“Seek his Majesty if thou wilt, but I may tell thee that he set out for Katsena at sunrise, and ere his return thy lover’s bones will lie bleaching in the sun.”
“Farewell, Azala,” I shouted. “Be thou of good cheer. Remember that in my heart the tree of affection hath struck root. I am thy friend always—always—even though our enemies may thus part us.”
“We will never part,” she cried, rushing across to me; but the Aga, catching her roughly by the arm, dragged her away by sheer brute force.
“Whither he goeth there also will I go,” she gasped, struggling to elude his grasp, overturning one of the little mother-of-pearl coffee-stools in her frantic efforts to reach and embrace me.
“Tarry no longer,” cried Khazneh, in anger, addressing my captors. “Let the Sultan’s will be obeyed.”
“Farewell, Azala! Farewell,” I cried, paralysed with fury as I saw her bow her head upon her arms and weep.
But she answered not, for, as I was dragged fiercely from her sight, I saw her struggling with the chief eunuch, endeavouring to follow us. With brutal disregard of her sex, the big, gaudily-attired brute had seized her by the throat. Her dress was torn, her hair dishevelled, and her jewels lay scattered and trodden under foot. Suddenly a scream sounded, dull and muffled, and, just as I was dragged away into the dark passage, I witnessed the woman who had entranced me hurled backward. I saw her reel, stagger, and fall senseless upon her divan.
The grinning negroes who held me laughed aloud, and hurried me along the short, close passage, and down flight after flight of broken, time-worn steps, while Khazneh, closing the small, heavy door, barred and bolted it securely. Then he followed us, biting his finger-nails in deep thought. Whither they were conducting me I knew not, neither did I care. Azala and I had, by the treachery of some unknown slave, been torn asunder, perhaps never again to meet. Only death would, I knew, expiate the crime of being found in disguise in the Sultan’s harem, and towards the bourne whence none return was I being conveyed.
My anticipations of immediate death were not, however, realised. Deep down into the foundations of the ancient palace the eunuchs conducted me, along a labyrinth of gloomy passages that showed the great extent of the Fada, until we came to a long, subterranean corridor where, on entering, I saw, behind iron bars, the lean, emaciated figure of a man, haggard, unkempt, with the gleam of madness in his eyes. Shaking the bars wildly with the strength of a wild beast, he cried as we passed,—
“Strangers! Have compassion. Have pity. In the name of Allah, who both heareth and knoweth, remove these fetters which for fourteen long years have held me captive.”