“I will follow you to death,” replied Abd-hoo, looking up to his new master with a reverence inspired by those physical powers which, in his rude breast, afforded the highest claim to respect.
Hassan, having given into his charge the horses which had fallen to his share, cast his eyes over the disconsolate group of merchants and their followers, among whom his quick eye detected a feeble old man whom he had more than once seen at the Governor’s house at Siout. Approaching him, he inquired what had brought him on this route.
“My son is a merchant who deals in gum and senna in Soudan,” replied the old man. “He has fallen into illness and trouble, and I was going to Dongola to see him, and to give some money to the Governor’s secretary to get him released from trouble. Now my fifty dollars and my mule have been taken from me, I am ruined and my son is lost.”
“I hope your case is not so bad,” said Hassan, smiling good-humouredly; “here are one hundred dollars to make good your loss. You must now return to Siout, and, Inshallah! you will soon set out again for Soudan with a better escort and a more fortunate caravan.” He then turned to the group of gellabs, and said in a voice that carried dismay to their already trembling hearts—
“Hark ye, I know you all, and shall know all your doings in Siout: if ye dare to touch one para of what I have given to this old man, your lives shall answer for it. Now gather up what you have left of clothes and goods and be gone.”
The discomfited traders collected the goods and the sorrier nags and mules which the freebooters had left as useless to themselves and retraced their way to Siout, while Hassan and his band went off with their booty into the desert.
The news of this audacious razzia, exaggerated as it was by the defeated troopers and the despoiled gellabs, created the greatest consternation in Siout. Hassan’s band was magnified into a force of two or three hundred ferocious and well-armed desperadoes, and he himself into some jinn or afreet in human shape, equally proof against lance, sword, or bullet.
Osman Bey was furious at this new triumph of his mortal enemy, the more so as a portion of the money captured by the Bedouins had been advanced by himself to the gellabs on speculation.
Delì Pasha was scarcely less vexed at the lawless and desperate course of life on which his late favourite had been driven to enter, although his former feelings towards him were kept alive by the trait of compassionate generosity which he had shown to the old man, who had himself related it to the Pasha with tears in his eyes. Hassan’s warning threats to the gellabs had not been without effect, for none had dared to take from him a para of the hundred dollars given to him by the dreaded leader of the plundering band. The latter ere long acquired a notoriety equalled by that of Robin Hood in the olden time of England; nor were Hassan’s character and conduct very different from those of our prince of archers and foresters. To take from the rich and bestow generously on the poor and oppressed was the base of his system. Thus in every village he had voluntary and grateful spies, who gave him timely notice of the approach of any troops sent against him, and according to their numerical force or his own inclination, he either defeated or eluded them.
The attention of Mohammed Ali was ere long aroused by the depredations of this formidable band; but although he sent the most angry and severe orders to his provincial governors to seize the audacious rebel who set his authority at defiance, their exertions remained infructuous.