After dinner he made his way along the quay towards the white vessel with its flare of light that stood out against the dark night.
Evidently he was expected. On inquiring for Miss Langham, he was shown into the cabin where he had had his previous interview with her; and with the feeling that things would go his way, if he had but a little patience: a virtue he had never been called upon to exercise where a woman was concerned.
Le Breton's feelings as he stayed on in the pretty cabin would be difficult to describe. Everything was redolent of the girl, touching his heart with fairy fingers; a heart he had hardened against her.
But, as he waited there, he despised himself for even having momentarily contemplated letting a woman come between him and his cherished vengeance.
Once in Africa Sir George Barclay would prove an easy and unsuspecting prey. According to custom, the Governor should tour his province. That tour would bring him within six hundred miles of Le Breton's desert kingdom. The latter intended to keep himself well posted in his enemy's movements. And he knew exactly the spot where he would wait for the Governor and his suite—the spot where sixteen years before the Sultan Casim Ammeh had been shot.
He, Le Breton, would wait near there with a troop of his Arab soldiers. Unsuspecting, the Governor would walk into the trap. The whole party would be captured with a completeness and unexpectedness that would leave no trace of what had happened. With his prisoners he would sweep back to the desert.
Once in El-Ammeh, the daughter should be sold as a slave in the public market, to become the property of any Arab or negro chief who fancied her. And her father should see her sold. But he should not be killed afterwards. He should live on to brood over his child's fate—a torture worse than any death.
"Put your ear quite close. It's not a matter that can be shouted from the house-tops."
Like a sign from the sea, the echo of Pansy's voice whispered in his ear, a breath from his one night in heaven.
But he would not listen. Vengeance had stifled love—vengeance he had waited sixteen years for.