A Son of the Sahara Part 42

His name was familiar but half forgotten, like the fairy tales of her childhood.

Then she suddenly remembered who and what he was.

The youthful Sultan who, long years ago, had sworn to kill her father and sell her as a slave!

The man Alice mentioned must be the boy grown up! It must have been his hordes who had swept down on her and Bob that afternoon.

But it was not of herself that Pansy thought when the truth dawned on her with vivid, sickening force. In anxiety for her father she forgot the fate promised for herself.

"My father! What has happened to him?" she asked in quick alarm.

"De Sultan, he catch Sir George too," Alice answered coolly.

Pansy's heart stood still.

"Is he still alive?" she asked breathlessly, horror clutching at her.

"Sir George he go also to the city of El-Ammeh, de Sultan's city."

A feeling of overwhelming relief swept over Pansy on hearing her father was still alive.

For some minutes she lay brooding on the horrible situation and how she could best cope with it, all the time feeling as if she were in some wild nightmare. Then she remembered her own vast riches.

All these Arab chiefs knew the value of money. She might be able to ransom her father, herself, the whole party.

"Where is the Sultan? Tell him I want to see him," she said suddenly in a weak, excited way.

"He no be here. He go back to El-Ammeh. You go, too, Miss Pansy, an'

I go wid you, when Doctor Edouard say you be fit to move."

Pansy clutched at the name of Edouard. After that of the Sultan Casim Ammeh it had a welcome European sound.

"Where is Doctor Edouard? Can I speak to him?" she asked quickly.

She hardly noticed the pain within herself now, torn as she was with anxiety for her father and friends.

Alice rose, ready to oblige.

"I go fetch him," she said.

Leaving the tent, she interviewed one of the guards. Then she pa.s.sed on beyond Pansy's view.

She reappeared some few moments later accompanied by a short, stoutish man with a pointed, black beard, unmistakably of French nationality, who was dressed in a neat white drill suit and a sun helmet.

Anxiously Pansy watched him approach, with no room in her mind to think how he came to be there, a person as European as herself, in this savage Sultan's following.

"Do tell me what has happened!" she said, without any preliminaries, the moment he halted at her bedside.

However, Edouard did not tell Pansy much more than she had already culled for herself. But she learnt that the whole of her father's party were prisoners in the hands of this desert chief and were now on their way back to his capital.

"But can't you do something?" she asked in despair.

"I'm virtually a prisoner, like yourself," Edouard replied in a non-committal tone.

He was not a prisoner, but he was paid a good price for his services and his silence; and he had no intention of playing an excellent friend and patron false.

"But is there nothing I can do?" Pansy asked, aghast at her own utter helplessness.

Edouard smiled, remembering the Sultan's concern for the beautiful captive girl.

"Yes; there's one thing," he replied in a soothing tone. "Don't worry about the matter just at present. But when you get to El-Ammeh use all your personal influence with the Sultan. In the meantime you can rest a.s.sured that no harm will happen to Sir George and his staff.

Afterwards I rather fancy everything depends on you."

With this Pansy had to be content.

CHAPTER IX

In Bathhurst, the deputy Governor awaited news of Sir George Barclay.

More than a month had pa.s.sed since he had left the town, and during most of the time letters had come through regularly to official headquarters. The deputy knew that the furthermost point of the tour must now be about reached; but nearly a week had pa.s.sed without any communication, official or otherwise, coming from the party. The fact was not alarming; the part Sir George must now be in was the wildest in the colony, and a week might easily pa.s.s without any message coming through.

But when another day or so pa.s.sed without bringing any news, the deputy began to wonder what had happened.

"The letters must have gone astray," one of the officers remarked.

"Or some leopard has gobbled up the postman," another suggested.

For a couple of days longer the deputy and military officers waited, hourly expecting some message from the Governor's party, but none came.

There was no reason to think that harm had befallen them, for the colony was in perfect order.

Then they sent up for news to the next town of any importance, only to hear that nothing had been heard there either.

The answer astounded them.

An expedition was sent off post-haste to find out what had happened to the party.

They were nearly a fortnight in reaching the old fort, the last spot where any message had come from. And there they found the British flag still flying over the official headquarters, but both the bungalow and the fortress were deserted. In the old guardroom and the compound were a few gnawed human bones; but there was no other trace of the missing expedition, although there was every sign that disaster had overtaken it.

The officials were aghast. Sir George and his staff had completely disappeared. That there had been fighting was evident. The bones in the guardroom and compound told them that much, but all trace of their ident.i.ty had been gnawed off by prowling hyenas.

The country around was scoured, but it brought no clue. The French Government was communicated with, but it could throw no light on the affair.

When the news reached England it caused a sensation, for Society culled that Sir George Barclay's daughter, the lovely twenty-year-old heiress, Pansy Langham, was among those missing--dead now, or perhaps worse; the chattel of one of the wild marauders who had fallen so swiftly and silently upon her father's party.

And in a pleasant English country house Miss Grainger wept for the bright, brave girl who had always been such a generous friend and considerate mistress.