“His life!” she cried, looking over her shoulder towards Zarah. “His life! I’ve won! I’ve won!” then flung her arms round him and held him close at sight of the fury in the Arabian’s face, whilst the men pressed upon them, their hands outstretched, waiting for the order which they knew must come.
“Separate them!”
Helen’s hair came down about her like a mantle as hands, only too willing, dragged her away from the man she loved, and Ralph’s silk shirt ripped to the waist as he fought desperately for her until overpowered by numbers.
Zarah stood half-way down the steps, looking like some great bird with her train spread out behind her, the ospreys blowing this way and that above her death white face with its half-shut tawny eyes and crimson mouth. She stood looking from the one to the other evilly as she planned a torture for the two which might, in some little way, ease the torture of her own heart.
She had given her word to spare the white man’s life, and as it had been given before some hundred witnesses, her word she had to keep, but she would make of that life such a hell that the white girl would wish, before she had finished with both of them, that death had overtaken her and her lover in the battle.
In the intense excitement of the moment no notice was taken of Yussuf as he crept quietly through the doorway from behind the curtain where he had been sitting, nor of the clamour from the kennels, which a few moments later rent the peace of the night.
“Bring them here, both of them, to my feet. Hold them apart! Thou dog! Who told thee to strike the white man?” Zarah pointed at a pock-marked youth who had pushed Ralph Trenchard forward by the shoulder in an exuberance engendered by the uproar so dear to the Arab’s heart. “’Tis well for thee that it is a day of festival, else would ten strokes of the whip have been paid thee for thy presumption.”
The youth shrank back behind a pillar, whilst Zarah looked from one to another of the men, dominating them all by her unconquerable will and her magnetic beauty.
She had but to smile and to speak to them as her beloved children and the prisoners would be free to go where they pleased; to say one word for the hall to be emptied; to raise her hand for the prisoners to die on the spot.
She was supreme in her command, superb in her beauty, but as she looked at the English girl she knew she was beaten.