Jealousy might torture, but hope and an abnormal vanity lay as balm upon the wounds. She had no time for the trivial occupation of finding a punishment befitting the crime of the prisoners. She had called her six most trusted servants with a view to making plans for the capture of the entire party, headed by the beautiful woman with the unpronounceable name.
Time pressed.
Let her but make a prisoner of the white man who had held her in his arms, subject him to her wiles, her beauty, and surround him with all the evidence of her great wealth, then what would she have to fear of any woman where love was concerned!
“Al-Asad!”
He knelt and touched her foot.
“They beg their freedom, those thirty fools. Their freedom they shall have! Lead them safely over the path, then whip them out into the desert to find their way back across the road by which they came. The desert is free to all—to man as well as to beasts of prey and carrion birds. They have asked for liberty and naught else; bid them begone with empty hands.”
But there was no fear in the heart of the girl who had leapt to aid the old man when he fell; she ran forward to the very foot of the dais and called down curses upon the woman above her, cursed her until the hall rang with the terrible words and the superstitious men drew back in fear.
“ ... and thou shalt be driven into the desert, O woman without heart,” she ended, “and death shall find thee bereft of power and love. Thou shalt leave thy beauty to the jackals and the scorpions shall nest in thine eyes and thy hair.” A speck of foam appeared at the corners of her mouth as she prophesied with the vision of the East. “I see thee pursuing, I see thee pursued, I see dogs upon thy track, and one, whose light cometh from within to lighten his darkness, hard upon thy heels, hunting thee. I——”
She laughed shrilly, pointing at Zarah, who made a quick movement of the hand. Al-Asad sprang down and, seizing the girl by the throat, hurled her backwards, whilst the rest of the prisoners, with hope eternal to spur them, ran from one to the other, until at last, with the girl and the old man in the centre, they marched boldly from the hall, with the gigantic half-caste harrying them in the rear.
Whispered words fell upon the ears of Almana, the gentle Damascene, as she paused to allow those in front to pass through the door out into the night. She turned for a moment and looked up into Yussuf’s blinded face as he stood near her in the shadows.