Without understanding my words he departed, comforted.
Azad! small wonder that at the mention of his name my face had assumed its sternest, cruellest expression, for it is a name which is almost unspeakable in the mouth of any self-respecting desert denizen. In every story of the desert which I have studied there is one Sheik who is described as the cruellest man in the world. To put the matter arithmetically, these men added together equal one-half of Azad. That is how wicked he was.
He was said to be the son of a Spanish murderer who, having escaped from the bastilliano at Cadiz, lived for a time with a gypsy woman of unknown origin. Azad was the result. From his earliest years he was an outlaw and defy-er of authority. Swaggering, brawling, killing, making love, he roamed from one Mediterranean port to another, gathering about him a following of riff-raff and ne’er-do-wells. Then came his notorious abduction of Miss Sedley from the mission station at Fez. This outrage assumed international proportions. Our government, after a sharp interchange of notes with France, proposed a punitive expedition. Two months later President Felix Faure was assassinated. Then rumors began to leak out that Miss Sedley did not wish to be rescued and the affair was dropped.
From that time the name of Azad became a synonym for unbridled license. Many a time I have heard the fishermen along the Moroccan coast say, as the thunder rolled among the coast-ranges. “Aha; there is old Azad, laughing at the law!”
If we were near Azad we were near violence, that was certain, but you may be sure I said nothing of this to the others since there was naught to be gained by alarming them. I had another and better plan. I must divert them from their proposed expedition into the hills.
About four in the afternoon when the sun was beginning to lose its violence the horses were saddled and the gun-bearers gathered under the palm trees, Effendi meanwhile becoming more and more anxious.
“Milady,” I said, addressing Lady Sarah who had just come out of her dressing tent, “have you ever hunted desert lions before?”
“Only yesterday,” she replied, “but we’d no luck. Not so much as a whisker did we see.”
“We didn’t go far enough,” put in Lord Wimpole. “Effendi stuck about the edges of the hills.”
“Curious ...” I mused, “that you saw no lions ... for there are plenty of them there ... and yet....”