The chief, standing by her, lifted her up in his sinewy arms, up on to the saddle of his charger. His voice was very solemn, his glance was very gentle; all the nobility of the highest Arab nature was aroused in him at the heroism of a child, a girl, an infidel—one, in his sight abandoned and shameful among her sex.
“Go in peace,” he said simply; “it is not with such as thee that we war.”
Then, and then only, as she felt the fresh reins placed in her hand, and saw the ruthless horde around her fall back and leave her free, did she understand his meaning; did she comprehend that he gave her back both liberty and life, and, with the surrender of the horse he loved, the noblest and most precious gift that the Arab ever bestows or ever receives. The unutterable joy seemed to blind her, and gleam upon her face like the blazing light of noon, as she turned her burning eyes full on him.
“Ah! now I believe that thine Allah rules thee, equally with Christians! If I live, thou shalt see me back ere another night; if I die, France will know how to thank thee!”
“We do not do the thing that is right for the sake that men may recompense us,” he answered her gently. “Fly to thy friend, and hereafter do not judge that those who are in arms against thee must needs be as the brutes that seek out whom they shall devour.”
Then, with one word in his own tongue, he bade the horse bear her southward, and, as swiftly as a spear launched from his hand, the animal obeyed him and flew across the plains. He looked after a while, through the dim, tremulous darkness that seemed cleft by the rush of the gallop as the clouds are cleft by lightning, while his tribe sat silent on their horses in moody, unwilling consent; savage in that they had been deprived of prey, moved in that they were sensible of this martyrdom which had been offered to them.
“Verily the courage of a woman has put the best among us unto shame,” he said, rather to himself than them, as he mounted the stallion brought him from the rear and rode slowly northward; unconscious that the thing he had done was great, because conscious only that it was just.
And, borne by the fleetness of the desert-bred beast, she went away through the heavy, bronze-hued dullness of the night. Her brain had no sense, her hands had no feeling, her eyes had no sight; the rushing of waters was loud on her ears, the giddiness of fasting and of fatigue sent the gloom eddying round and round like a whirlpool of shadow. Yet she had remembrance enough left to ride on, and on, and on without once flinching from the agonies that racked her cramped limbs and throbbed in her beating temples; she had remembrance enough to strain her blind eyes toward the east and murmur, in her terror of that white dawn, that must soon break, the only prayer that had been ever uttered by the lips no mother's kiss had ever touched:
“O God! keep the day back!”