Straining my aching eyes in the direction indicated, I saw in the far distance a small speck against the horizon, which proved, on our approach, to be a clump of palms, and almost as soon as I had been able to make them out, I noticed that we had been observed, and that a Bedouin horseman in white burnouse was spurring out towards us.
In half an hour we met. As he came nearer, there appeared something about him that seemed to me familiar, and when at last he galloped up, amid the jingling of his horse’s trappings, holding his rifle high above his head, I recognised his dark evil face.
It was the rascally caitiff Labakan, who had followed me so suspiciously from Algiers, and against whom the dispatch-bearer Gajére had forewarned me! The man who gave me greeting was the sinister, villainous-looking outlaw who had stolen the cut-off hand!
Chapter Twenty Nine.
Labakan.
Misgivings were aroused within me by the discovery, but, concealing them, I gave him “peace,” as in flowery language and with many references to Allah’s might, he bade me welcome to their shade. Scarcely deigning to notice the brave girl who had secured my liberty and acted as my guide, he wheeled round and rode beside me, expressing hope that I had in no way suffered from my detention within the Fáda of Agadez, and uttering profuse greetings with every breath.
To these I remained somewhat indifferent. I was wondering what fate was about to overtake me, and whether, after all, I had not been ingeniously betrayed into the hands of my enemies. This dark-visaged brigand who had followed me nearly two thousand miles had evidently done so with evil purpose. His words of well-feigned welcome and apparent delight at my arrival at that lonely spot were the reverse of reassuring, and, for aught I knew, I was about to fall into some cunningly-devised trap. The reason of this strange vengeance which he apparently desired to wreak upon me remained a hidden and mystifying enigma. To my knowledge, I had never harmed him, and, indeed, previous to our meeting in the kahoua in Algiers, I had never before set eyes upon him. Yet, with the fire of a terrible hatred burning within his heart, he had tracked me with the pertinacity of a bloodhound over the Great Sahara, through the many vicissitudes that had befallen me, and at last, by his clever machinations, I was now actually being led irresistibly to my fate!
At first the thought flashed across my mind that the woman whom the outlaw addressed as Yamina had brought me there, well knowing the reason this villain desired my release. Why had she observed that I was standing insecurely upon Al Arâf, between paradise and torment? Did not that imply that there was a vile plot against my life? Heedless of the outlaw’s well-turned Arabic sentences, I pondered, half inclined to condemn her. Yet no, I could not. She had, I felt sure, rescued me without dreaming that I should fall a victim under the knife of a secret assassin, and as she rode along in silence, unveiled, and looking a trifle pale and jaded, I was compelled to admit that to secure my release she had placed her own life in serious jeopardy.