“Kellamullah!” he bellowed. “What is this? Art thou mad, too, O Sakr-el-Bahr?”
“Ay, mad indeed,” said Marzak; “mad with fear.” And he stepped quickly aside so that the body of Biskaine should shield him from any sudden consequences of his next words. “Ask him what he keeps in that pannier, O my father.”
“Ay, what, in Allah’s name?” demanded the Basha, advancing towards his captain.
Sakr-el-Bahr lowered his bow, master of himself again. His composure was beyond all belief.
“I carry in it goods of price, which I’ll not see riddled to please a pert boy,” he said.
“Goods of price?” echoed Asad, with a snort. “They’ll need to be of price indeed that are valued above the life of my son. Let us see these goods of price.” And to the men upon the waist-deck he shouted, “Open me that pannier.”
Sakr-el-Bahr sprang forward, and laid a hand upon the Basha’s arm.
“Stay, my lord!” he entreated almost fiercely. “Consider that this pannier is my own. That its contents are my property; that none has a right to....”
“Wouldst babble of rights to me, who am thy lord?” blazed the Basha, now in a towering passion. “Open me that pannier, I say.”
They were quick to his bidding. The ropes were slashed away, and the front of the pannier fell open on its palmetto hinges. There was a half-repressed chorus of amazement from the men. Sakr-el-Bahr stood frozen in horror of what must follow.