Blake threatened, promised, begged that they give Guinalda her liberty, but Fahd only laughed at him and spit upon him. For a time it seemed almost certain that they were going to kill Blake, as one of the Beduins stood over him with a keen khusa in his hand, awaiting the word from Ibn Jad.
It was then that Guinalda tore free from those who held her and threw herself upon Blake to shield his body from the blade with her own.
"Thou shall not slay him!" she cried. "Take my life an thou must have Christian blood, but spare him."
"They cannot understand you, Guinalda," said Blake. "Perhaps they will not kill me, but that does not matter. You must escape them."
"Oh, they must not kill thee—they shall not! Canst ever forgive me the cruel words I spoke? I did not mean them. My pride was hurt that thou shouldst say of me what Malud told me thou didst say and so I spoke to hurt thee and not from my heart. Canst forgive me?"
"Forgive you? God love you, I could forgive you murder! but what did Malud tell you I had said?"
"Oh, mind not now. I care not what thou saidst. I tell thee I forgive it! Say to me again thy words that thou didst speak when I pinned my favor upon thy hauberk and I can forgive thee anything."
"What did Malud say?" insisted Blake.
"That thou hadst bragged that thou wouldst win me and even cast my love aside," she whispered.
"The cur! You must know that he lied, Guinalda."
"Say what I have asked and I shall know he lied," she insisted.
"I love you! I love you, Guinalda!" cried Blake.
The Arabs laid heavy hands upon the girl and dragged her to her feet. Ibn Jad and the others still argued about the disposition to be made of Blake.
"By Allah!" exclaimed the sheikh, at last, "We shall leave the Nasrany where he lies and if he dies none can say that the Beduw did slay him."
"Abd el-Aziz," he continued, "let thou take men and continue across the valley to that other city. Come, I shall accompany thee a way and we will talk out of hearing of this Nasrany who, perchance, understandeth more of our tongue than he would have us guess."
As they moved away toward the south Guinalda tried to free herself again from the grasp of her captors, but they dragged her with them. Until the last Blake saw her struggling. He saw her dear face turned toward him, and as they passed out of sight among the trees she called back through the falling night three words that meant more to him than all the languages of all the world combined: "I love you!"
At a distance from Blake the Arabs halted. "I leave thee here, Abd el-Aziz," said Ibn Jad. "Go thou and see if the city appears to be a rich place, and if it be too strongly guarded make no attempt to loot it, but return to the menzil that will be just beyond the northern summit where it now is, or, if we move it, we shall make our trail plain that thou mayst follow us.
"I shall hasten from the valley with this rich treasure that we now have, not the least of which is the woman. Billah! in the north she will fetch the ransom of a dozen sheikhs.
"Go, Abd el-Aziz, and may Allah be with thee!"
Ibn Jad turned directly north. His belief that the great body of horsemen he had glimpsed amid the distant dust were returning to the city he had sacked argued against his attempting to leave the valley by the same route that he had entered it, and so he had determined to attempt to scale the steep mountains at a point west of the City of the Sepulcher, avoiding the castle and its defenders entirely.
Blake heard the retreating footsteps of the Beduins die away in the distance. He struggled with his bonds, but the camel leather held securely. Then he lay quiet. How silent, how lonely the great, black wood—the Wood of the Leopards! Blake listened. Momentarily he expected to hear the fall of padded feet, the sound of a great, furred body approaching through the underbrush. The slow minutes dragged. An hour had passed.
The moon rose—a great, swollen, red moon that floated silently up from behind distant mountains. This moon was looking down upon Guinalda as it was on him. He whispered a message to it—a message for his princess. It was the first time that Blake ever had been in love and he almost forgot his bonds and the leopards in recalling those three words that Guinalda had called back at the instant of their separation.
What was that? Blake strained his eyes into the darkness of the shadowy wood. Something was moving! Yes, it was the sound of stealthy, padded feet —the scraping of a furred body against leaves and twigs. The leopard of the wood was coming!
Hark! There must be another in a nearby tree, for he was sure that he could see a shadowy form almost above him.
The moonlight, shining from the low moon near the eastern horizon, crept beneath the trees and lighted the ground upon which Blake lay and beyond him for a dozen yards and more.
Presently into this moonlit space stepped a great leopard.
Blake saw the blazing eyes, felt them burning into him like fire. He could not tear his own from the great snarling figure, where they were held in awful fascination.
The carnivore crouched and crept closer. Inch by inch it crept upon him as though with the studied cruelty of premeditated torture. He saw the sinuous tail lashing from side to side. Me saw the great fangs bared. He saw the beast flatten against the ground, its muscles tensed. It was about to spring! Helpless, horrified, Blake could not take his eyes from the hideous, snarling face.
He saw it leap suddenly with the lightness and agility of a house cat, and at the same instant he saw something flash's through the air. The leopard stopped in mid-leap and was hauled upward into a tree that overhung the spot.
He saw the shadowy form that he had seen before, but now he saw that it was a man and that he was hauling the leopard upward by a rope that had been cast about its neck at the instant that it had risen to leap upon him.
Screaming, pawing with raking talons, Sheeta the leopard was dragged upward. A mighty hand reached out and grasped the great cat by the scruff of the neck and another hand drove a knife blade into the savage heart.
When Sheeta ceased to struggle, and hung quiet, the hand released its grasp and the dead body of the carnivore thudded to the ground beside Blake. Then the god-like figure of an almost naked white man dropped lightly to the leafy mold.
Blake voiced an exclamation of surprised delight "Tarzan of the Apes!" he cried.
"Blake?" demanded the ape-man, and then: "At last! And I didn't find you much too soon, either."
"I'll tell the world you didn't!" exclaimed Blake.
Tarzan cut the bonds that held the American.
"You've been looking for me?" asked Blake.
"Ever since I learned that you had become separated from your safari."
"By George, that was white of you!"
"Who left you trussed up here?"
"A bunch of Arabs."
Something like a growl escaped the lips of the ape-man. "That villainous old Ibn Jad here?" he demanded incredulously.
"They took a girl who was with me," said Blake. "I do not need to ask you to help me rescue her, I know."
"Which way did they go?" asked Tarzan.
"There." Blake pointed toward the south.
"When?"
"About an hour ago."
"You'd better shed that armor," advised Tarzan, "it makes walking a punishment—I just tried it."
With the ape-man's help Blake got out of his coat of mail and then the two set out upon the plain trail of the Arabs. At the point where Ibn Jad had turned back toward the north they were at a loss to know which of the two spoors to follow, for here the footprints of Guinalda, that the ape-man had been able to pick up from time to time since they left the spot where the girl had been seized, disappeared entirely.