CHAPTER XXVII
Outside a little French military settlement several ragged tents had been pitched. In the largest of them the miser feather merchant was sitting, cross-legged, on a pile of dirty cushions. As chance would have it, his caravan had gone to the south-west, and that night he had halted within three hundred miles of St. Louis.
With him was an Arab friend, a nomad like himself, who chanced also to be encamped outside the little settlement. A year had passed since their last meeting. After the first exchange of compliments, as the two sat smoking together, the new-comer remarked to the miser:
"In your hunger for gold you grow ever thinner and more haggard."
A wild look came into the feather merchant's eyes.
"It is not hunger for gold that has robbed my bones of their flesh," he replied. "But another hunger, far more raging."
His friend puffed away in silence, and as he puffed, he had in mind an Arab proverb wherein it is said that a man can fall madly in love with the shadow of a woman's heel.
"Then it's the shadow of some woman's heel," he remarked.
"More than her shadow," the miser replied in a parched voice. "I saw her before me, as plainly as I see you. A houri from Paradise."
His friend made no reply. Considering a woman was under discussion it was bad manners to ask questions. He waited, knowing that silence on his part would be the most likely way of hearing the story.
The miser's bony hands clenched, and his tongue went round his bearded lips.
"There was a girl I desired," he began presently. "A milk-white maid, more beautiful than the morning, with hair golden as the sun, and eyes deep blue as desert night. She was a slave, and with my wealth I would have bought her. She was more to me than my gold. But there was another more rich and powerful. And he took her—may his soul perish in hell."
As the miser talked, an amazed look crossed his friend's face.
"And where did you see her, this milk-white maid, with the hair of gold, and deep blue eyes?" he asked quickly.
"In a desert city, a month's journey or more from here."
"And how did she come to be there?"
"She was captured by the Sultan who rules there. Allah curse him!"
"So!" his friend ejaculated.
Then he stayed for some moments ruminating on the matter.
"Such a maid was stolen three months or more ago, from a mighty white nation whose territory lies far beyond the Senegal," he began presently. "And that white nation has made great stir and commotion with our rulers, the French. For the maid is one of great wealth and importance in her own country, possessed of undreamt-of riches, a fortune in gold pieces more numerous than the grains of sand in the Sahara. A month ago I was in the town of St. Louis, and the people there talked of nothing else. The white officers here search for her in all directions. And great will be the reward of the man who can lead them to her abductor. And great also will be the punishment of that desert ruler—even death."
Tensely the feather merchant listened. Then he started up with a wild cry.
"Allah be praised!" he shouted. "For my prayer has been granted. I have found those who are the enemies of the Sultan Casim Ammeh. The nation most mighty of all on this earth. And they will break him, as he has broken me."
Then he darted from the tent, running like a madman in the direction of the French military quarters.