“Nothing else.”
“And what of my ‘daughter’—who however is not my daughter, but my sister’s daughter?” went on Mervyn, who was puzzling hard over what took on more and more the look of a very hopeless and dreadful situation. “As believers you dare not harm a woman, the holy Koran itself forbids it. But how shall she find her way back to her people alone, she who has never before been in this land?”
“We want nothing of her,” said the chief. “She may go in peace. Two of my people here shall escort her safely to within view of the camp of yonder Feringhi,” with a nod over his shoulder in the direction of Varne Coates’ camp. “But for thyself thou must go with us.”
To say that Mervyn felt as if more than half the cloud had lifted would be to put it mildly. The awful deadly weight that had been crushing him, the consciousness to wit, that by his own foolhardy obstinacy, he had brought Melian into ghastly peril—was that which afflicted him most. He himself and his own potential fate was a matter of utterly secondary importance—and, here was a way out.
But could he trust the chief’s promises? He knew that in this instance he could. So he made answer, and that very earnestly.
“You will keep faith with me, Sirdar Sahib? My sister’s child shall be escorted to yonder camp by two of your people, and delivered there safe and unharmed either by word or deed, on condition that I go with you now? Do you swear that solemnly on the holy Koran and the tomb of the Prophet?”
“I swear it,” answered Allah-din Khan, “on the holy Koran, by the tomb of the Prophet, and on the holy Kaba.” And he raised his sword hilt to the level of his forehead. Mervyn knew that the oath would be kept.
“I would fain bid farewell to the child, and prepare her for the journey,” he said. “I, too, make oath, that nothing will be done inside the tent but that.”
It seemed strange, but to this the chief made no objection, nor did he require that one of his followers should be present. He merely bent his head in assent.
“Well, what has happened? You have been talking long enough, dear,” said the girl, as he entered the tent.