Thunderer and I covered the last quarter mile in record time, jumped a series of tent-ropes and recumbent camels and bounded into the center of a somnolent compound.
“To arms! To arms!” I shouted, brandishing my own. “Your queen is in danger.” Unconsciously I quoted the beautiful lines from the Black Crook, probably the most exquisite lyric drama in the English language. At my words startled Arabs popped from the encircling tents or raised themselves from the masses of baggage upon which they had been sleeping. In a moment I was closely hemmed in by a circle of swart, savage faces. “Heavens,” I thought, “how could Ab-Domen have recruited such tough travelling companions?”
Then, raising my hands, I addressed them, speaking boldly, fiercely, talking down to them as it were in order to let them know their place.
“Hearken, O, Scum of the Sahara, and hear the words of your master, Abdullah-el-Dhub....”
A roar of laughter and a mighty cry of “Yaa ... a ... ah” greeted my ears and with a sickening sense of defeat I realized that I was surrounded by enemies. I might have known! The men were of a different type from any of my camp-followers. My Arabs were swart but these were swarter. I instinctively looked over their heads to warn Whinney of my predicament.
“Back,” I shouted. “Back,—I am captured.”
But I might have saved my breath. The plucky fellow was already a speck on the horizon having fled the instant he saw and heard what was transpiring. There was only one desperate chance left; to jump the encircling crowd. Spurring Thunderer with both heels, I gave him a loose rein. Gathering himself together he made a glorious leap from a standing position high over the head of the tallest Arab. For a second I thought I had broken through when, straight and sure, rose a native spear hurled by a gigantic Bassikunu. It struck my courageous beast directly below me and with a scream of anguish he fell on the stout shaft, the point being forced upward through bone, sinew, entrails, saddle-blanket and saddle. Only the greatest nimbleness on my part saved me from a fatal puncture.
Like a soaring bird I leaped from the saddle, my burnous floating in billows about me as I planed earthward there to be seized by a hundred hands, disarmed, my hands trussed behind me, my feet bound in morocco leather and my head covered with a filthy gunny-sack.
About me I heard coarse laughter and an occasional remark in the crude Bassikunu dialect.
“Hah!” said one, kicking me contemptuously, “this will be a pleasant surprise for Azad.”