The Project Gutenberg eBook, Zarah the Cruel, by Joan Conquest

ZARAH THE CRUEL

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

• Desert Love
• Leonie of the Jungle
• The Hawk of Egypt

ZARAH THE CRUEL

BY
JOAN CONQUEST

AUTHOR OF “DESERT LOVE,” “LEONIE OF THE JUNGLE,”
“THE HAWK OF EGYPT.”

NEW YORK
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Copyright, 1923, by
THE MACAULAY COMPANY

Printed in the U. S. A.

TO
BETTY C—— OF C——
TO WHOM I AM INDEBTED FOR SO MUCH OF THIS BOOK

ZARAH THE CRUEL

PROLOGUE

“Narrower than the ear of a needle.”—Arabic Proverb.

The Holy Man, motionless, gaunt, his eyes filled with the peace of Allah, the one and only God, stood afar off, outlined against the moonlight, watching two horsemen fleeing for their lives across the desert.

Pursued by a band of Arabs which hunted them for murder done in the far, fair City of Damascus and had hunted them throughout the Peninsula, they headed for the Mountains of Death towering in the limitless sands of the burning desert and cut off from the world by the silvery belt of quicksands which surround them completely.

Uninhabited by beast or human being within the memory of man and the memory of his fathers, and his fathers’ fathers, yet did the wandering story-teller, as he flitted from town to village, from Bedouin camp to verdant oasis, make song or story of the legend which has clung to the pile of volcanic rock throughout the centuries.

A story which either moved the listener to shouts of derisive, unbelieving laughter or held him still, lost in wonderment and dreams.

A legend recounted in this day of grace by the Arabian story-teller to Bedouins, sitting entranced under the stars or the moon, yet which had been inscribed upon a highly decorated vellum by the Holy Palladius in the fifth century of our Lord, which record of early holy church was lost in the burning and sacking of a famous library in the more Christian times of the last ten turbulent years.

The story of a miraculous light, which, so read the vellum, led the Holy Fathers across the sands of death, over which they did most safely pass, to find within the mountains the further miracle of fresh, sparkling water, palm groves of luscious kholas dates, stretches of durra and grass, coarse enough to be woven into shirts, with which to replace, in the passing of the years, the shirts of hair which covered the attenuated bodies of the thirty-odd early Christian Fathers.

There, within the secret oasis, so went the legend, the holy men who fled the temptations and persecutions of the world and sought safety and salvation in penance and pilgrimage, built a monastery to the glory of God, and there, so it was to be supposed, they must have died, with the exception of one, who, following the casting of lots, had been sent forth from the miraculous oasis upon a mission to acquaint the Holy Palladius of the community’s whereabouts.

The vellum had witnessed the Holy Father’s safe arrival at his journey’s end, but of his return to the Sanctuary, as was the poetical name given the place by the renowned Palladius, there had been no mention.

A fair legend to endure throughout the passing of the centuries, a sweet story in a land of thirst and death and dire privation, a tantalizing word-picture to those who knew the shifting sands to be impassable.

The Holy Man pondered upon the legend as he watched the horsemen tearing towards the quicksands and certain death, then, with the beads of Mecca slipping between his fingers, turned and continued his pilgrimage due south, the south where the wind blows hottest and the sands burn the sandal from off even holy feet.

And Mohammed-Abd, accused of the murder of a wealthy, flint-hearted usurer in the fair, far City of Damascus, turned to the handsome youth who, loving him as a brother, had helped him to escape, so far, from the vengeance of the flint-hearted usurer’s relatives.

“The mare faileth, Boy of the Wondrous Eyes! I fear a spear or a bullet shall find its home in her body, or in mine, before she reaches yonder mass of rocks.”

Yussuf laughed and turned in his seat and looked back, shading the beautiful, almond-shaped, long-lashed eyes which had earned him his nickname and had got him into more trouble even than usually befalls a handsome youth in the Arabian Peninsula.

“There is the length of many spears yet between us, brother. Lie upon the neck of Lulah, the mare, so that the wind of her great speed be not counted against her. The swiftest mare in all Nejd, yet in endurance of but little count. Behold is there a light at the foot of the mountains moving this way and that way? Perchance ’tis one who lives amongst the rocks and who watches with intent to succour us. Allah be praised that the sands lie flat under our horses’ feet, though by the wool! would He be thrice praised if, in His mercy and compassion, He were to twist the feet of the horses which follow us and so break their riders’ necks.”

The mountains seemed within spear-length, the quicksands showed one with the desert, silvery, smooth, when the mare stumbled just as a bullet whistled past, singeing the streaming mane.

She was up on her dainty, unshod feet upon the instant, racing for safety with the last effort of her gallant heart, when Mohammed-Abd turned and yelled defiance at his pursuers.

“Ista’jil!” he yelled, “Ista’jil!”

Everyday words, which merely mean “make haste,” but destined to become a battle cry which, in after years, struck terror in the hearts of those who heard it, from Oman to Hajaz.

In reply came a volley of firing, mixed with derisive and insulting words, lost in the din of shouting and hoofs upon the sand.

“Follow me, brother!” shouted Yussuf, as he pressed his mare with his knees.

Ahead a greenish light danced this way and that, backwards and forwards, and to it Yussuf rode his mare, with Mohammed-Abd close upon his heels.

They followed the will-o’-the-wispish light formed by the gas floating above the quicksands, mixing with the wind when it blew from the south, and fled upon the narrow path over which it danced. A path formed perchance by the top of some mountain chain thrusting through the desert; hidden throughout the centuries by the inch or so, not more, of sand which overlapped it from the treacherous, seething, ever-moving sea of death; a way to safety discovered to the Holy Fathers and the fugitives before the law by Allah the merciful, the one and only God.

Over it they passed safely, with, if they had but known it, barely the breadth of a hand to spare, upon either side of the exhausted mare; they slipped from the saddle and pulled the panting beasts back into the shadows just as, with much triumphant shouting and firing of rifles, the pursuing Arabs, riding in a straight line, plunged, yelling, screaming, down into the quicksands’ suffocating depths.

The miracle of the fifth century had been explained at last.

An hour later, when the stars shone down upon a scene of perfect peace, Yussuf laughed and pulled at the spear hurled by an Arab in one last effort of revenge before sinking to his death.

It did not move. Stuck fast between two rocks it remained for all time, a sign to mark the commencement of the only means of communication between the Sanctuary and the pitiless, burning desert.

“Methinks we are no better off, brother. If, by the grace of Allah, we find again the hidden path by which we crossed this sea of death, yet have we neither drop of water nor date-stone left with which to stifle the pangs of hunger and thirst, of which we surely die if we move not from this ledge of rock.”

He looked up to the top width of a great V which cleft the mountains half-way down the side, and from the narrowest point of which there seemed to stretch a path to where the spear marked the beginning of the secret path.

Then he stretched his hand and touched the rock behind the spear, and with finger upon cracked lips softly called Mohammed-Abd, who came quickly upon tiptoe.

“Let us go warily, brother, yet let us go in search of those who inhabit the heart of the mountains, so that they help us in our need.”

They passed their fingers over the rough cross hacked in the rock as a sign of his return by the Christian who, in the fifth century, had been sent upon a mission to the Holy Palladius; then, hobbling the mares, crept in the shadows from rock to rock, up the path leading to the narrowest point of the great cleft, which made the one opening in the mountains, slitting them to a spot midway between the foot and crest.

Famished and almost crazed with thirst, the two men hid in blackest shadow, listening for a sound, peering for a sight of those who had marked the way up with rough crosses cut upon the rocks; then, alert, apprehensive, stopping to listen at every yard, crept noiselessly to the opening of the cleft. Through it they passed like shadows, and on down a steeper, broader path to a great plateau, on the edge of which they stopped, staring in amazement.

“A mirage!” whispered Mohammed-Abd in hoarse tones, then, crouching, ran across the plateau and fell upon his knees and to his full length upon the bank of a sparkling, rushing river.

Whence came the unknown, miraculous water? It flowed from the eastern side of the mountains; it twisted in the shape of a big S in the middle of the fertile plain; it disappeared through a narrow cleft in the western side with the thundering, rushing sound of water falling into space.

The waters of the Wadi Hanifa which flow through Woshim and Ared more or less abundantly, according to the season, have so far not been traced after they disappear in the fertile district of Yemama. Do they flow below the surface to the Persian Gulf? or on into the terrible desert, to be absorbed in the ever greedy sand? Are these the waters which show above ground for a few blessed yards in the secret heart of the Mountains of Death, cut off by the quicksands from the needy sons of the desert who depend upon the scanty, brackish water of deep wells, and vapours carried uncertainly on certain winds from the Persian Gulf, and which are lost once they pass above the hamads, those red-hot, dust-laden, scorching, terrible limestone plains?

Or does a subterranean river flow through the bowels of some chain of mountains stretching below the surface of the Peninsula from sea to sea, wrapped in the desert sand?

Maybe!

And may not the short mountain ranges dotted throughout Arabia’s deserts be the topmost peaks of that great hidden chain, and the miraculous waters hidden in the Mountains of Death be part of that lost river, escaping through its prison walls in the one spot where the rocks have been worn, during the centuries, by the rush and the fret of the waters below and the wind and the storm above?

Fantastic theory. And yet who knows? Who will ever know?

But there it is, and doubtlessly there it always will be, forming an inaccessible oasis, with sweet water and groves of date palms, and stretches of wheat and barley descended from the grain sown from the Holy Fathers’ scanty store centuries ago; a quiet spot, with cotton shrubs and vines, coffee plants and durra, climbing gentle slopes covered in rich, coarse grass, and herbs and flowers of every kind which spring from the seeds blown upon the wind or carried by the birds which swarm where water is to be found.

“No mirage, brother,” whispered Yussuf. “Yet must we go warily, with eyes in our heads and hands upon our weapons, for methinks the inhabitants hide and spy upon us from the rocks, waiting the fortunate moment to fall upon us.”

He passed his hand over the first of a short flight of steps leading down to the water and worn smooth by the passage of holy feet. “By the marks upon the steps there is much going and coming, and a good harvest about us. Food for the eating and for the drinking, water, the beverage prescribed for man by Mohammed the prophet of Allah, the one and only God.” He touched the amulet of good luck which hung about his neck and lay quite still, his hand upon his friend’s arm, looking about him in the shadows and up at the birds of all sizes which, disturbed by the intrusion, flew distractedly in every direction. “Stay thou here, brother. I will drink a while, then will I go and fetch thee dates, and if I meet the inhabitants of this corner of Paradise, set in the midst of suffering, will ask of them hospitality—if they be friendly—or the way back across the hidden path by which we entered if they prove otherwise, quickening their tongues, if there be hesitation, with this.”

He loosened the broad, crooked dagger in his cummerbund, and, descending the rough steps, threw himself down to drink until he came wellnigh to bursting. Replete, he rose and walked apart some feet and looked around him and stood amazed, overcome by a strange awe, then, beckoning Mohammed-Abd who drank at the river’s edge, crept like a shadow across the plateau and up a steep flight of steps made by the laying of boulders one upon the other.

The ruins of the monastery, which had been hidden from the fugitives by a great mass of jutting rock which swept down almost to the water’s edge, lay silent, forsaken, upon the natural terraces of the mountainside. In the strong black-and-white shadow and moonlight the rough walls showed no sign of the devastating hand of time, and hid the remains of roofs which, from want of repair, had at last caved in and fallen upon the rock floors. The windows of the cells, thirty in all, showed like black patches painted upon a grey background; thirty doorways gaped desolate; the dust of ages covered stones worn by the passing to and fro of bare feet, some more, some less, according to the span of years allotted to each holy man.

How had the holy men worked? How had they built to the glory of God with no other implements than their hands and the strength of their muscles and their vows?

The walls of the cells, the chapel and the refectory were two feet thick and built of pieces of granite of various sizes, fitted together in rough, mosaic fashion; they had stood throughout the centuries just as they had been put together, without loss of a single stone, just as the trunks of palms, rough-hewn by patience and sharpened stones, had stood, in ones or in columns, to support the roofs composed of other trunks of palms, laid crosswise and covered in laced leaves.

Later was discovered a place, high upon the mountainside, to the edge of which boulders, both great and small, had evidently been pushed and hurled to the rocks below, to be smashed to bits, out of which bits doubtlessly had been picked the pieces necessary to the task of building.

How many years had it taken to build the chapel? How much strength to carry the square slab, which had formed the altar, up the mountainside and to prop it upon four supports? How much patience to build up the pointed façade and to pluck out the stones from the middle until a clear cross, formed by space, showed against the blazing sky or the star-studded velvet of the night?

Why had they built? For joy? For penance? The latter probably, for the buildings, which spread terrace above terrace, must have far outreached the need of the holy men.

For many minutes Yussuf stood staring up at this mystery of the desert, and then, slowly, step by step, pulled by the strength of the unknown, halting to listen, hastening to gain the shadows, climbed the rough steps and reached the chapel door.

He stood staring down at the floor littered with stones and across to the altar, before which lay a skull, gleaming in a shaft of moonlight. Making the sign to scare away evil spirits, he stepped across the holy place, though not for a king’s ransom would he have touched the white bones of Father Augustine, the last of the holy men, who had laid himself down to die before the altar, upon which had been roughly chipped a cross.

“Christians!” whispered Yussuf, slipping the rosary of Mecca between his fingers. “Infidels!”

Like a great cat he crept out of the place and up the steps leading to the thirty cells, where, upon the stone floors, showed the marks made by the holy men who had fled the world and the luxury of soft beds. He climbed yet twelve steps more to the refectory, where thirty stones, more or less flat, stood in the circle the holy men had formed for meals or recreation; and up again to other buildings, both great and small, built to what purpose it will never be known; then fled the silent, deserted place, slipping, stumbling down the steps to the plateau, where waited his friend.

Side by side, warily, noiselessly, they climbed to the tombs, high up upon the western flank, natural caves, upon the floors of which twenty-nine holy men slept the long sleep, each underneath a mound of stone.

They lay there now, for all that is known, waiting for the last trump to call them back across the quicksands of time.

They sleep peacefully, undisturbed, for ruthless, savage as were the men who ultimately threw in their lot with Mohammed-Abd, criminals and outlaws every one, from every province and every tribe in the Peninsula, yet they respected the solemnity of that Christian burial ground and left the sleeping forms in peace.

And just as the first sunbeam slid over the mountaintops, filling the rocky bowl with golden light, the two men adopted the place as home.

An impregnable stronghold; a natural fortress in a waste place; a land of dates and water, upon which a man or many men could subsist for lack of better or more tasty nutriment; a citadel surrounded by a sea of death, yet connected with terra firma by a path of rock, which as a foundation cannot be bettered.

“ ... for if we have safely followed in the path of the thirty who sleep yonder,” argued Mohammed-Abd, looking up to the tombs in the rocks bathed in the glory of the sunrise; “why should not yet another thirty, fleeing before the law, and even thrice times thirty, come safely through the hungry sands? If two horses escaped the death, why should not two camels, with their feet as big and soft as the heart of one who leans unduly to the affections, cross that path, and, with violent lamentations and much urging, make their way down yon rocky road? And if two, why should not thirty of their brothers and sisters follow as safely, with thirty Nejdeen stallions and mares, as nimble as goats upon their dainty feet, behind them? And are we so weak that we could not carry sheep and goats, in young, across our saddle bows, so that they multiply in this place of plenty?” He looked up and around, stretching wide his arms. “Is there not place for man and beast and many of each? And are we not, O my brother, bidden by the Great Prophet to succour those in distress, are we not?”

In such-wise did Mohammed-Abd, the ambitious outlaw, with Yussuf as his right hand, become the head of as daring a gang of brigands as had ever swept the highways of the desert.

And all went well with him, his harvests yielding abundantly, his wealth accumulating, his people and cattle waxing fat and multiplying throughout the years, until he took unto himself a wife, who died on bearing him a daughter.

CHAPTER I

“From the afternoon it will appear if the night will be clear.”—Arabic Proverb.

Zarah the Cruel leaned on the wall which surrounded the chapel of the monastery, built by early Christians in the fifth century, and looked down at two dogs fighting upon the plateau near the water’s edge.

Twenty years had passed since Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, so called by his men, who adored him, had adopted the natural stronghold in a desert waste as home, naming it the Sanctuary, unwitting that he poached upon the poetical tendencies of the long dead Holy Palladius; fifteen years since he had taken to wife Mercedes, the beautiful Spaniard, the arrogant daughter of an impoverished Spanish grandee, who, made prisoner as she journeyed on business bent across the Arabian Peninsula in the company of her high-born and feckless father, had condescended to marry the notorious robber-sheikh in exchange for the liberty of her progenitor and the safe conduct of himself and his retinue out of the country. She had condescended to marry him, but in the secret places of her passionate, adventurous heart she had come most truly to love him, so that the years preceding the birth of their daughter had been years of happiness; years in which, although the raids upon caravans and peoples had been as fierce and bloody as before, the lot of the prisoners had been considerably lightened, until those who had not the wherewithal to pay the ransom demanded had come to sing as they set about their tasks of herding cattle, tending harvests, or working to strengthen and beautify the ruins upon the mountainside. Those who had the means, or friends altruistic enough to raise the ransom, had paid it and taken their departure with a distinct feeling of regret in their hearts.

Many had thrown in their lot with the outlawed chief, whilst the physically undesirable had been liberated at once and sent packing on the homeward track, so that harmony had reigned in the strange place and the welfare of the brotherhood had increased a hundredfold.

Three years later Mercedes died, leaving in her stead a woman-child, upon whom the Sheikh poured out the adoration of his stricken heart. A strange, quiet woman-child, who had neither cried nor laughed as she had lain in her father’s arms, staring past him out of tawny, opalescent eyes.

And as she grew, beautiful, cruel, and as relentless as the desert to which she belonged, so did unrest and fear and passion grow in the erstwhile happy community, until women ran and seized their children so that her shadow should not fall upon them, prisoners shrank at sight or sound of her, and the men, hating her in their hearts yet hypnotized by her beauty and her great daring, whispered amongst themselves as they questioned the one, the other, as to the next whim or new punishment her ungovernable temperament would invent.

For an Arabian she was well educated. Vain as a peacock, she forced herself, loathing it the while, to take advantage of every opportunity of learning which presented itself, solely with the object of shining before the men, who, with, the exception of one nicknamed the Patriarch, were as illiterate as most Arabs are.

A learned Armenian, a Spaniard and a Frenchman, made prisoners through an injudicious display of wealth, had each had the sentence of heavy ransom commuted to that of two years’ instruction to the Sheikh’s almost ungovernable daughter.

The Jew had taught her to read and to write whilst thoroughly appreciating his robber-host’s hearty hospitality; the Spaniard had taught her his language and the dances of his country whilst enjoying the wild life he had led between lessons; the Frenchman had taught her his language and the use of the foils, and had asked for her hand in marriage, to be thoroughly surprised at a blunt refusal.

She read everything she could get hold of, lining the reconstructed walls of two cells, which had once echoed the prayers and witnessed the austerities of the holy monks, with books brought by caravan from the port of Jiddah. She could eat quite nicely with a knife and fork and manipulate a finger napkin with some dexterity, but showed a preference for her fingers—which she wiped upon the carpet or by digging them into the hot sand—and her splendid white teeth for the process of separating meat from bone.

From her father she undoubtedly came by her magnificent horsemanship and surpassing skill in the use of weapons of self-defence.

He delighted in her physical training, spending hours with her either in a room which had been fitted up as a gymnasium after the counselling of the Frenchman; or on the plateau, pitting her skill with spear, rifle and revolver against that of youths of her own age; or away in the desert riding with the magnificent horses for which he had become famous throughout the Peninsula.

Trained to a hair, with a ripple of muscle under the velvety, creamy skin which the sun barely bronzed, she could, at last, throw an unbroken horse with any of her father’s followers, or ride it bare-back out into the mystery of the terrible desert, heedless of its efforts to dismount her, driving it farther and farther with little golden spurs until, with its pride shattered and its heart almost broken, she would race it back, utterly spent, to the shade of the mountains.

She joined the enthusiastic men in the sports they got up amongst themselves to pass the monotony of leisure hours, or hunted with them for the sheer joy of killing, laughing with delight when she brought down ostrich or gazelle, firing at carrion for the sole purpose of keeping her hand in, leaving the birds to die where they fell.

Born and bred in the heat of the tropics, which hastens the physical development of both sexes in the Eastern races, she was almost full grown upon her twelfth birthday. She inherited the beauty of her mother, save for the colour of her hair, which rioted over her head in short curls and flamed like the setting sun, and the colour of her eyes, which shone like a topaz in the moonlight or as the storm-whipped desert, according to the violence or moderation of her mood. Through the Andalusian strain in her mixed blood she had come by her perfect hands and feet and teeth, and to the same source was she a thousand times indebted for the grace of her movements and gait and the assurance of her pose.

Her father’s tenacity was abnormally developed in her. It had helped him to cling to life in the first turbulent years in the desolate Sanctuary; it helped her to beat down his almost indomitable will over matters both great and small, until, save for an occasional outburst of authority, he was as wax in her slender hands. Of his great-heartedness, his charity towards the needy—for whom he so often robbed the wealthy, with much violence and bloodshed—his justice and understanding, she had not one particle in her heart of stone, as she had not a glimmer of the humour and tenderness which had served to balance her mother’s arrogance and passionate nature.

In her, the crossing of the races, exaggerating the defects, minimizing the merits of her parentage, had resulted in a terrible streak of cruelty which roused a fierce hatred in heart of man and beast.

Virile, ambitious, relentless, she was cursed from birth by the strength of her dual nationality.

Driven, beaten, horses did her bidding, but had never been known to answer to her call; dogs hated her instinctively, but feared her not one bit; her arm still showed, would always show, the marks of Rādi’s teeth when, from an incredible distance, the greyhound bitch leapt upon her to revenge the death, by drowning, of one pup which had angered the girl by its continual whimpering. For her life she dared not visit the kennels unattended.

She had tried, but had failed to bring about the fall of Yussuf of the Wondrous Eyes, who loved the Sheikh as a brother, and would have laid down his life for him if he had so desired.

She hated him for his beauty, for his indifference towards her, for the love he inspired in animals—Rādi, the famous greyhound; Lulah, the fastest mare; Fahm, the priceless dromedary, were all his.

Allah! how she hated him!

He responded to her hate with a hate transcending that of his own dog, the maddened bitch; he had hated her blindly from the very beginning—for causing the death of the woman who had brought such happiness to his friend; for usurping her place and his place in the Sheikh’s heart; for her cruelty, her tyranny, her utter disregard of the happiness and welfare of others.

He set himself to thwart the child in every possible way and upon every possible occasion—craftily, so that none should point to him as the author of the contretemps which so strangely and so frequently befell her.

From the day she could understand until the dawn of her tenth birthday misfortune after misfortune fell upon her, until those who met her, covertly made the gesture, used all the world over, to avert the evil eye; whilst the Sheikh tore his beard in secret as he tried to elucidate the mysteries of the dead mare, the broken spears, the disappearance, almost within sight of the Sanctuary, of an entire caravan laden with gifts for her, and other calamities which had befallen his offspring, in whom, blinded as unfortunately are so many doting parents, he saw no fault.

But when the sun rose on the anniversary of Zarah’s tenth year of life, Yussuf’s hate, as is the wont of unbridled passions, turned back upon him, whilst tragedy followed close upon his heel as he wended his way to the Hall of Judgment by one of the many paths he had made, in his love of solitude, amongst the rocks. Mohammed-Abd looked up at the handsome face and smiled into the wondrous eyes which looked down into his in such splendid friendliness and bade him sit beside him on the carpet, upon which were spread gifts of gold and silver, ivory and glass and silk, to celebrate the festival.

“Zarah would ride thy mare Lulah in the gazu this night, little brother. Behold would she be well mounted when gaining the title of Hadeeyah by leading the men to the attack, even as did Ayesha, the wife of Mohammed, the Prophet of Allah, the one and only God.”

“She would ride Lulah?” replied Yussuf slowly, ignoring the girl entirely, intentionally, so as to rouse her anger. “Lulah, descendant of the mare that brought thee safely across the path so many moons ago?”

As it happened, Zarah did not mind if she rode mare or stallion in her first raid upon a caravan which had been reported as travelling, heavily laden, towards Hutah.

Foiled, up to that very moment, in all her efforts to break or bend the man she hated with all her heart, she was making one last effort to triumph over him.

Incapable of understanding the friendship between the men, under-estimating Yussuf’s strength of character, believing, in her colossal vanity, that he was merely the victim of a petty jealousy roused by her beauty and her power over the Sheikh, she had decided to make her request before her father upon a day when, so she thought, no one would dare refuse her anything.

“Yea! little brother,” replied Mohammed-Abd, “the fastest mare in all Arabia!”

Knowing nothing whatever about fortune telling, and merely to plague the girl, Yussuf, slowly and with an irritating nonchalance, drew certain signs upon the floor, then spoke, as Fate, who held the strings by which they were hobbled to their destinies, dictated.

“I see Lulah flying across the desert sands,” he whispered, “at dawn, with death upon her back. She flees for her life, with hate, revenge, hard upon her heels. She stumbles, there is ... nay! I see no more. ’Tis hidden in the mists of time. But death, death with a crown of red above her snow-white face, rode her, with hate upon her heels.”

He looked across at Zarah, who, ridden with superstition, and totally unaware that he was fooling her, leant far back upon her cushions, one hand extended, with fingers spread against disaster, the other clutching an amulet of good luck hanging about her neck.

He smiled at her terror and shrugged his shoulders, spreading his hands, palm uppermost, as though to protest against such signs of weakness. The action, the look in the wonderful eyes, acted as a spur upon the girl, goading her to maddest wrath. With a mighty effort she controlled herself and leaned far forward, eyes blazing, her lips drawn back in a snarl of hate.

“What has death to do with me?” she cried. “Verily dost thou croak like a bird of prey. I say that I will ride Lulah, the black mare, thy mare, as far as anything in the Sanctuary can be thine, who art but a servant. Hearest thou? I ride Lulah, the black mare!”

“Behold! have I ears to hear thy words, and eyes to see thy face distorted in anger! Yet I say that thou shalt not ride the mare.”

The men who sat in the body of the hall smoking or drinking coffee whilst listening to the dispute, nudged each other at the sudden, tense silence which fell between the two.

“A golden piece, Bowlegs, to the dagger in thy belt that trouble befalls before the coffee grows cold within the cups,” whispered the Patriarch, whose benign exterior covered a heart given entirely to gambling.

Bowlegs, who had gained his unpoetical sobriquet on account of his lower limbs, which had become almost circular through his infantile desire to run before he could crawl, laid his dagger on the carpet beside the golden piece.

“Nay! Not to-day. Fall the trouble will between the two who love each other as love the cat and dog, but not upon the tiger-cub’s day of festival—hist—she speaks.”

“And why shall I not ride the black mare?”

Zarah spoke slowly, clearly, whilst the Sheikh looked from the one to the other in grief and anxiety.

“Because she is in foal!”

It was a lie, the girl knew it was a lie, the Sheikh knew it was a lie, as he leaned forward and tried to catch her hand.

He was too late.

“Liar!” she screamed. “Accursed liar!” she screamed again, as she seized a heavy, cut-glass bowl and hurled it in Yussuf’s face, against which it smashed to pieces, cutting it to ribbons, a thousand needle-pointed splinters of glass putting out for ever the light of the wondrous eyes.

“The box went in search of the lid until it met with it.”—Arabic Proverb.

The mistaken love of friends saved him, though would it have been far kinder to have let him close his blinded eyes in the last long sleep, from which he would perchance have wakened with a clearer vision and a better understanding.

“The will of Allah? Does our brother live or die? Speak quickly lest I pinch thy windpipe ’twixt thumb and finger.”

Some many days later the renowned herbalist procured from Hutah, in the Hareek Oasis, by the simple process of kidnapping, and brought, blindfolded, by swiftest camel to the curing of the sick man, looked up at Al-Asad, the gigantic Nubian.

“He lives,” replied the wizened old man, gently removing the Nubian’s slender fingers from about his scraggy throat. “But would have died long ere my advent if it had not been for the tender ministrations of yon woman Namlah and her son, smitten with dumbness.”

Al-Asad nodded as he looked to where Namlah, the busy, who had tended the sick man day and night, stretched out pieces of soft white muslin to dry, with the help of her son.

“Aye, verily has she a heart made for mothering. Two apples has she, one for each eye. Two sons, though which one she loves the most we do not know. The one who is gifted with speech and is slow of wit, or the dumb one with a mind like yonder sparkling water? Hey! Namlah! thou busy ant, wilt give thy boy to the herbalist so that he acquires much learning in medicine?”

Namlah clutched her dumb boy to her heart.

“I will kill him, or her, who takes one of mine from me!” she shrilled, taking off the amulet of good luck from about her own neck to hang it round her son’s. “The jewels, the fair name, yea! even the eyes canst thou take from a woman, but her manchild, never!”

She spat in the direction of the dwelling where slept the girl upon whom she waited sometimes as body-woman, whereupon the Nubian laughed good-naturedly, bidding her keep a hold upon her tongue.

“Yea! but verily,” said the unsuspecting herbalist, “does the Sheikh’s daughter need a whip across her shoulders.”

“And thou thy tongue pulled forth by the roots!”

Al-Asad, who loved the Sheikh’s daughter with all the strength of his fierce nature, made an ineffectual grab at the terrified old man as he shot like a rabbit down the rocky path; then laughed and looked up to where the girl slept, and fell a-dreaming of the day when, now that Yussuf was out of the running, he might perchance, by right of force, step into the Sheikh’s shoes upon his death, to rule the leaderless men and to wed the fatherless daughter.

The wounds healed, the fever abated, yet for many days, feigning weakness, tended by the dumb youth whom he christened “His Eyes,” Yussuf lay planning revenge for his loss of sight.

Distraught with pain, unable to control his thoughts in the agony of his wounds, he finally decided to leave it to time, which did not mean that he murmured Kismet in the quiet watches of the everlasting night which had fallen upon him.

The Oriental submits uncomplainingly to sickness, misfortune and death, but he sees to it that his revenge is of his own fashioning and one that will, if possible, descend unto the furthest generation.

He left his sick bed a seemingly humble, repentant, and forgiving soul, blaming himself for the disaster and promising to make amends for past misdemeanour—seemingly; for not for one single moment of the dreary days and pain-filled, sleepless nights did the thought of revenge leave his tortured mind. Bereft of the joys of hunting and the daily thrills which make part of a marauder’s life, he wandered by day, ever guarded by “His Eyes,” around and about the buildings of the monastery and over the rocks amongst which they had been built; at night he lay, until the coming of the dawn he could not see, thinking, planning, discarding, to think and plan again.

The second sight of the blind, through touch and auditory nerve, came to him swiftly, until, at length, sure-footed as a goat, he passed where no other would have dared to place a foot; of a truth, there did not seem to be rock, or precipice, or height round, through, or over, which he could not lead one safely; nor human whom he could not designate by the sound of his, or her, footfall on sand or rock.

It approached the uncanny even in the blind, bringing with it a certain respect from others, who, thinking him possessed of a djinn or evil spirit of the desert, left him alone, with the exception of Mohammed-Abd and the half-caste Nubian, who loved him only one whit less than they loved the girl who had blinded him.

Refusing all aid, even that of “His Eyes,” he passed days in discovering and establishing the exact position of the narrow path which stretched through the quicksands up to the foot of the mountain. Day after day, night after night, in the cool of sunrise or sunset, in the peace of star or moonlight, or in the noonday heat, he followed the edge of the quicksands upon his knees, feeling and digging, until one noon his slender fingers found that for which they searched. He turned his face to the sun, and, sure-footed as a goat, picked his way, step by step, backwards, feeling, feeling with his toes, across the quaking bog to the spear stuck fast between two rocks.

There he passed the blazing hours, registering the location of the path by the lay of the sun upon the rocks and his mutilated face; and never once, afterwards, did he fail by day to find his way, unaided, either going out or coming in, across the narrow way.

He crossed to the desert at night upon the back of either one or the other of the two animals he loved to ride, and which, with the help of “His Eyes” and much patience, he trained to negotiate the path without fear and without help of guiding hand or knee.

During the training, Lulah, spoilt and sensitive, had wellnigh lost her life more times than could be numbered; whereas Fahm, the black dromedary, ambled indifferently across the dangerous path as though its great, cushioned feet trod the desert sands.

A magnificent beast, this black hejeen of Oman.

Brainless as a sheep, swift as the wind, as enduring as it was obstinate, it was worth the price of many blood-red rubies on account of its colour, and had fallen to Yussuf as his share of the spoil resultant upon a sanguinary and none too successful attack upon a caravan of camels belonging to the great Sheikh Hahmed, the Camel King.

And with it all he waited, patiently and with the Oriental’s fatalism, throughout the years, for his revenge upon Zarah the Arabian.

Subtle, crafty, determined that by his hand alone should punishment fall upon her, he had argued with and beseeched the Sheikh and his fellow-men to spare her. Even upon the night of the disaster had he whispered, between the cut lips held together by the hour in Namlah’s tender fingers—had whispered in urgent entreaty, until the men, crowding about his couch, thinking him crazed with fever, touched their foreheads as they looked at each other and made oath upon the beard of the Prophet to do so.

They had thought him crazed with fever then, thereafter they ever thought him slightly mad.

They would touch their foreheads when he spoke gently of the girl, and would shake their heads when he questioned them closely about the suitors who, afire with the tales of her beauty and her wealth, came themselves or sent emissaries laden with gifts, piled high on camel back, to ask her hand in marriage.

They thought him slightly mad, whereas, if they could but have seen into his sane and cunning mind, they would have understood that his interest in the girl’s marriage had root in a great fear that he would so be cheated of his revenge.

But Zarah, exceeding proud of the European blood in her veins, had no wish to wed at an age when European girls were still at school, neither had she the slightest intention of becoming one of the four wives which Mohammed the Prophet in his wisdom, knowing the weakness of character and want of self-control in man, allotted unto the male sex. So that Yussuf sighed in relief as each suitor, blindfolded, was led back across the path by which, blindfolded, he had come, and, laden with gifts, set upon the homeward track.

Actively, he knew he could do nothing in revenge until Fate whispered in his ear, but in a hundred ways, a hundred times a day, he made the girl’s life a burden to her.

He refused to cover his face, which was no fit sight for man or woman, and took to haunting her, craftily withal, so that it seemed that by mere chance his shadow fell so often upon the path she trod.

She had no escape from him.

If she passed in a crowd he picked out her footfall; when the place was full of the sound of the neighing of horses and the barking of dogs, he could hear her coming, and, quick and silent as a beast of prey, sliding, slipping, holding by his hands, would reach the spot where, knowing the turns and twists of every path, he knew that she must pass; he would stand or sit without movement, staring at her out of sightless orbits, whilst she, believing him ignorant of her presence, would pass swiftly, silently, with averted head and fingers spread against misfortune.

He stood close behind her in the shadows, wrapped in the Bedouin cloak, as she leaned on the wall watching the fight between the dogs, one of which had been accepted as a gift by the rejected suitor who, at that moment, made his adieux to the Sheikh in the Hall of Judgment.

In the depths of the girl’s startling eyes shone a merciless light; an amused smile curved the beautiful, scarlet mouth; she clapped her hands covered in jewels, and, jogged by Fate, laughed aloud at the despair of the groom who had allowed the dogs to escape from the kennels.

Jaw locked in jaw, bleeding, exhausted, the dogs were fighting to the death, but they sprang apart when the sound of the girl’s laughter was brought to them on the evening breeze and crouched, glaring upwards, ruffs on end, growling, the anger of the moment forgotten in their hatred of the woman.

Furious at the dogs’ display of hatred in front of the attendant, consumed with a desire to punish them, Zarah turned to run up the steps leading to the Hall of Judgment where were stacked the weapons of defence.

“Thy spear!” she shouted to a youth who came towards her from the men’s quarters.

She seized it from him and leapt upon the wall, standing straight and beautiful, her white draperies blown against her by the evening breeze. She paid no attention to the shouting of the groom; instead, she took careful aim and laughed as the spear, flashing like silver in the sun rays, sped downwards and buried itself in the flank of the greyhound which had been accepted as a gift by her father’s guest.

Her vanity appeased, she turned away, neither did she look back as she mounted the steps to her own dwelling.

Had she but glanced over her shoulder she might have taken a warning from the terrible look of satisfaction on blind Yussuf’s face.

“‘The little bird preens the breast, while the sportsman sets his net.’” He laughed to himself as he muttered the proverb, and passed on into the shadows and out of sight.

CHAPTER II

“If thou wert to see my luck, thou wouldst trample it underfoot.”—Arabic Proverb.

Insolently indifferent Zarah stood, some hours later, in the Hall of Judgment waiting for the verdict to be passed.

In outraging her father’s hospitality by killing the dog accepted as a gift by the guest beneath his roof, she had committed the one sin unforgivable to the Arab.

The hospitality of the Arab to-day is as great and as genuine as in the days of Ishmael and Joktan—of either the one or the other he is supposed to be the direct descendant.

Three days is the prescribed limit to the Arab’s bounteousness on behalf of the stranger within the gates, though, if the guest’s company prove agreeable it will doubtlessly be offered for a period extending over weeks, or months, or even years. In any case, however, the three days’ limit is never strictly adhered to, even if there be but little sympathy between host and guest, and once the latter has eaten an Arab’s salt he can count himself as absolutely safe for roof and sustenance, until courtesy or necessity bids him to move on. The Arab may hate the very sight of his guest and loathe his habits and disagree entirely with his views on life, but, whilst aching to see his back, will patiently bear with him and offer him of his best; he may be longing to know whence his guest came and whither he goes, but not a question will he ask if the stranger should not see fit to enlighten him as to his movements; and a traveller can most assuredly feel at ease about his precious life and belongings as long as he is under an Arab’s roof—as guest.

An Arab will give his life for you if you have broken bread with him, and under the same conditions he will not touch a button or a biscuit belonging to you, even though he may be wellnigh starving and dressed in rags himself.

The Emeer, or ruler, of one of the Wahhabee provinces had come in person, though secretly, to ask for the hand of the girl, the fame of whose beauty had been spread throughout the Peninsula by prisoners who had worked or paid their way back to freedom. He had not come straightforwardly, because, even in Arabia, the powers that be, however insignificant, do not openly deal with outlaws. His offer to include Zarah amongst his wives and to give her all that she might wish for—within reason—had been refused, not because he already had three wives and various lesser lights of the harem, who were known to fight between themselves like cats, or because he was of middle age and inclined to rotundity, but just because Zarah already had everything she could wish for, within reason and without, and had no intention of marrying without love.

He had proffered his gifts and had accepted his host’s in return, and his eyes had glistened at the sight of the slender beauty of the greyhound which, within an hour of his departure, had been killed by his host’s daughter.

The Sheikh had many greyhounds; in fact, a pair had been substituted for the one killed, but that was not the point; the dead dog having been accepted had become the guest’s property, therefore it had also become sacred in the eyes of the host and the host’s family and servants.

The severest sentence, ofttimes that of death, is passed upon those who break the Arab’s law of hospitality, so that Zarah stood, beautiful, insolent, alone, in the Hall of Judgment waiting to hear what punishment the two, so deeply wounded in their pride, would mete out to her.

And as she stood, knowing the power of her beauty, therefore fearing naught, she looked indolently round the room, once a monk’s refectory, and thought in her greedy heart of how it would be decorated to enhance her power when once she reigned supreme.

The Sheikh’s taste was rather primitive and inclined more to the useful than to the ornamental. Prisoners had worked upon the rock floor until the surface had been made smooth, and upon it had been thrown skins of the small, ferocious tiger, the panther, the Nejd wolf, and other wild beasts of the Peninsula, with rugs woven from camel’s hair, patterned in different colours.

Great brass bowls, full of water, stood upon the thirty stools of stone, once used by the holy men as seats, now ranged against the walls upon which hung weapons of every sort, calibre and age, either honestly bought in towns or lifted in a raid. Lances or throwing spears, heavy and light, swords, knives, daggers ornamented with every conceivable device, and firearms of most genuine antiquity, even match-lock or flint-guns, which, however, should not be treated with contempt when in the hands of the Bedouin. He is a splendid marksman, no matter what the age of the weapon he may handle.

The Sheikh and his men were magnificently armed, wealth and craft having procured them their hearts’ delight in the shape of the most up-to-date rifles and revolvers, which they loved a good deal more than their wives and almost as much as their sons.

The two men sat on cushions upon a dais at the end of the hall, the guest, in the place of honour upon the Sheikh’s left hand, looking down, perplexed, uneasy, at the beautiful girl who stood so superbly indifferent just below them.

She had dressed for the occasion.

A Banian or Indian merchant, taken prisoner one time, had introduced and taught the men’s wives and daughters how to manipulate the sari. Zarah had learned from them and had acquired a knack of winding yards upon yards of stuff about her slender person, as far down as her ankles and back again to her lissom waist, where she stuffed the ends in. She had wrapped yards of some glittering, yellow material around her this day, tightly enough to outline her superb figure but not to impede her movements as she walked upon her toes and from her hips in a manner insolent beyond words. Her beautiful arms and neck were bare, her small feet shod in golden sandals; she wore no jewels and looked young and innocent and altogether harmless until she looked up and sideways into the guest’s eyes.

She sighed a little and clasped her hands just above her heart of flint and looked down again, well content, believing that the love-stricken man would be on her side whatever punishment her outraged father should feel inclined to pass upon her in his terrible wrath.

“My heart is broken, my pride shattered, the law of my fathers’ fathers set at naught by thee, O my daughter!” said the Sheikh quietly, as he sat, torn between a desire to pass the sentence of death upon the offender and a longing to spare the daughter he loved so much. “Know’st thou that if my men were to sit in judgment upon thee that they would drive thee out into the desert to die of hunger and thirst for what thou hast done to this my guest?”

Zarah bent her head and stood with hands clasped upon her breast, a figure of contrition; and it was as well the deluded men were unable to see the look in her eyes or the twitching of the fingers which were aching to steal to a very small but very workmanlike automatic she invariably carried in her girdle.

“I am at a loss, my daughter. I would not humiliate thee before my men, who will one day serve under thy ruling because, as the proverb says, ‘Him who makes chaff of himself the cows will eat.’”

He paused as the guest murmured, “El hamdoo l’illahy,” which is the correct response to the proverb and is translated, “Thanks be to God, that is not my weakness.”

There was not a sound as Zarah stood watching the men, nor movement as the men watched her from under half-closed lids, the guest with thoughts of her beauty, the father with fear as to which way his tiger-daughter would spring.

“Never has a father been so outraged in his honour as I by thee, O Zarah; never has a guest been so outraged as mine in all the history of the race.” The Sheikh plucked at his beard as he spoke, a sure sign of anger, though his soft voice was not raised one tone by the wrath which surged within him. “I know not how my guest will look upon that which I am about to propose, nay! nor if I dare to darken the honour of his house by my proposition.”

He looked towards the Emeer, who looked back at him, then sat silent, watching the girl who swayed a little upon her feet like some golden lily in the wind.

“Wilt thou O my guest of whom I crave pardon for the insult put upon thee by my child,” said the Sheikh at last, “wilt thou take her now, bereft of all dignity, as wife, to serve their Excellencies thy wives as handmaiden until the stain upon her honour and my honour be wiped out?”

There was no doubt as in what direction the tiger-daughter would literally spring.

She sprang straight forward, eyes blazing, face distorted with rage, looking from one man to the other and back as, without waiting to see how the Emeer would take the suggestion, she flung a proverb of protest at him.

“Nay! Nay! Nay!” she screamed. “‘My meat and his meat cannot be cooked in the same pot!’”

“Peace, daughter!” said the Sheikh sharply, “lest I drive thee myself out into the desert to die. All that is mine is my guest’s, my bread, my horses, my wealth and thou, if he will deign to look upon thee.”

He spoke with the Oriental’s habitual extravagance of speech, but, under the agony of the blow dealt his pride by his daughter, with the firm intention of giving all he possessed to the insulted man if by so doing he could obliterate the stain upon his own name. “Wilt have her, with jewels and horses and cattle and slaves, O my guest?”

The Emeer slowly shook his shaven turbaned head.

The offer was tempting indeed, but the brief insight into the girl’s character, allied to the memory of the warring factions already established in his house, had decided him.

He was getting on in years, with a liking for peace, good food and long hours of sleep; his line was firmly established, his fortune big enough to buy or hire maidens for the song or the dance.

Why run the risk, he had argued to himself during the altercation between his host and the girl, of keeping a caged tiger which, in all probability, would maul the household if let loose, when tame cats, using their claws only upon each other, could be kept safely at large?

“‘More just than a balance’ art thou, O my brother” he quoted, stroking his beard, “but not for one thousand woebe filled with gold pieces and precious stones would I of her.”

In her fury at the man’s indifference and the insult to her beauty, Zarah brought her punishment upon herself.

“Thou wouldst not of me!” she stormed, as she stepped back and threw out her arms. “Of me! Thou, with thy beard thinning upon thy ageing face and thy person rounded as a mosque beneath thy belt.” She laughed shrilly, looking like some trapped, wild beast, with her flashing yellow eyes and perfect teeth. “Look to thy black slaves for thy cooking, to thy withered wives for dance and song. I have the blood of the whites in me, I——”

“’Tis a pity,” said the Emeer, making a gesture of resignation before the verbal storm which hurtled about his head. “Yea! ’tis a pity that thou dost not go to thy mother’s people and so rid our race of one who does it no honour!”

“Ah!” softly exclaimed Sheikh Mohammed-Abd, as he let slip the rosary of Mecca between his fingers. “Well said, O my guest! Thou showest the way, thou hold’st a torch to lighten my feet in the darkness; through thy words of wisdom shall peace fall upon my dwelling for a space and the whip upon the shoulders of she who has disgraced me.”

The men sat silent, the amber mouthpieces of the nagilehs between their lips, whilst Zarah, utterly undaunted, filled in the time by smoking innumerable cigarettes with her back turned to the dais, which childish and uncontrolled action caused the Emeer to smile in his thinning beard.

The Arab delights in deliberation and procrastination, and it is wise to let him talk round and round his subject or, if it please him better, to sit for long moments, even to the length of an hour, communing with his thoughts.

“Yea,” gently said the Sheikh at the end of twenty minutes’ hard thinking, “it is ordained. Thou, Zarah, O my daughter, shalt go to the big school in Cairo where attend the daughters of the whites who sojourn for a while in Egypt, and there shalt thou learn the manners and customs of thy mother’s people.”

If he had proposed strangling the girl on the spot she could not have shown more horror.

“Thou wilt send me to Cairo,” she cried, flinging round, “me, who must one day, even at thy death, rule in thy stead. Nay! Make not the sign against the evil day, for die thou must. Thou art mad, O my father, nearing thy dotage or distraught or sick of a fever. What can they do, these white folk, to make me more than I am? Can they enhance my beauty by their ugly raiment? Or teach me anything that I do not know about horses or the dance, or soften my voice by teaching me their language, which sounds like the hissing of snakes caught in a basket; can they?”

“Nay! they cannot!” indifferently replied the Sheikh, who was as easy to move as a pyramid once his mind was set upon a project. “But they can teach thee to eat even as did thy mother and less like a dog with a bone between its teeth; also can they drive home the duty of a daughter towards her father’s guests. For two years shalt thou sojourn amongst the stranger, then will I marry thee to whomsoever I will, if perchance there be a man who will look with favour upon one who has so dishonoured the name of her father.”

The Emeer, who was thoroughly enjoying the taming of the beautiful shrew, nodded his head in approval, whereupon the girl’s hand slipped to her girdle. She was mad with rage, ripe for direst mischief, ready to kill through the workings of her untutored mind, but she reckoned without the Sheikh, who had not ruled a band of outlaws for nothing.

As her hand slipped to her girdle he sprang, and, catching her by the wrist, flung her to the floor, wrenching the pistol from her fingers, whilst the Emeer sat unmoved, nodding his turbaned head.

She was on her feet in an instant, breathless, undaunted, magnificent in her fury.

“O thou,” she cried, “who thinkest that a woman can be quelled by threats. Thou canst not even keep me by thy side. I leave this place for ever to-night, taking with me the men who, in their youth and strength, love me, leaving thee the grey-beards and women and children. O! thou fool, thou fool!”

She turned and ran swiftly across the hall as the Sheikh clapped his hands; she stopped dead as two gigantic Abyssinian slaves suddenly appeared in the doorway to inquire their master’s bidding.

“Let loose the greyhounds for the night!” curtly commanded the Sheikh.

The slaves pressed the pink palms of their dusky hands against their foreheads and turned to go.

With a mighty effort Zarah played for her position as future ruler of the two servants, and won.

“Bring me first my body-women—here—at once!”

The two slaves stood like graven images for an infinitesimal fraction of a second, whilst she looked them full in the eyes, then they bowed to the very ground before her and departed—to do her bidding.

CHAPTER III

“Suspicious, treacherous, remote from good works.”—Arabic Proverb.

Neither storms of tears nor threats of suicide having proved potent enough to alter the Sheikh’s decision, Zarah, with as good a grace as she could muster, had acknowledged a temporary defeat and resigned herself to a visit of two years’ duration to the well-known school for young European ladies over the age of fifteen in Cairo.

The school, exclusive, expensive, was looked upon more as a home from home, where distracted mothers could deposit the offspring they had not had the sense to leave behind in cooler climes; as an establishment where angles could be rounded and manners polished rather than a seminary where such dull things as grammar and arithmetic could be learned.

The Misses Cruikshanks had spent the hours they should have passed in the siesta in threshing out the question of introducing a pupil of mixed parentage into the society of the pure-bred, if somewhat insipid, young women entrusted to their charge.

“We have made it our strictest rule, Jane. Europeans only!”

“We have, Amelia, and Maria Oporto, the dull little Portuguese, is almost as swarthy and dense as the new scullery-maid who is a mixture of Arab and Abyssinian!” had countered Jane, who kept the books and knew to a piastre what the new wing, with the gymnasium, was going to cost.

“We may lose our entire connexion if we break it, Jane.”

“Not if we emphasize the title of her maternal grandfather. Remember, he was a Spanish nobleman. Besides, look at the terms offered. No interference from the father, who is evidently a person of great position in Arabia, fees for two years which will come to as much, if not more, than the fees for all the pupils put together for three years, and extra for holidays if we will keep her with us.”

“Of course, we might make enough to buy a cottage in Cornwall and retire, if we took the plunge, Jane.”

“We might, if you think we could exchange this for east winds and grey skies.”

They had both turned and looked out through the open window to the intense blueness of the sky, the glare of the sun, and the green of the palms tossing in the light breeze.

The school stood in the European quarter, within a stone’s throw of the Midan where the young ladies, whose parents could afford the extra course in riding, exercised and worried their riding master’s patience and their mounts to fiddle-strings before breakfast twice a week.

All the joyous or irritating noises, according to your mood, of a big Egyptian city had come to the spinsters’ ears as they had sat, uncertain, weighing the pros and cons of the problem.

“If we break the rule just this once—and after all she is half Spanish—we might be able to go round the world before retiring,” had tempted Jane, who hadn’t the slightest intention of giving up work until she dropped dead between the shafts of enterprise.

“And I dare say she will be a dear, gentle, little soul, with big brown eyes and pretty ways,” had replied Amelia, surrendering unconditionally.

The “gentle little soul” swept down upon Jane and Amelia Cruikshanks like a tornado, leaving a trail of wreckage in her path.

She duly arrived at midday, on camelback, alone, surrounded by an armed escort, with half a dozen snarling dromedaries, laden with gifts, bringing up the rear.

A shouting, delighted crowd from the streets surged into the school grounds in the wake of the dromedaries, trampling down the sparse flowers and the cherished grass; the girls refused to move from the windows in response to the bell for tiffin, and screamed with delight when the boot-boy inadvertently opened the door of a cage containing six black and white monkeys and allowed them to escape into the house.

Having sworn some unprintable oaths and lain her whip smartly across the shoulders of the camel driver who had not shown himself over-deft in getting her camel’s legs tucked under, Zarah swept regally into the cool hall. She made a startling picture in blazing magenta satin embroidered in gold, as she greeted the Misses Cruikshanks. They quaked visibly at the knee—at least Amelia did—whilst the armed escort, in concert with the school servants, packed the hall with bales of silk, boxes of sweetmeats, cages of birds, trays of jewels, and exquisite pots in brass and earthenware. Amelia trotted forward in greeting, and nearly swooned under the overpowering scent which emanated from the new pupil’s raiment, whilst Jane eyed her from veiled head to dainty sandal and, being an infallible judge of character by dint of sheer practice, set her mouth. Her heart, heavy through the school-books which had shown a distinct deficit, had been considerably lightened when the Sheikh had paid her in advance half the fees due for the taming of his child; and she had not the slightest intention of refunding that thrice-blessed sum, even if she had to emulate Job for a period of two years, whilst breaking in the girl committed to her care.

“I’m here and I’m hungry!” said Zarah, in French, in response to Miss Amelia’s greeting, who thereupon withdrew her hand with a hurt look in her gentle, blue eyes.

“Are you?” decisively replied Jane, who adored the sister she ruled. “Then you’d better come and join the other girls at tiffin after you’ve washed your hands.”

Zarah walked slowly across to the insignificant looking little woman, with the snap in the blue eyes and the kink in the reddish hair, and smiled.

“Behold! we are sisters in command. I rule men, you women. It will, I think, O Sister, rest with you if I stay or no!”

“You’re staying!” flatly replied Jane Cruikshanks. “Come and wash your hands.”

“I wash them after food.”

“You wash them before, here. Come!”

Half a moment’s hesitation and Zarah turned to follow the one person who was ultimately to win her respect, if not her affection.

“I will first command my men to depart.”

The girls hung out of every window, the servants peeked round the corners of the house, a still greater crowd collected to watch beautiful, disdainful Zarah when she appeared at the door and raised her right hand as a sign of dismissal to the armed escort.

A firework display could hardly have been more entrancing to the native onlookers than the escort’s departure.

With a shout the men flung themselves into their saddles, pulled their horses until they reared, fired a salvo of farewell, and tore through the gates like a cyclone, homeward bound; upon which Miss Amelia, who believed in doing her duty against the most appalling odds, trotted out to fetch the girl in.

“My dear!” she said sweetly, “I’m afraid the rice will be somewhat heavy if you delay much longer, oh! and look, they have forgotten the dromedaries!”

“They are a gift from the Sheikh, my father,” replied Zarah, as she bent low before the astounded little school mistress. “To the honoured head of the house in which his daughter is to dwell!”

“Quite so, my dear, quite so. I’m delighted with the pets. Come with me!” replied Miss Amelia, who could always be depended upon to rise to any occasion, and who secretly returned thanks that the great Sheikh had not seen fit to send six oxen as well.

The heads of the house withdrew, after the usual introduction of the new pupil to the older ones had taken place and a little speech of welcome been made by Helen Raynor, the head of the school. She was the girls’ ideal, before whose shrine they offered the incense of their girlish hero-worship, and was leaving next day to act as secretary to her grandfather who, an expert in the sinking of wells, was known all the world over as Egypt’s Water Finder.

Zarah, accustomed to cushions on the floor, sat down uncomfortably on a chair at the end of the table and finally drew her feet up under her, to the delight of the girls who surreptitiously nudged each other until they met the reproachful eyes of Helen Raynor, their best-beloved and model in all things.

They gasped when Zarah, whose thoughts were anywhere but on the doings of the moment, took a handful of rice from the bowl passed down the line, and stuffed a fair quantity between her teeth with her jewelled, hennaed fingers, which she proceeded to wipe forthwith on the table-cloth; but when she made use of her beautiful teeth to tear the meat from the drumstick of the emaciated fowl which followed the rice, then Maria Oporto, whose own methods of mastication were unduly audible and left much to be desired, burst into a peal of uncontrollable laughter.

The laughter did not last long, for the simple reason that, with unerring aim and almost as though she handled a loaded stick, Zarah flung the chicken bone full in Maria Oporto’s swarthy face, hitting her straight across the mouth; whereupon, taking no notice of Helen Raynor, as lovely in her golden hair and blue eyes and exquisite skin as was Zarah in her dusky beauty, when she rose to quell the tumult which broke out at the table, Maria Oporto, in floods of tears, subsided on the floor.

“Girls!” Helen cried above the uproar that ensued, “do remember what is expected of us towards a new boarder, and play up for the courtesy of the house; at present, you are being simply vulgar.” There fell a complete silence. “It’s ten to one if any of us were lunching with the friends of our new companion that they would find our habits unusual, not to say strange.”

She smiled across at Zarah, who sat sullenly, without a smile, victim of a sudden, violent jealousy of the other girl’s charm and beauty and breeding.

Yet might all have gone well if Maria Oporto had not lifted her swarthy face, stained with a mixture of gravy and tears, above the edge of the table.

“Yes!” she shrilled at Zarah in execrable Spanish, “and it’s a pity Helen Raynor’s going away to-morrow or you might have learned how to behave from her. She’s wonderful, and beautiful, and the dearest darling in the whole world, but you will never, never, never be anything like her, you couldn’t, you’re a savage, that’s what you are, a savage!”