The voice of the Lost One suddenly rose shrill and excited, and he shouted at the Pasha. "Swine! swine! swine! . . . Kill your slaves with a kourbash if you like, but a bullet's the thing for a waler!—Swine of a leper!"
The whole frame of the Lost One was still, but the voice was shaking, querulous, half hysterical; the eyes were lighted with a terrible excitement, the lips under the grey moustache twitched; the nervous slipshod dignity of carriage was in curious contrast to the disordered patchwork dress.
The trouble on Fielding's face glimmered with a little ray of hope now.
Dicky came over to him, and was about to speak, but a motion of
Fielding's hand stopped him. The hand said: "Let them fight it out."
In a paroxysm of passion Selamlik Pasha called two Abyssinian slaves standing behind. "This brother of a toad to prison!" he said.
The Lost One's eyes sought Dicky like a flash. Without a word, and as quick as the tick of a clock, Dicky tossed over his pistol to the Lost One, who caught it smoothly, turned it in his hand, and levelled it at the Abyssinians.
"No more of this damned nonsense, Pasha," said Fielding suddenly. "He doesn't put a high price on his life, and you do on yours. I'd be careful!"
"Steady, Trousers!" said Dicky in a soft voice, and smiled his girlish smile.
Selamlik Pasha stared for a moment in black anger, then stuttered forth:
"Will you speak for a dog of a slave that his own country vomits out?"
"Your mother was a slave of Darfur, Pasha," answered Fielding, in a low voice; "your father lost his life stealing slaves. Let's have no airs and graces."
Dicky's eyes had been fixed on the Lost One, and his voice now said in its quaint treble: "Don't get into a perspiration. He's from where we get our bad manners, and he messes with us to-night, Pasha."