Horrified by the terrible sights I had witnessed, I endeavoured to draw back, but with loud shouts the crowd, excited to madness by their work of murder and pillage, made a sudden rush to the Sultan’s pavilion, and involuntarily I was carried onward.
“Seek Abd-el-Kerim!” they cried. “Kill him! kill him!” Through the harem-garden, along the edge of the great lake, and on into the Hall of the White Divan they pressed. On entering, we found under the great baldachin of silk and gold the young Sultan, with his Grand Vizier Mukhtar and Amagay, the chief of his eunuchs, on either side, standing erect, regarding our entrance with regal air and unflinching eye. He had drawn his scimitar and was prepared to defend himself.
“What meaneth this intrusion?” he cried, the fierce fire of anger in his face. “Verily hast thou rushed into the Wrath, and the blow of destruction shall descend upon thee!”
“Spare us!” cried Mukhtar, rushing forward, trembling, cringing coward that he was.
“We are thy slaves,” added Amagay, throwing away his sword. “Have mercy upon us! Take what thou mayest, but slay us not!”
The fierce, dishevelled band, heedless of all appeal, dashed onward, led by Hadj Absalam. A dozen men rushed forward to dispatch the Sultan, but the latter, wielding his jewelled scimitar, felled the first outlaw who approached, inflicting a mortal wound. Next moment, however, the youthful ruler of the Ahír, pulled unceremoniously off the divan, was struggling powerless in the hands of his ragged conquerors.
For his curses they cared naught, but at a signal from Hadj Absalam, who had in the meantime mounted to the deposed monarch’s place, Labakan stepped forward, armed with the executioner’s heavy doka, which he had just found while searching for plunder.
“Let him die!” exclaimed Hadj Absalam briefly.
“Ah! spare me, O conqueror!” gasped the unhappy youth. “It is written—it is written that the blessings of Allah rest upon the merciful! Spare me!”
But the Sultan, pale and haggard, was quickly forced to his knees upon the polished pavement before his own divan and held with his hands behind his back. Piteous were his appeals, but they softened not his captors’ murderous, sanguinolent hearts. The great diamond aigrette was ruthlessly torn from his turban and handed to the robber Sheikh, and then, as the men held him down firmly, Labakan stepped forward, and, swinging the doka with both hands, smote off his head at a single blow.