It was growing late in the day, and he had had no food for many hours. Was he to be neglected and starved? At last he heard steps approaching, and the door was opened by the man who had led the assault on him, who addressed him as 'Son of an old ass-dog of a slave,' bade him stand up and show his height, at the same time cutting the cords that bound him. It was an additional pang that it was to Yusuf that he was thus to exhibit himself, no doubt in order that the merchant should carry a description of him to some likely purchaser. He could not comprehend the words that passed, but it was very bitter to be handled like a horse at a fair-doubly so that he, a Hope of Burnside, should thus be treated by Partan Jeannie's son.
There ensued outside the shrieking and roaring which always accompanied a bargain, and which lasted two full hours. Finally Yusuf looked into the hut, and roughly said in Arabic, 'Come over to me, dog; thou art mine. Kiss the shoe of thy master'-adding in his native tongue, 'For ance, sir. It maun be done before these loons.'
Certainly the ceremony would have been felt as less humiliating towards almost anybody else, but Arthur endured it; and then was led away to the tents beyond the gate.
'There, sir,' said Yusuf, 'it ill sorts your father's son to be in sic a case, but it canna be helpit. I culd na leave behind the bonny Scots tongue, let alane the gude Leddy Hope's son.'
'You have been very good to me, Yusuf,' said Arthur, his pride much softened by the merchant's evident sense of the situation. 'I know you mean me well, but the boy-'
'Hoots! the bairn is happy eno'. He will come to higher preferment than even you or I. Why, mon, an Aga of the Janissaries is as good as the Deuk himsel'.'
'Yusuf, I am very grateful-I believe you must have paid heavily to spare me from ill usage.'
'Ye may say that, sir. Forty piastres of Tunis, and eight mules, and twa pair of silver-mounted pistols. The extortionate rogue wad hae had the little dagger, but I stood out against that.'
'I see, I am deeply beholden,' said Arthur; 'but it would be tenfold better if you would take him instead of me!'
'What for suld I do that? He is nae countryman of mine-one side French and the other Irish. He is naught to me.'
'He is heir to a noble house,' waged Arthur. 'They will reward you amply for saving him.'
'Mair like to girn at me for a Moor. Na, na! Hae na I dune enough for ye, Maister Arthur-giving half my beasties, and more than half my silver? Canna ye be content without that whining bairn?'
'I should be a forsworn man to be content to leave the child, whose dead mother prayed me to protect him, and those who will turn him from her faith. See, now, I am a man, and can guard myself, by the grace of God; but to leave the poor child here would be letting these men work their will on him ere any ransom could come. His mother would deem it giving him up to perdition. Let me remain here, and take the helpless child. You know how to bargain. His price might be my ransom.'
'Ay, when the jackals and hyenas have picked your banes, or you have died under the lash, chained to the oar, as I hae seen, Maister Arthur.'
'Better so than betray the dead woman's trust. How no-'
For there was a pattering of feet, a cry of 'Arthur, Arthur!' and sobbing, screaming, and crying, Ulysse threw himself on his friend's breast. He was pursued by one or two of the hangers-on of the sheyk's household, and the first comer seized him by the arm; but he clung to Arthur, screamed and kicked, and the old nurse who had come hobbling after coaxed in vain. He cried out in a mixture of Arabic and French that he WOULD sleep with Arthur-Arthur must put him to bed; no one should take him away.
'Let him stay,' responded Yusuf; 'his time will come soon enough.'
Indulgence to children was the rule, and there was an easy good-nature about the race, which made them ready to defer the storm, and acquiesce in the poor little fellow remaining for another evening with that last remnant of his home to whom he always reverted at nightfall.
He held trembling by Arthur till all were gone, then looked about in terror, and required to be assured that no one was coming to take him away.
'They shall not,' he cried. 'Arthur, you will not leave me alone? They are all gone-Mamma, and Estelle, and la bonne, and Laurent, and my uncle, and all, and you will not go.'
'Not now, not to-night, my dear little mannie,' said Arthur, tears in his eyes for the first time throughout these misfortunes.
'Not now! No, never!' said the boy hugging him almost to choking. 'That naughty Ben Kader said they had sold you for a slave, and you were going away; but I knew I should find you-you are not a slave!- you are not black-'
'Ah! Ulysse, it is too true; I am-'
'No! no! no!' the child stamped, and hung on him in a passion of tears. 'You shall not be a slave. My papa shall come with his soldiers and set you free.'
Altogether the boy's vehemence, agitation, and terror were such that Arthur found it impossible to do anything but soothe and hush him, as best might be, till his sobs subsided gradually, still heaving his little chest even after he fell asleep in the arms of his unaccustomed nurse, who found himself thus baffled in using this last and only opportunity of trying to strengthen the child's faith, and was also hindered from pursuing Yusuf, who had left the tent. And if it were separation that caused all this distress, what likelihood that Yusuf would encumber himself with a child who had shown such powers of wailing and screaming?
He durst not stir nor speak for fear of wakening the boy, even when Yusuf returned and stretched himself on his mat, drawing a thick woollen cloth over him, for the nights were chill. Long did Arthur lie awake under the strange sense of slavery and helplessness, and utter uncertainty as to his fate, expecting, in fact, that Yusuf meant to keep him as a sort of tame animal to talk Scotch; but hoping to work on him in time to favour an escape, and at any rate to despatch a letter to Algiers, as a forlorn hope for the ultimate redemption of the poor little unconscious child who lay warm and heavy across his breast. Certainly, Arthur had never so prayed for aid, light. and deliverance as now!
CHAPTER VIII-THE SEARCH
'The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks, The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs. The deep Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.' TENNYSON.
Arthur fell asleep at last, and did not waken till after sunrise, nor did Ulysse, who must have been exhausted with crying and struggling. When they did awaken, Arthur thinking with heavy heart that the moment of parting was come, he saw indeed the other three slaves busied in making bales of the merchandise; but the master, as well as the Abyssinian, Fareek, and the little negro were all missing. Bekir, who was a kind of foreman, and looked on the new white slave with some jealousy, roughly pointed to some coarse food, and in reply to the question whether the merchant was taking leave of the sheyk, intimated that it was no business of theirs, and assumed authority to make his new fellow-slave assist in the hardest of the packing.
Arthur had no heart to resist, much as it galled him to be ordered about by this rude fellow. It was only a taste, as he well knew, of what he had embraced, and he was touched by poor little Ulysse's persistency in keeping as close as possible, though his playfellows came down and tried first to lure, then to drag him away, and finally remained to watch the process of packing up. Though Bekir was too disdainful to reply to his fellow-slave's questions, Arthur picked up from answers to the Moors who came down that Yusuf had recollected that he had not finished his transactions with a little village of Cabyle coral and sponge-fishers on the coast, and had gone down thither, taking the little negro, to whom the headman seemed to have taken a fancy, so as to become a possible purchaser, and with the Abyssinian to attend to the mules.