“Newly arrived from the South,” admitted the dilal rather impatiently, in explanation of what he feared would be one of the outbursts that the market saw so often; “but he is strong and well, and knows a few words.”
“Forty dollars, Salesman,” said the Moor briefly; “let me see the girl.”
Marzuk’s little companion was pushed forward and, too frightened to speak, kissed the old man’s hand. He handled her with an approach to gentleness, asking the auctioneer all he wanted to know.
“Forty dollars also,” he said, when the last word was spoken.
Forthwith the dilal shifted the children for whom no bid had been yet made from the right to the left hand, and took the first vacant place in the line of auctioneers and slaves, proclaiming with a loud voice: “For the boy and the girl, forty dollars each”.
A quarter of an hour passed, while the salesman marched round and round with his charges, and in that brief period two smaller children passed from the left to the right hand side of the dilal. They were the remaining girls, for whom seventy dollars were offered, an amount working out in English money at ten pounds.
“A bad price—a bad price,” muttered the auctioneer sadly, and then he withdrew from the line and returned to the pen. “Wait here,” he said to the four boys who had not yet been asked for; “wait till the rest are sold.”
Then he hurried back to the line of auctioneers with Marzuk and the three girls, proclaiming the price and merits of his wares as loudly as possible. Several times Marzuk was summoned by an intending purchaser, and his price went slowly up to fifty-five dollars, while his companion stayed at forty-eight.
For the other two girl children, a bright, intelligent pair, and not without good looks of a kind, there was a very brisk bidding; three country Kaids were bent upon purchasing them. The three sat along the arcade some twenty yards from one another, and raised the price of the two little girls three, four, sometimes five dollars at a time, the auctioneer thanking them with a “Praise be to Allah the One!” every time the price was augmented.
At last the Kaid from a town on the far side of the Atlas Mountains raised the price to one hundred and thirty-five dollars at which figure the bidding ceased, and the two children were handed over to their new master.