She knew her own men were blown like cotton threads before every passing gust of their facile emotions, and that their suddenly aroused hatred of Ralph Trenchard had given place to genuine admiration; by that she had come to realize she had no real hold over them and that, where they had obeyed her father, the Sheikh, through genuine love, they merely obeyed her because it pleased them so to do.
She was just their nominal head. She pleased their sense of beauty, and they almost worshipped her for her courage in raids, but they were too well fed, too sure of an unfailing supply of the necessities of life, too secure against intrusion and interference to wish to relieve her of the reins of government with its attendant burdens.
If they had formed one of the itinerant groups of Bedouins which have to literally fight for their existence as they flee across the desert, she knew they would not have tolerated her for a day.
True, they made no effort to run counter to her orders and to ameliorate the white man’s position. They considered the rough hut he lived in on the far side of the plateau, and the rough food sent him, quite good enough for any infidel; but they greeted him with friendly shouts when he arrived to teach them his tricks of cunning, and did their best to beat him at his own game.
If it had not been for his overwhelming anxiety for the future and for Helen, whom he knew, by hearsay, to be a very slave to the tyrannical Arabian, Ralph Trenchard would not have complained of his life or his treatment. True, he hated the half-caste, who did his best to humiliate him in the eyes of the men and, in a moment of forgetfulness in the early days, had forcibly rebelled against his constant espionage and irritating presence. He had been instantly cured of the spirit of rebellion by the sight which, with a mocking laugh, the Nubian had pointed out to him, of Helen, kneeling by the river surrounded by jeering women, as she washed the Arabian’s linen.
“And worse will happen, thou infidel, if thou dar’st disobey my mistress’s commands. Mohammed the Prophet of Allah decreed in his understanding that unto the faithful should be four wives given, neither did he in his wisdom say aught against an infidel wife being of the four. Nay! in thine eyes I see the lust to kill. The life of the white woman pays forfeit for my life; thy life if the white woman essays to shorten the days of Zarah the Beautiful.”
For fear of something worse than death befalling the beautiful, splendid girl he loved, he dared do nothing. For every word, for every act of rebellion on his part, some task even more menial than those she daily performed would be forced upon her; for any attempt he might make upon the Nubian’s life, to assuage his own outraged feelings, her life would be taken.
And there seemed no possible way out.
Not only did the Nubian dog his footsteps, but Yussuf, upon whom he had counted in his heart of hearts, had failed him, and without his help nothing could be done, no communication with Helen effected, no plans for escape made.