“Do I not?” laughed Warden, going off instantly into the sonorous language of the desert. “I can accomplish that and more, Beni Kalli, if you follow my plan.”
The Hausa sprang to his feet in amazement.
“Master!” he cried, “you know Arabic better than I, who have lived here many years.”
He thought the Nazarene was a wizard. Thenceforth he was ready to fall in with any proposal he made.
Warden’s scheme was feasible. Beni Kalli, afraid to be skeptical, yet only half convinced at first, quickly saw that its very daring commended it. Moreover, time pressed. He must either sacrifice his daughter or adopt some such heroic alternative as that suggested by one whom he already recognized as a leader of men. Immediate decision was called for. To defy the Nila Moullah’s will meant simply that the malcontent would be beheaded forthwith.
“I am between the lion and his prey,” said Beni Kalli valiantly. “So I face the lion. Have it as you will, Seyyid. I am at your command.”
His proverb was well chosen. Never did people in dire straits adopt bolder strategy than that which Warden had in mind. He had often weighed it and found it practicable, but hitherto it had proved impossible owing to the secrecy with which the prophet surrounded his daily life. When traveling, the Blue Man usually remained in his litter. At Lektawa he gave audience unseen. None could gain admission to his compound without stating their business and revealing their identity; he lived alone and hidden, like a spider in the dark recesses of his murderous web. Now that safeguard, previously unsurmountable, vanished by reason of the girl’s presence. For the rest, Warden relied not only on his own audacity, but on the assured cowardliness of a crafty tyrant.
There is an hour in the desert—the hour following sunset—when night wraps the earth in blackness as in a pall. It is due to the rapid fall in temperature and the resultant condensation of surface moisture taken up by the air. But it soon passes. If there is a moon, the landscape becomes a radiant etching in black and silver; even when the moon is absent, the light of the stars makes traveling safe. Therefore, the time at Warden’s disposal was limited. So many shrewd eyes watched the Nila Moullah’s dwelling that if success were to attend the coup it must be carried out during the forty minutes of darkness.
And there was much to be done in that brief period. As soon as the rapidly advancing gloom permitted, Warden and the girl crossed the open space in the center of which stood the moullah’s abode. The Englishman was so bronzed by exposure to the elements that the hood of a burnous was scarcely needed to conceal his face. The young negress, a comely statue of ebony draped in white cotton, was so terror–stricken that she offered the most serious obstacle to Warden’s project. But that could not be helped. He depended on her to draw those ferret eyes off himself for the one precious moment he needed. After that, he trusted utterly to his own resources.
There was no trouble at the entrance to the compound. The guards were Moors recruited from the seaboard provinces, well–paid hirelings whom the Blue Man could safely order to kill any obnoxious members of his own tribe. Were they Arabs, they might have suspected Warden’s accent, but the patois they used was almost unintelligible among the desert folk. So Warden spoke with a harsh distinctness.