"Ya! Ya!" came the shout, in a mongrel Arabic, "a maid; seize! capture! a prize!"
It was all over in less time than the telling. Mary never knew how it befell. She was standing once more by the roadway; two men, dismounted, were holding her. The other four still sat on their saddles. All six were devouring her with their eyes, and pelting her with questions she had no wits to answer. Her captors, she began to judge, were roving Syrian cavalrymen—half warriors, half bandits, tall, wiry-limbed, swarthy, sharp-featured. They and their steeds were gorgeously decked out with strings of bright silk tassels. They wore light steel caps polished bright; at their sides were short cimeters; over their shoulders were curved bows and round, brass-studded targets. When they opened their bearded lips to chatter, their teeth shone sharp and white as of hungry cats. At last Mary found words. The blood of the great house of Kurkuas was in her veins. Even in this dire strait she knew how to put on pride and high disdain.
"Slaves," was her command, "unhand me! Who are you, so much as to look upon my face! By what right will you treat me as is unfit to one of your own coarse brood?"
The curve of the lip and the lordly poise for an instant disconcerted even the Syrians. But soon one of them answered, with a soldier's banter:—
"By the soul of my father, pretty one, I half dream you a sultana. Does Allah rain houris in youths' clothes upon the waste land betwixt Sermada and Harenc? Bismillah! we do not light every day on a partridge plump as you!"
"Let me go, fools," cried the Greek, turning very pale, but more with wrath than fear, "or you will find my little finger large enough to undo you all."
But at this the six only roared their laughter, and for a moment ogled their captive with sinful eyes that made Mary's soul turn sick. She made one last appeal, and only her own heart knew what it cost her to say the word.
"Act not in folly. Carry me to Aleppo, and deliver me safely to the great emir, Iftikhar Eddauleh. He will give you for me my weight in gold."
Another laugh, but the six looked at one another.
"Tell me," quoth the earlier speaker, "O Star that falls in the Desert, how you come here, if you are possessed by Iftikhar Eddauleh?"