It could not be true! It must be some hideous nightmare.
Yet there she was, with white face and strained eyes, meeting her fate bravely, as his daughter would. Pansy, as he had often seen her, in a simple white muslin dress, and a wide white, drooping hat with a long, blue, floating veil. Garbed as she had gone about his camp during his fatal tour.
Even as Sir George looked, Pansy's tortured eyes met his, and she tried to smile.
The sight broke him utterly, bringing a groan to his lips.
At the sound a voice said in French, with a note of savage triumph:
"Now perhaps you understand what I suffered when you shot my father?"
Standing behind him was a big man in a khaki riding-suit, a European, he looked. For the moment Barclay did not know him for his enemy, the Sultan Casim Ammeh.
When he recognised him he did for Pansy what he would never have done for himself—he begged for mercy.
"For God's sake, for the sake of the civilisation you know, don't condemn my child to such a fate!" he entreated in a voice hoarse with agony.
"You showed my father no mercy. Why should I show you any now?" the Sultan asked coldly.