CHAPTER XI
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 perhaps you understand what I suffered 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.