The famine lay heavily upon this people. Perhaps it was due to the biscuits we offered this tribe that our interference with their ceremony was not hotly resented. Perhaps, indeed, the famine was responsible for their next move.
An old woman came out of the alcove that had hidden the girl and came directly to General Eaton. "The fair-haired one is a trouble to me," she said. "We have given her food and shelter for many years, yet when we speak to her of marriage, she weeps. When we tell her that we will sell her to become a dancing-girl in the bazaars and cafes if she will not wed one of our young men, she threatens to kill herself! Lovelier damsels than she have gone into the harem, happy to have a lord who will keep them from want. And there are worse lives than to dance at the fantasias of rich men, and to win the approval of the cafes. The girl is ungrateful and a burden to us. Our own children are starving. Give us money to buy food and take the unthankful girl!"
"Let the girl be summoned," said the general. She came forth, glancing from the Sheik Abdullah to General Eaton with fear in her eyes.
"My girl," said the general through an interpreter, "these people have offered you for sale. My purpose in buying you would be to find you a good home, where you will be brought up in the way of people of your color and race. Do you consent?" She looked at him as if she could not believe her ears, then sobbed, then nodded earnestly.
"Done!" thundered the general, "I call on Sheik Abdullah to witness that the offer has been made and accepted. I shall be liberal, too! Tell me what price such girls bring at the slave-market in Murzuk and it shall be paid."
The money was poured into the old hag's outstretched palms. The members of her family gathered round to gloat over it. The young Arabs laughed at the prospect of food. The departure of the girl in our company did not cause them the slightest concern. Maidens are held cheaply in the Sahara. A swift camel is worth more than a girl. What value has a Nazarene maiden compared with food for one's own famished children?
The general, to shield the girl as much as possible from the curious soldiers, gave her a tent where she dwelt alone, watched over by an old Nubian woman who had become attached to our party in Egypt and had been taken along for her value as a cook.
The general told a group of us briefly that the girl remembered little of her early life. There was a vague remembrance of a mother who had lived among these dark people. There came a day when she went out of her life and a scolding Arab woman took her place.
The girl and her black servant traveled on donkeys. A young sheik, a friend of the sheik, who had sold the girl to our party, joined Hamet's forces at this village. I wondered if he had planned to add the maiden to his circle of wives.