The expression of Zarah’s sullen face was almost as black as the shadows spreading half-way up the mountains; her heavy brows were bent above her strange eyes; her crimson mouth set in a line which boded no good to those who might thwart her.
A chance word, an indiscreet gesture, would be spark enough to start the conflagration, and Fate, close to Helen Raynor, stood ready to fire the Arabian’s raging jealousy as Ralph Trenchard, followed by the Nubian, walked slowly from the men’s quarters towards them.
There was not a sound and scarcely a movement in the vast throng of men as they stood looking from one to the other of the three who, even in the desert, made the seemingly inevitable love triangle. And so enthralled were they, and so oblivious were the three who composed the triangle to their surroundings, that no notice was taken of the downtrodden, docile women who, headed by Namlah, and imbued with the spirit of insubordination which was sweeping the camp, also with a fierce desire to see the white woman’s shaven head, crept in ones and twos from behind the rock buttress which hid their quarters from the greater part of the plateau.
They stole along the river edge, behind their men, who were too engrossed in the picture before them even to bet, let alone to notice the doings of their womenkind.
They crept up behind the gigantic Abyssinian women who stood behind Zarah’s chair, and turned and looked at them as a couple of Yemen buffaloes might turn to inspect an ant heap.
The radiance of the blazing sky seemed to fill the mountain ring for a moment as Ralph Trenchard passed down the path made for him by the men, and stood suddenly clear of them, and exactly opposite Helen as she fanned the Arabian.
The mountains echoed Helen’s name as he called to her, holding out his arms, and her cry of joy as she flung the circular fan with pointed edges sideways, so that by mischance it caught in the Arabian’s hair, and ran to her lover.
The rocks echoed Zarah’s screams of wrath and pain and her sharp order to the Abyssinians, and the downtrodden women’s screams of hate, as they swept round the chair headed by Namlah, and cut Helen off.
Zarah shrieked in agony as the fan pulled her head down to one side, scratching her face and her shoulder, and beat the arms of the chair and the Abyssinians’ glistening bodies as they tried their best to relieve her whilst she fought like a wild cat, with her eyes fixed on the fight which was taking place in front of her.