"In due time we reached the yacht, where the officers and crew were at their posts as usual.
"After his interview with the Sultan, Monte-Cristo, accompanied by the Grand Vizier, had returned to the Alcyon in the caique. To his astonishment he found his men lying on the deck tightly bound. On releasing them he learned what had happened, and his influence was sufficient to induce the Grand Vizier, who was greatly affected by the Count's despair when he discovered the terrible fate that had befallen me, to risk the Sultan's displeasure by aiding him to recover me from the clutches of Ali Pasha.
"Such," concluded Haydée, "was the manner in which Monte-Cristo rescued me from the hands of the villainous Turkish slave-dealer and a fate worse than death."
"Sister," said Mercédès, "no wonder you love Monte-Cristo so devotedly, for he is one of the noblest and most heroic men upon this earth!"
CHAPTER III.
THE COUNT OF MONTE-CRISTO.
Maldar and his Khouan followers had reached the desert with their captive. For a long time they heard Monte-Cristo and his men in hot pursuit of them, but the sound, growing fainter and fainter, had finally ceased. The Sultan concluded that the Count had been misled by some fancied indication and had taken a wrong direction. He therefore gave himself no further concern in regard to him. Once in the desert he slackened the pace of his Arab steed and the Khouans imitated his example. The party rode on for several miles when they arrived at a small oasis, covered with tall palm trees, that resembled an island of verdure amid the far-reaching waste of arid sand. There Maldar gave the order to dismount. The Khouans sprang lightly from their weary horses, both men and animals going directly to the wells, where they took long draughts of the cool, refreshing water. The night was now far spent, and as the abductors of Esperance threw themselves upon the grass surrounding the wells, the first rosy streaks of dawn appeared in the eastern heavens. The horses stood cropping the verdure for a brief period, then they also lay down for rest and recuperation. Soon slumber reigned supreme, for Maldar, fearing neither pursuit nor attack, had not taken the precaution to post sentinels. The scarf had been removed from Esperance's mouth, and the son of Monte-Cristo, still wrapped in his lethargic sleep, lay on the sod beside Maldar near one of the wells. It was a wild and picturesque group, such a group as would have filled the soul of a painter with delight and inspiration.
As the light increased, but while it was yet vague and uncertain, giving a demoniac and supernatural cast to the group and its tropical surroundings, Esperance suddenly awoke and raised himself upon his elbow. For an instant he gazed around him in bewilderment and terror. Was he dead, and were those swarthy-visaged forms extended motionless on the grass of the oasis the forms of fiends? This thought shot through his mind and augmented his consternation. When he fell asleep he was with his father, with the dauntless Monte-Cristo, and the last faces he had seen were the faces of French people and friends. Now he was in the midst of beings of another race, in the midst of strangers. Strangers? No, for at that moment his eyes rested on Maldar, and he realized that he was again in the clutches of his remorseless foe, and that the men around him belonged to the dreaded Khouan tribe.