, all apparently indifferent to the ordeal before them.
Then the auctioneer appeared on the threshold.
On seeing him Pansy felt her turn had come, and the world started reeling around her.
She knew she passed from shadow into sunshine, that dead silence greeted her appearance on the dais—a silence that was followed by a din of wild, excited shouting.
It seemed to her that the world was nothing but eyes: the eyes of a surging crowd of dark-faced men, watching her with desire and admiration.
To Pansy, high-bred and fastidious, it was a vision of hell, this swarm of wild men looking at her with covetous desire. The Pit gaped at her feet, peopled with demons, any one of which might spring upon her.
Then the din died down to a subdued hum as men whispered one to another, their eyes still on the golden-haired girl on the dais. There was a horrible sort of despair on the faces of some as they thought of their more wealthy neighbours; lustful triumph on the faces of others as they thought of their own hoarded gold.
For sale as a common slave at the Taureg auction block.....For sale as a common slave at the Taureg auction block.....
For sale as a common slave at the Taureg auction block.....For sale as a common slave at the Taureg auction block.....
Then out from the crowd a voice made an offer.
The sum staggered the auctioneer. It equalled nearly five hundred pounds of English money. No girl, even the creamy Barbary beauties, had ever fetched that amount.
Wild commotion followed. But the price went up and up, doubling itself in ten minutes.
To escape for a moment from the sea of covetous eyes, Pansy raised her own.
There was someone watching her from a window, someone who looked as tortured as herself—another soul condemned to hell.
It was a moment before she recognised that drawn, haggard face as her fathers; it looked an old man's. He was there, the father she loved, condemned by his enemy to see her sold.
She tried to smile. It was a woeful effort. And when the blur of tears that seeing him brought to her eyes had passed he was gone.
It seemed to Pansy that for an eternity she stood on the edge of the Pit, waiting until one of the devils, more powerful than the rest, should drag her in.
The din died down as the sale proceeded, lost in tense excitement. Of the twenty or more who had started bidding for her, only three were left now. One of them, mad with lust and excitement, had forced his way up to the edge of the dais and was clinging to it with grimy hands—a lean man in turban and loin-cloth only, with long matted hair and beard, who, foaming at the mouth, was cursing his competitors, yet always bidding higher as he stared at Pansy with the glare of a maddened beast.
Pansy tried not to see him, but he was always there, horrible beyond comprehension, the worst of the demons in the hell surrounding her.
Presently, over the murmur of the crowd, came the thunder of a horse's hoofs; of someone riding at breakneck speed through one of the resounding arches leading into the market.
Pansy did not notice this. She realised nothing now but the half-naked, foaming horror at her feet.
Suddenly another cry rang through the market-place.
Fortunately for Le Breton's plans Pansy knew no Arabic or she would have recognised that cry as:
"The Sultan! The Sultan!"
For Casim Ammeh had had his vengeance, and now had come in pursuit of love.
The cry grew to such a roar of sound that it penetrated the world of dumb terror in which Pansy moved, and made her raise her eyes.
The crowd in the square had opened up, giving way to a khaki-clad man on a huge, prancing black stallion.
Across the market-place tortured blue eyes met fiery black ones.
Then it seemed to Pansy that she must be dreaming—a vision of heaven beyond this hell.
For Raoul Le Breton was there, a god among these demons. Some figment of her own creating that must vanish as she gazed.
But he did not vanish.
He came closer, straight towards her, the crowd receding like a wave before him. Raoul Le Breton, looking more handsome, more arrogant, more of a king than ever; sitting his black horse like a centaur.
Pansy's hands went to her heart, and the world started spinning around her.
Like a knight of old, he had come to her rescue.
How he could have got there she was in no condition to consider. It was enough that he was there, in time to save her from the Pit of Hell gaping at her feet.
He rode ride up to the dais, reining in at her side.
With outstretched arms, he went towards her.
"Come, Heart's Ease, my own brave little girl, there's nothing to fear now," he said.
Swaying slightly, Pansy looked at him again as if he were some vision.
Then, for the first time in her life, she fainted.
With a little laugh of tender triumph, he caught her and lifted her on his horse.
As he turned to go, grimy, covetous hands clutched Pansy's skirts—the hands of the miser feather merchant.
With a savage oath, the Sultan raised his heavy riding whip and felled the defiler.
Then he rode off with Pansy.
But before this happened Sir George Barclay had been taken from the room overlooking the slave market. He did not see the Sultan Casim Ammeh come in person to save the girl. He did not know that, in Pansy's case, at any rate, the auction had been but a pretence.
When Pansy returned to consciousness she felt she had awakened from some nightmare and was back in her own world, a civilized world; her capture by the Sultan Casim Ammeh and all the subsequent happenings some wild dream, terrifying in its reality as dreams can be.
She was lying on a big bed in a shady room, among sheets and pillows of finest linen; a solid brass bedstead such as might have come from any good shop in London, not among silken cushions and rugs on an ottoman. And there was a bedroom suite of some choice grey wood with a litter of gold toilet appointments on the wide dressing-table.
An elderly woman, brown skinned and black eyed, dressed in a swathing of white muslin, was seated by the bedside, fanning herself with a gentle, regular movement, and the air was fresh with the scent of eau-de-Cologne.
Beyond the woman—all down one side of the room—ran a series of arches, over which were drawn blinds of split bamboo.
With the feeling of fragments of her nightmare still clinging about her, Pansy sat up.
Then, with a rush, came back the scene in the slave market.
"Where is Mr. Le Breton?" she asked in a dazed manner.
She expected the woman to disclaim all knowledge of any such person.
However, she rose immediately.
"I'll fetch him," she said in French.
She made towards a curtained doorway.
Pansy watched her go. And her gaze stayed anxiously on the spot where the woman had disappeared.
A few moments passed and the curtains were drawn aside again. The woman entered. In her wake was a big man in white drill, with sleek, black hair and a close-clipped, black moustache.
On seeing him Pansy gave a little hysterical cry.
"Oh, Raoul, I was so afraid you were just a dream!"
"No, I'm not a dream, but a solid fact," he replied, going towards her.
"Come quite close. I want to touch you to make sure."
Nothing loath, he seated himself on the bed.
Pansy took one of his hands, holding it in a tight, nervous grip.
"Yes, it is really you," she said. "In the whole wide world there's no one who feels quite the same as you."
She had forgotten his coldness and harshness on the occasion of their last meeting in Grand Canary—his colour, his religion, everything except that he was there and she was safe.
He laughed tenderly and put the loose curls back from her face with a lingering, caressing touch.
It was Pansy as he had never known her, frightened and clinging to him. Pansy as he would have her, looking at him with eyes full of love.
"So, little girl, you're quite pleased to see me?"
"Did you buy me?" she asked in a bewildered voice.
"How else could I get you?" he asked, smiling slightly. His voice and touch calmed her a little.
"Butyou! How didyouget here?" she asked.
"You know I'm an African merchant, don't you?" he said easily. "This is my special province. I do most of the trading in this part. And El-Ammeh is my headquarters."
"But how did you knowIwas here?" she asked in a dazed tone.
"You told me you were coming out to Africa. I heard the Governor of the adjacent English colony was on tour, his ultimate point a spot some six hundred miles or so from here. Some weeks ago the Sultan went out on a foray, returning with some English prisoners, a girl among them. There are not many blue-eyed, golden-haired girls in these parts, Pansy, so I guessed who she was."
It all sounded very feasible. And Pansy was in no mood to dispute with miracles.
"He hates my father; that's why he did it," she began in a weak, wild way.
"Never mind about that just now," he replied. "Fortunately I was there to save you."
She clung tighter to the strong, sinewy hand that had snatched her back from the brink of hell.
"Oh, Raoul, what would have happened if you hadn't come?" she whispered.
"Well, I did come, so there's nothing more for you to worry about," he said tenderly.
"There's my father. The Sultan has threatened to kill him," she began hysterically.
"You mustn't worry about your father, either. Leave things to me. You may be sure I'll do my best for him, too."
Under the tension of the last few weeks and the final reaction Pansy broke down completely. In a weak, wild manner she started sobbing, almost as if her brain had snapped under the strain and relief.
Evidently Le Breton had expected something of the sort.
Going to a table, he poured some water into a glass and dropped a couple of cachets into it.
When they had melted he came back to the distraught girl.
Seating himself on the edge of the bed, he slipped an arm around her.
"Come, drink this up," he said authoritatively; "then, when you've had a good sleep, you can tell me all your adventures."
"I daren't go to sleep," she sobbed, "for fear I should wake up in hell!"
He drew the golden head on his shoulder with a soothing, protective touch.
"I'll stay with you and see that doesn't happen," he said tenderly.
At the promise, Pansy drank the proffered draught. Then she lay back among the pillows.
He held the empty glass towards the Arab woman. She took it, and would have gone from the room, as she was accustomed to going when the Sultan pleased to linger with any one of his slave girls; but his voice stopped her.
"There's no need to go, Sara," he said.
Then he stayed, smiling down at the worn little face on the pillows, until the wild blue eyes closed in drugged slumber.
Afterwards he sat watching Pansy in a calculating manner.
Just then it seemed to Le Breton that his plans had succeeded; that he was going to have all he wanted. Revenge he had had; love now seemed within his grip.
A sense of gratitude for her supposed rescue, in conjunction with the love Pansy still had for him, would be a strong enough combination to make her forget his colour and bring her into his arms in the way he wanted—of her own free will.
Yet he was not wholly satisfied, for the method he had used to attain his ends was not one a civilised person would approve of.
A huddled heap against one of the fluted columns, old Sara sat and watched him. From time to time she muttered to herself and cracked her knuckles for luck and to keep off the "evil eye."
She had seen another Sultan bewitched by one of these lovely white girls; and she hoped that this girl would prove kinder to the son than the Lady Annette had been to the father.
Great stars flashed in a desert sky, a sky deep and soft, like purple velvet. They looked down on a sea of sand over which the wind roamed; and always and ever in its train there followed a sighing hiss, sometimes loud, sometimes soft, but always there, a constant, stealthy menace in the night.
In the dark depths, one great curling billow of sand showed, the coarse grass that fringed its crest looking like spray lashing through the night. Beneath, a little yellow fire glowed. In the glimmer a few ragged tents stood, patched and squalid dwellings. Among them mangy camels lay and groaned and gurgled and snored, with their long necks stretched along the sand, looking like prehistoric beasts.
Here and there half-naked men and boys slept and gaunt dogs prowled—slinking, furtive shadows through the encampment, nosing about for scraps of the evening meal.
There had been no meal for the owner of the caravan that night. A hunger that could not be assuaged with food, and a thirst that no drink could quench, raged within him. Now a burning lust kept sleep at bay and sent him prowling like some wild beast into the desert, hoping that there relief might be found.
But for him none was to be had there.
The blue of the sky was like the eyes of the girl he had lost. Her skin had rivalled the stars in its purity. The very fire that burnt outside of his squalid home mocked him. It was golden as her hair.
But for the Sultan that girl would be his. Now! This night. His, to hold within his arms—that milk-white maid!
He flung his arms out to the night, then strained them across his chest.
But for the Sultan all that maddening beauty would lie within his grip. His to crush and caress. His!
The thought was torture.
"Curse him! Curse him! Curse him!" he cried aloud to the mocking night.
Then he stretched grimy paws towards a voiceless heaven.
"Allah, give him into my hands, the Sultan Casim Ammeh, who has robbed me of the flower of my desire. That milk-white maid—a houri of thy sending. Guide my step to those who are his enemies. To those who would break him, as he has broken me. Surely a man so mighty has others as mighty who hate him. There are always kings ready to make war on other kings. Allah, most high, let me find them. Allah, most merciful, grant my prayer. Like the wind in the desert I will roam—to the east, the west, the north, the south—until I find them.—His enemies. Then I will deliver him unto their hands."
The mad prayer of a wandering feather merchant against his Sultan; the prayer of a man whom, in his wealth and power and arrogance, Casim Ammeh had not considered.
But one which was to bear fruit.
Giving no thought to the grimy wretch out there in the desert, the Sultan was seated in one of the deep, open galleries of his palace. Some ten feet below a garden sighed, and the soft wind that wandered in and out of the fretted arches was ladened with the scent of a thousand flowers. Close at hand a fountain whispered, and from the distance came the gentle lap of the lake.
However, he noticed none of these things. There was something of far greater interest close beside him.
Among the cushions of a wicker lounge Pansy lay, her head pillowed on silk and down, a worn look still on her face.
Night had fallen before she awoke from her drugged slumber. She had found Le Breton still beside her, and the room full of the soft glow of shaded lamps.
Once she was fully awake he had left, promising to come again after dinner.
She had dined in the gallery. The roofed terrace was lighted by the glow coming from the two rooms behind. One was her bedroom; the other a gorgeously appointedsalon. But at the end of these two rooms an iron grille went across the gallery, stopping all further investigations.
When Le Breton came he found Pansy on the terrace. Once he was seated, she told him what had happened to her father's party. Then she went back to the beginning, sixteen years before, with the story of the youthful Sultan; but she did not mention that she had been wounded and ill, for fear of having to meet a host of anxious enquiries.
Without comment he listened.
When she finished, all he said was:
"Well, I suppose the Sultan has his point of view, since it appears your father was responsible for the death of his."
"But it was my father's duty to condemn him. He would hate doing it, for he can't bear to hurt people. It was not 'murder,' as the present Sultan seems to think."
To this Le Breton had nothing to say.
"You must let the French Government know my father is a prisoner here," she went on. "Then they'll send an expedition and rescue him and his officers."
"I couldn't do that, Pansy. You forget I'm half Arab. I can't go back on my father's people."
Pansy had forgotten this fact about him; and it seemed her father's freedom was not quite so close at hand as she had imagined.
"Could I send my father a note?" she asked anxiously. "That cruel Sultan sent him to see me sold. It must have been torture for him; for I'm all he's got, and he's awfully fond of me. I want to say I'm safe here with you. I can't bear to think of him in torment."
"Write a note if you like, and I'll see what I can do," he replied.
At once she got up and went into thesalonwhere she had noticed a writing-table. The place was more like a hall than a room; a spreading columned apartment, with walls and floor and ceiling of white marble, where fountains played into fern-grown basins and palms stood in huge, gilded tubs. There were deep, soft, silk-covered chairs and lounges, a sprinkling of gilded tables, and a large grand piano.
Some minutes later Pansy returned to her host with a letter in her hand.
He took it, and then rose to go.
"You mustn't sit up too late," he said, looking down at her with an air of possession; "you've had a trying day, and don't worry any more about anything or anybody."
So saying, he left her.
Full of gratitude, Pansy watched him go. And her conscience smote her.
On the whole she had treated him rather badly. She had promised to marry him, and then had gone back on her word. She did not deserve his kindness and consideration.
He had been so cold and harsh that night on her yacht in Grand Canary. He was none of these things now. He was just as he had been during their one brief week of friendship, but even nicer.
Pansy sighed, and her face grew wistful.
Why wasn't he just like other men? Why had Fate been so unkind? Giving her love, but in such a form that pride revolted from taking it.
Then Pansy went to bed, to lie awake for some time, brooding on the miracle the day had brought forth and the black barrier that stood between her and her lover.
She was about early the next morning and wandering in the garden.
It was a long stretch of shady walks and sunken ponds and splashing fountains, full of tropical trees, scented shrubs, and rare blossoms—a tangle of delights. In one spot she found a tennis court, walled with pink roses. The grounds went on, ending in a wide, flagged terrace, with stone seats and shallow steps leading down to the blue waters of the lake.
High walls ran down either side of the spreading garden. Behind, a huge building rose in domes and turrets and terraces—the palace of El-Ammeh had Pansy but known it, of which her new quarters were but a further portion.
Blissfully ignorant of this fact, she turned her steps from the rippling lake and wandered along a flower-decked path that twisted under shady trees and creeper-grown arches, coming presently to a locked iron gate let into the massive walls.
It gave a view of a scorched paddock where a dozen or more horses were browsing.
Pansy paused and scanned the animals.
One was strangely familiar.
That gaunt chestnut browsing there could only be "The Sultan"!
Amazed at her discovery, she called the horse by name.
At once the brown head was up, and the beast came galloping in her direction.
Even in the days of her illness and during her imprisonment in the palace, Pansy had spared a thought for her protégé. She imagined he had become the property of one of the Arab raiders, and she hoped his new master would be kind to him and understand him as she did.
Through the iron bars Pansy caressed her pet.
"I never expected to see you again, Sultan, old boy," she said. "Raoul must have bought you, too."
She was standing there talking to and petting the animal when Le Breton's step roused her.
"Are you pleased to see him again?" he asked, after greeting her.
"Pleased isn't the word for it. But how did you manage to get hold of him?"
"He was really the cause of my getting hold of you," he replied without hesitation. "I saw him in the possession of one of the soldiers who had come back from that foray. That made me doubly certain who the white girl was whom the Sultan was going to put up for sale."
"Raoul, you must let me give you back all you had to pay for me," she said.
"Why should you?" he asked, a slight smile hovering about his lips. "You saved my life. Now we're 'quits.' Isn't that what you called it?"
Pansy did not argue the point. Nevertheless, she determined to repay him once she and her father were back in civilisation.
"How long will it take to get my father free?" she asked.
"It all depends on the sort of mood I catch the Sultan in. With the best of luck, it'll be some weeks."
"Has he got my note yet, do you think?" she asked anxiously. "He'll go grey with worrying over me. I can't bear to think of the look on his face when he saw me in that ... that awful slave market."
Le Breton had destroyed her message the moment he had reached his own rooms. Now he could not meet the beautiful eyes that looked at him with such perfect trust.
"I expect the message will get through before the day is out," he answered. "It's merely a matter of 'baksheesh.'"
At his words the world became quite a nice place again for Pansy, the only shadow in it now the dark blood in her lover.