Presently a Negro slave girl came forth from the largest pavilion with some garments which she passed to Jim and me.
"Izubahil sends these to you, to take the place of your rags," she told me in Arabic. "Also, a little way below the big water hole is a smaller one, and since you and your companion are foul and stinking from the prison, and since it is the custom in Frankistan, you have her leave to lave in it. But she bids you not stay long, for to be immersed in water causes a man's strength to wane, and he's likely to die from fever."
"Tell Izubahil I won't stay long."
"Afterwards the black effendi may go to the cooking fires. To you, Izubahil will speak."
When we had laved and scrubbed with sand, Jim put on white garments sometimes seen on Negro travelers from the East. I dressed in a kind of loincloth under a resplendent deep blue Kashmir robe not greatly different than some of the barricans worn by rich Arabs. There was no headcloth or face veil, no cross-handled sword and dagger that the Tuareg invariably wore. Plainly Isabel had no idea of arraying me as one of her tribesmen, no doubt good policy by a capable princess.
When I returned to the fires, I found her seated on camel's-hair cushions in front of the closed doorway of the large pavilion. At once she rose and showed me her profile. She had gone a little farther from childhood since I had seen her last; her manner was more grave and ceremonial. She was dressed in a sleeveless, side-less jacket and tucked-in skirt, as when we had first met. Her beauty was the same I had seen in manifold dreams.
She turned her eyes on mine and began to speak in Arabic.
"Omar, you're no longer a slave. You've escaped from slavery and shall never return to it as long as you ride with the Tuareg. Do you think the Tripolitan dogs could catch you now? If they discovered your flight before butter can melt in the sun, and some barraka (magic) brought the quarry master and his guards straight to this camp on camels as fleet as ours, do you think they'd show themselves beside our fires? Not when they are guarded by the Sons of the Spear.
"Will they not send to Misda for a great company? What if they do? We've already ridden sixty miles from the prison; before they can bring the Mamelukes, we will ride three hundred miles. Will they guard the water holes? What if they do? Give us dew-wet fodder for our camels and we can cross the Igidi Desert with no drink but their foaming milk. They will be as jackals trying to catch the white gazelle with back-bent horns. They will be as vultures trying to catch a falcon.
"So until the stars pale, we will rest here, in the cool, and then vanish like shadows in the desert."
She paused for dramatic effect—I could not and never wanted to forget that she came of a people as poetic and language-loving as the shepherds who roved the hills of Judea with David for their king—then she began to recite an ancient writing.
"Let him kiss me with kisses of his mouth, for his love is better then wine.
"A bundle of myrrh is my well-beloved, and he shall lie between my breasts.
"Lo, the winter is passed, the rain is over and gone, and the flowers appear; the time of the singing of the birds is come, and the fig tree puts forth green figs.
"My beloved is mine, and I am his; he shall feed among the lilies. Until the day break and the shadows flee away.
"Awake, O North wind, and come, thou South, blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into the garden and eat his pleasant fruits.
"Make haste, my beloved, and be thou like to a roe or to a young hart upon the mountain of spices."
Her eyes shone, and with the promise of a smile she held out her hand to me while with the other she drew open the pavilion door.
BOOK THREE
FORGING OF WEAPONS
CHAPTER 16
Fall of the Chain
The new moon of Ramadan had waxed but half her fill when we passed beyond the last vague border of the Pasha of Tripoli's dominions, out of danger of pursuit. For the first time I saw what true-bred, well-trained riding camels could accomplish as ground-coverers when expertly ridden and managed. Our band of forty-some people had over two hundred beasts. Every day one camel in five carried riders, two in five bore light loads of baggage, mainly grain and water bags, two in five ran free. The baggage-bearers were always offended and tried to bite their wallahs; those running without burdens were the most nervous; those that carried the black-veiled Tuareg, the most proud. Traveling in the early morning hours or, later on, by moonlight, with ample rest for man and beast, we sped five hundred miles in seven days.
Thoughts can fly faster than that, and sometimes mine turned back, for a few troubled minutes, to the Sepulcher of Wet Bones. The keepers would not have taken lightly the breach Jim and I had made in its boasted inviolate walls. The Pasha in Tripoli would thunder his rage, heads would roll, new rules and regimes would be enforced; but I did not think that the prisoners would have it much harder than before, because otherwise their output of beautiful marbles would be diminished, which would lighten the Pasha's purse. Perhaps the greatest impact would be made on the prisoners' souls, whether for good or ill, I could not reckon. Some might be encouraged to attempt escape, only to die on the iron hook. A great many might dream of escaping and hold to that dream to the dreadful last.
During this week of flight an Arabic-speaking Tuareg told me some news of the outside world, no hint of which had reached me in the prison. In the preceding year a strong flotilla of warships from Frankistan had bombarded Algiers and forced the Dey to surrender prisoners. Of late the Pasha of Tripoli had broken treaties made with these same Frankistan captains some dozen years before, again harrying their ships, so he, too, took terror at the sight, since he thought their power had been broken in Christian wars. In the upshot, both of these pirate kings and the Dey of Tunis to boot had begged mercy from "the terrible captains with blue eyes" and had sworn by Allah to give wide berth to all their vessels.
I wondered what captains these were. Some captains from U.S.A. had treated with the Pasha about twelve years ago. Frankistan was a general term for Western Europe and beyond. . . .
"From what tribe of Frankistan did the captains come?" I asked my informant.
"I didn't hear that, Omar."
"Were you told the color of their flag?"
''Ah! Ah! It had a blue square in one comer, with sixteen stars, and red-and-white stripes to the number of thirteen."
"Why, I know of that nation," I remarked when the Tuareg warrior peered sharply into my face.
"And you too have blue eyes!"
So all was well with my native land! Wondering what it would be like to be homesick again, I rode on with my good companions. On our eighth day of flight, generally southward but veering a little eastward, we came on some good wells in a lake bed grown to camel-thorn, in striking distance of the caravan road that Mahound had taken on his return from Mecca. Now we must take new bearings, and chart a course.
"It would be well, and pleasant, to rest here for five days," Isabel Gazelle told me as we sat by a dying thorn fire when the camp had stilled. "Then we will strike the road to ride either east or west."