'It is the Frenchi—the Infidel!' he heard the voice of Hassan exclaim, and he found himself surrounded by a crowd of armed Arabs, foremost among whom stood Pietro Girolamo—the rascally Girolamo of Cairo, who, having made even that city too hot to hold him, had, for the time, sought refuge with the denizens of the desert.
Partly clad and partly nude, with plaited hair, forms of bronze colour, their teeth and eyes gleaming bright as the swords and spears with which they were armed, Malcolm Skene saw some twenty or more Soudanese warriors, on foot or camel-back, around him, and gave himself up for lost indeed, as his sword and revolver were immediately torn from him.
Uttering a yell, Girolamo was rushing upon him with upraised knife, when he was roughly thrust back by a tall and towering Arab, who dealt him a sharp blow with the butt-end of his Remington rifle—so much as to say, 'I command here.'
Clearly seen and defined in the light of a moon which was silvery, yet brilliant as that of day, Skene saw before him in this personage an Arab of the Arabs.
His bronzed face was nearly black by nature and exposure to the scorching tropical sun. His arms, legs, and neck were bare, and their muscles stood forth like whipcord. His nose was somewhat hawk-like; his eyes were keen as those of a mountain eagle, and his shark-like teeth were white as ivory, in contrast to the skin of his leathern visage.
His hair, which flowed under a steel cap furnished with a nasal bar, was black as night, and shone with an unguent made from crocodile fat by the fishers of Dongola; and save for his shirt of Dharfour steel and Mahdi tunic and trousers, he looked like a mummy of the Pharaohs resuscitated and inspired by a devil.
His arms were a long cross-hilted sword, a dagger, and a Remington rifle.
Such was the Sheikh Moussa Abu Hagil, kinsman of Zebehr Pasha—like Zebehr, almost the last of the great slave-dealers—and whose prisoner Malcolm Skene now found himself—whether for good or for evil, he could not foresee; but his heart too painfully foreboded the latter!
'Sheikh,' said he, 'you will consider me as a prisoner of war, I trust?'
'We shall see—there are things that are as bad as death, and yet are not death,' was the grim and enigmatical reply of Moussa Abu Hagil, which Skene knew referred to torture or mutilation, by having his hands struck off, like those of some prisoners he had seen.