“He can’t make the turn of the road and live!” cried the Moor, all his dignified self-possession vanishing as he prepared for action.
“I will check the horse,” he added, in a quick, low voice. “You break his fall, Peter. He’ll come off on the left side.”
“Das so, massa,” said Peter, as he sprang to the other side of the narrow road.
He had barely done so, when the Dey came thundering towards them.
“Stand aside!” he shouted as he came on, for he was a fearless horseman and quite collected, though in such peril.
But Ben-Ahmed would not stand aside. Although an old man, he was still active and powerful. He seized the reins of the horse as it was passing, and, bringing his whole weight and strength to bear, checked it so far that it made a false step and stumbled. This had the effect of sending the Dey out of the saddle like a bomb from a mortar, and of hurling Ben-Ahmed to the ground. Ill would it have fared with the Dey at that moment if Peter the Great had not possessed a mechanical turn of mind, and a big, powerful body, as well as a keen, quick eye for possibilities. Correcting his distance in a moment by jumping back a couple of paces, he opened his arms and received the chief of Algiers into his broad black bosom!
The shock was tremendous, for the Dey was by no means a light weight, and Peter the Great went down before it in the dust, while the great man arose, shaken indeed, and confused, but unhurt by the accident.
Ben-Ahmed also arose uninjured, but Peter lay still where he had fallen.
“W’en I come-to to myself,” continued Peter, on reaching this point in his narrative, “de fus’ t’ing I t’ink was dat I’d been bu’sted. Den I look up, an’ I sees our black cook. She’s a nigger, like myself, only a she one.
“‘Hallo, Angelica!’ says I; ‘wass de matter?’