“I fear not thine host of Veiled Men, fierce and relentless though ye be. True, I am a soldier, but one thing alone I dread.”
“Thou fearest to lose thy life,” observed our Sheikh, knowing that the garrison at that little desert town was but small and weak.
“For myself I care nothing,” the Colonel answered. “It is the fate of my daughter that I fear.”
“Thy daughter! Why is she here, in the desert, so far from Algiers?”
“Not having seen me for four years she travelled from Paris a moon ago to visit me. Both my captain and my lieutenant have died of fever, and we two are now the only Europeans in Metlili. The rising of thy tribesmen hath occurred so unexpectedly, or I would have sent her under escort back to the coast.”
“Is thy daughter a child?” asked Tamahu.
“She is nineteen,” answered the officer, whose name he informed us was Colonel Bonnemain. We at once knew him by repute as a distinguished traveller and soldier.
“Thou knowest what is said of the word of a Touareg,” the Sheikh said, regarding him keenly.
The Colonel nodded.
“Canst thou trust these my tribesmen with the escort of thy daughter?” Tamahu asked. “If thou wilt, no harm shall befall her. We have agreed with the Mzabs to attack and pillage thy town, because thou, with thine horsemen, hast established a post therein; therefore it must be done. But the Azjars wage not war upon women, and ere we commence the attack thy daughter shall find safe asylum within our camp.”