Then she heard her father's voice, strained and anxious:
"Pansy, are you in there?"
"Oh, father," she called back frantically. "Don't let them kill the Sultan."
There came more muffled voices. Then the sound of masonry being shifted, as the men outside her prison started clearing away the debris that blocked the door.
CHAPTER XXXII
Evening shadows were settling over El-Ammeh; deep, grey shadows that, for all their gloomy darkness, were not as dark and gloomy as the thoughts of a man who was a prisoner in one of the rooms of his own palace.
Against a fluted column the Sultan stood watching night settle on the lake; a night that would soon settle on him for ever.
The day had gone against him. Outmatched, he had been driven back to his city walls. Even then he could have escaped with a handful of his following, and have started life afresh as a desert marauder, but there was one treasure in his palace—the greatest treasure of his life—that he wanted to take with him. In a vain effort to secure Pansy before he fled, he had been captured.
With his enemies close at his heels, he had made a dash for the palace, to fetch the girl. On arriving outside of her prison, he found a fall of masonry had blocked the doorway. Before he could retrace his steps and try another entrance, his pursuers were upon him.