Miranda of the Balcony: A Story

by A. E. W. Mason

The boy turned upon his heel, and ran down towards the town. The man was left alone. He remained squatting on the ground. He heard the French voice exclaim: "Good-night, Jeremy."

But no answering voice returned the wish. Jeremy indeed contented himself with a careless nod of the head, mounted his mule, and passed out of the wicket gate. Jeremy passed within ten yards of the man seated upon the ground, who heard the padding of the mule's feet upon the grass and smelt the cigar.

He did not move, however. A road ran between this stretch of grass and the Sôk beyond, and he waited until the mule's hooves rang upon it. Then he picked up the dark cloak by his side and ran swiftly and noiselessly down the grass, across the road, over the trampled Sôk. Ahead of him he heard the leisurely amble of the mule.

"Stop!" he cried out in the Moghrebbin dialect. "I have the hobbles of the most noble one."

He heard the mule stop, and ran lightly forward.

"Who is it?" asked Jeremy, in the same tongue, as he bent round in his saddle.

"Hassan Akbar," cried the other, leaping at the point from which the voice came. "Bentham, it is Hassan Akbar."

The man addressed as Bentham turned quickly in his saddle with a cry and gathered up the reins; but he was too late. Even the cry was stifled upon his lips. For Hassan threw the cloak over his head, gathered it in tight round his neck, and still holding him by the neck, dragged him out of the saddle and flung him on to the ground. Bentham, half-throttled, half-stunned, lay for a moment or two upon his back, limp and unresisting. When he came to himself, it was no longer within his power to resist, for Hassan knelt straddled across his body, pinning him to the ground with the weight of his stature. One bony knee pressed upon his chest insufferably. Bentham's ribs cracked under it; he felt that his ribs were being driven into his lungs. The other knee held down his thighs, and while he lay there incapable of defence, Hassan bound his arms tightly together with the cord of palmetto fibres.

Bentham tried to shout, but the cloak was over his mouth: the knee was grinding and boring into his chest, and his shout was an exiguous wail which, when it had penetrated the cloak, was no more than a sigh. He waited for the moment when the knee would be removed, and waited motionless without a twitch of his muscles, so that Hassan might be deceived into the belief that he had swooned, and remove his knee and the cloak.

Hassan removed his knees, bent down to Bentham, twined one arm about his legs, thrust the other underneath his neck, and lifted him from the ground as though he was a child. Bentham was now less able to shout than before, for the hand of the arm which was about his neck pressed the cloak close upon his mouth.