A Son of the Sahara Part 46

He is a feather merchant. A miser. His home is a squalid tent, yet he has more money than any man who comes to El-Ammeh. Love has unlocked his heart. He will give all his h.o.a.rded wealth to possess that pretty slave on the platform there. He will be a fitting mate for your daughter. Think of her in his arms, and remember the man you murdered--my father, the Sultan Casim Ammeh, whom I have now avenged."

At the taunts, despite the difference in their years and physique, George Barclay turned on his tormentor.

"You brute! You devil!" he cried, springing at him.

With easy strength the Sultan caught and held him.

"You misjudge me," he said; "it's justice--merely 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.'"

Then he pushed the older man from him and, turning on his heel, went from the room.

CHAPTER XII

The market of El-Ammeh was situated in the centre of the city. It was surrounded by a huddle of whitewashed houses, of varying heights and shapes, leaning one against the other, with here and there, over some high wall, a glimpse of greenery--the feathery head of a palm, the shiny leaves of a camphor tree, a pomegranate, an orange or a fig tree.

On the side overlooking the square the houses were practically without windows, and the few there were were small and iron-barred.

Under most of the buildings were dim, cave-like shops hung with rare silks and ostrich feathers, or littered with articles in beaten silver, copper, and iron. There was quaint leatherwork and coa.r.s.e pottery and a good sprinkling of European goods.

Several narrow, pa.s.sage-like streets led into the square, entering it, in some cases, under dark archways. Sometimes these ways were barred to the mere public--the poorer people who daily sold produce in the square--and only those with special permits were allowed to enter: men of wealth and substance.

Every month a sale of slaves was held in the market, generally of Arab and negro girls; but occasionally something very different figured there--perhaps some black-haired, black-eyed, creamy beauty brought right across the Sahara from the Barbary States, a thousand miles away; or some half-caste girl from the Soudan, even further afield.

When this happened there were always plenty of buyers. Men of wealth flocked in from hundreds of miles around, for any skin lighter than brown was a rarity.

Within the last few weeks word had gone round the district, blown hither and thither in the desert, that a girl even more beautiful than those creamy beauties from the Barbary States was to be on sale at the next auction--a girl hailing from, Allah alone knew, what far land--Paradise, if her description were a true one. A girl with a skin white as milk, hair golden as the sunshine, and eyes of a blue deep as desert night; a maid, moreover, not another man's discarded fancy.

For days before the sale, as flies are drawn towards a honey-pot, the caravans of wealthy merchants came trickling in from the desert.

When the day itself arrived they hurried with their retinues to the square; some to buy, if possible; others, less wealthy, to see if the maid were as beautiful as report said.

On one side of the market square was a raised platform. From the house behind a room opened on it, a big, shadowy room, whitewashed and stone-flagged, with a barred window high up near the ceiling.

Into that room Pansy was taken by her escort in a curtained litter.

During the journey to the market she had had the sensation of moving in some ghastly nightmare from which she could not wake herself, much as she tried.

It could not be possible that she, Pansy Langham, the feted and much-courted heiress, was to be sold as one might sell a horse or a cow.

She had the horrible feeling of having lost her own ident.i.ty and taken on someone else's, yet all the time remembering what had happened when she was Pansy Langham. She felt she must have slipped back hundreds of years to some previous existence, when girls were sold as slaves; for surely this appalling fate could not be happening to her in the twentieth century?

A riot of thought ran through the girl's head during the journey from the palace to the market; a riot of numb, sickly terror, the outstanding feature of which was an inability to credit the fate before her.

When Pansy reached the room she gave up all hope. She knew she was awake--painfully, horribly wide awake, with a future before her that made her shudder to contemplate.

There were a dozen or more girls in the room, but they were railed off from Pansy by a thick wooden trellis, like sheep in a pen; brown and black girls, the majority attired in nothing more than a cloth reaching from waist to knee. They had been chattering shrilly among themselves at her entry, apparently in no way appalled at the fate before them; but they broke off when she came in, and crowded to the lattice to get a closer view, gazing at the newcomer and giving vent to little exclamations of awe and envy and admiration.

Pansy's arrival brought a stout, bearded man in white burnoose in from the house behind.

His glance ran over the English girl, but he made no attempt to touch her. Then he looked at her escort, who had stationed themselves on either side of her.

"By Allah!" he exclaimed. "This is a houri straight from Paradise you have brought me. Never have I sold such loveliness. There will be high bidding in the market of El-Ammeh this morning."

"I, for one, can't understand why the Sultan has not kept this pearl for himself," the leader of the escort said.

The auctioneer smiled in a peculiar, knowing fashion.

"Our Sultan has been in lands where there are many such," he replied.

"Now he gives his subjects a chance to revel in delights that have been his."

Other men appeared from behind, negroes.

At a word from their master they opened the door leading out on the platform. Then they stood on either side whilst he pa.s.sed through.

Through the open door came a blaze of sunshine, the buzz of a mult.i.tude, and presently a long declamation in Arabic as the auctioneer enlarged upon the quality of his wares.

The girls behind the trellis craned their necks to see what was going on, chattering shrilly among themselves.

From where Pansy stood she could see nothing. She did not want to see anything. The horror would be upon her quite soon enough.

One of the negro a.s.sistants opened a gate in the trellis and motioned to a girl. As she appeared on the platform, from outside there came a sigh of disappointment, then guttural voices bidding.

Another and another of the girls pa.s.sed out, all apparently indifferent to the ordeal before them.

Then the auctioneer appeared on the threshold.

On seeing him Pansy felt her turn had come, and the world started reeling around her.

She knew she pa.s.sed from shadow into sunshine, that dead silence greeted her appearance on the dais--a silence that was followed by a din of wild, excited shouting.

It seemed to her that the world was nothing but eyes: the eyes of a surging crowd of dark-faced men, watching her with desire and admiration.

To Pansy, high-bred and fastidious, it was a vision of h.e.l.l, this swarm of wild men looking at her with covetous desire. The Pit gaped at her feet, peopled with demons, any one of which might spring upon her.

Then the din died down to a subdued hum as men whispered one to another, their eyes still on the golden-haired girl on the dais. There was a horrible sort of despair on the faces of some as they thought of their more wealthy neighbours; l.u.s.tful triumph on the faces of others as they thought of their own h.o.a.rded gold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: For sale as a common slave at the Taureg auction block.....]

Then out from the crowd a voice made an offer.

The sum staggered the auctioneer. It equalled nearly five hundred pounds of English money. No girl, even the creamy Barbary beauties, had ever fetched that amount.

Wild commotion followed. But the price went up and up, doubling itself in ten minutes.

To escape for a moment from the sea of covetous eyes, Pansy raised her own.

There was someone watching her from a window, someone who looked as tortured as herself--another soul condemned to h.e.l.l.