CHAPTER XIII.
Every nation has just the government for which its people are fitted: at least, that is what is said by the rulers who are piously engaged in misgoverning it.—Manco Capac.
The Captain of Mamelukes repented later that he had not given his charger the treat of trampling the internal economy out of the Soothsayer, when, on looking out of an embrasure of the palace, he descried a vast mob approaching, headed by the same Soothsayer, and brandishing every sort of nondescript weapon, while they shouted in angry tones: “Death to the False Pasha! Death to the Imposter who has deceived the People with a False Heir! Death to the foreign Mameluke who insults our Astrologer!”
“That means me,” said the Mameluke, grimly. “And it seems to mean business. I wish I had Ben Zoin and a dozen of his rough riders behind this gate to-day. By Allah! we’d teach those carrion to sing another song. What is your Highness’s wish?” saluting, as he spoke, the aged form of Muley Mustapha. “Shall we comply with the petition of your royal subjects, and offer them our heads as a guarantee of good faith? or let them come and take them, if they can?”
Muley Mustapha, for answer, only extended his hand, which the grizzled warrior took and kissed.
“I take it your Highness does not mean to part with his head for nothing?”
A new fire shone in the eyes of Muley Mustapha. “What my brave guard does, that and no less will I do,” he answered. “Let the dogs come on, if they dare!”
And the dogs came. Did ever a pack of hounds fear to face the wounded stag at bay? But dearly did they pay for their temerity.
For a full hour the unequal combat raged in front of the feeble gates of the palace. Foremost at every breach the bare white locks of Muley Mustapha were seen, as he wielded his trusty scimitar and hewed down, one after another, every foeman who dared face his flaming countenance. First in every sortie loomed the gigantic figure of the Captain of Mamelukes, who seemed to bear a charmed life, and to escape death by the very eagerness with which he courted it, as sometimes happens to champions in the milder domain of courtship and love.
Nevertheless, the fortune of war had gone ill with the dauntless few against the mighty force of numbers, had not assailants and assailed been startled, at the very crisis of the conflict, by the loud notes of a bugle and the sound of tramping hoofs in the distant streets, whence presently there emerged, in the splendid panoply of war, a thousand of the body-guard of the Sultan of Kopaul, led on by Ben Zoin, the gallant champion of Ubikwi.
A ringing cheer went up from the worn defenders of the palace at sight of the relief. A wild cry escaped from the besiegers at the same; but the false Soothsayer, raising aloft a green banner, the Prophet’s sacred ensign, exhorted his followers to fight in the name of Islam. The fanatical appeal gave new heart to the rebels, so that not even the stout lances of Ben Zoin could have overcome the hostile array, had there not appeared at the further gate of the city a new cohort of cavalry, led by a plumed knight, whose face no man recognized, as he and his followers, with levelled spears, thundered on the rear of the rebel horde.
The rout of the besiegers was complete. The greater part threw down their arms and cried for quarter or sought safety in the alleys and lanes adjacent. The unknown did not draw rein until he was face to face with the Soothsayer, against whose neck he levelled the point of his lance.
“By what right, thou scoundrel,” he thundered, “dost thou levy war on the just and mighty Pasha of Ubikwi? Answer, knave, ere my steel find an answer in thy throat!”
Thus forced into a corner, the insolent Soothsayer, trusting to his sacred office, made answer: “By the right of my divine duty. I am a Soothsayer, and know that the Pasha of Ubikwi hath deceived his subjects and offended against high Heaven by palming off as his son the female child born to his house eighteen years agone.”
“And, by the divine right of my birth,” responded the knight, “I know thee to be a liar and a knave. Look at me. I AM PRINCE MULEY, born unto the house of my father eighteen years ago, and neither a female child nor a male impostor, like thee. Die, dog, with the lie in thy throat!”
With that he set spurs to his horse, and the point of his lance came out through the back of the Soothsayer’s neck. Whereat all the people cried out, as with one voice, “Long live Prince Muley, the son of his noble father, Muley Mustapha!”
But Muley Mustapha merely gasped in wonder, as not comprehending the simple way in which the truth had been witnessed and error confuted,—as, indeed, a wiser man might have wondered, had he not been told the explanation given in the next and concluding chapter.