A Son of the Sahara Part 64

Rayma said, her voice dropping to a whisper.

"Who is that?" Pansy asked quickly.

"One of the eunuchs who guards your room at night. He loves jewels beyond all things on earth. And surely the Sultan has given you plenty, although you never wear them."

The Sultan had given Pansy none, because he knew she would not accept them. But she had jewels of her own; one that would be bribe enough for anybody--the great diamond that had aroused her lover's comments one night in the moonlit garden of Grand Canary.

Pansy clutched at the mere idea of escape. Where she would escape to, she did not pause to consider. To escape she forgot his colour, his religion, his wild life, his treatment of her father, everything, except her own love for him.

"How do you know he'll let himself be bribed?" she asked.

"One of the women told me. He is her brother. I've spent days in trying to help you get away."

"Oh, Rayma, I can never thank you enough," Pansy said, hysterically grateful.

The Arab girl cast a spiteful glance at her, wondering why the other could not guess that it was her, Rayma's, one desire to get rid of her rival.

"Each night after dark you must open your door," the Arab girl went on.

"There will come a night when only one of the guards will be here.

Then, if you bribe him enough, he will let you pa.s.s."

Rayma did not imagine that Pansy would escape. She expected and hoped that she would be caught in the attempt. Judging by her desert standards, death would be the portion of any slave-girl who dared attempt to fly from her owner.

After that, every night when she was alone, Pansy opened the sandalwood door leading into the long, dark pa.s.sage by which she had first entered the palace.

Then, one evening, she found only one of the jewelled guards there.

On seeing this, she closed the door again, and going to her jewel case got out the one big diamond.

From the gallery of her sumptuous prison she had gathered that beyond the rose garden lay the grounds of the Sultan's own quarters, where she had spent those three days prior to his unveiling. During that brief time she had noticed that, at night and during the heat of the day, the horses that browsed in the sun-scorched paddock were stabled in a long, low building at the far end of the scanty field. And she knew, too, that the iron gates by which she had entered the palace could not lie so very far away from the paddock.

With trembling hands and almost sick with anxiety and excitement, Pansy opened the door of her prison. She said nothing to the guard there.

She merely held the gem towards him.

On seeing it, his eyes glittered covetously.

Without a word he took the diamond.

Pansy pa.s.sed down the dim pa.s.sage. She hardly knew how her feet took her along its ill-lit length. Every moment she expected to meet someone, or that one of the several doors leading into it would open, and her flight be brought to an abrupt end.

However, unchallenged she reached the iron gates.

A lamp flickering in a niche close by, showed her that one of the doors was slightly ajar. With shaking hands she pulled it further open and slipped out.

Outside all was silence and whiteness. Like a sea, the desert stretched away to a milky horizon. In a luminous vault the moon hung, a great round molten ma.s.s, that filled the world with a shimmer of silver.

Finding herself really beyond the palace precincts, took all strength from the girl. Hardly daring to breathe, she crept a few steps further, and leant against the city wall, to recover a little and get her bearings. Then, furtive as a shadow, she made her way towards a long, low building that showed up like a huge ebony block in the whiteness.

There were others as furtive as Pansy prowling round the city walls; jackals searching for offal, snarled at her as she pa.s.sed along, slinking away and showing teeth that gleamed like ivory in the moonlight.

The first sound of them made her start violently, for she felt the Sultan's hand upon her, drawing her back to himself and captivity. But when she saw the prowlers were four-footed, she pa.s.sed on, heedless of them, until the paddock fence was reached.

To climb over was a simple task. Then she ran swiftly across the gra.s.sy s.p.a.ce; suddenly deadly afraid, not of the loneliness, but that the stable doors might be locked and she would not be able to carry out her project.

However, in El-Ammeh there were no thieves daring enough to steal the Sultan's horses, so the doors were never locked. They creaked ominously when Pansy opened them, filling the still night with harsh sounds--sounds that she felt must reach her captor's ears.

Inside, the stables were vaguely light with the rays of the moon that dripped in from high little windows. Fortunately for Pansy's plan it was the hour for the palace servants' evening meal, or there might have been half a dozen men in the building. As it was, there was only a long row of horses, each in separate stalls.

Pansy knew that if her protege were there, he would answer to her call.

"Sultan," she said softly.

There was a whinny from a stall some twenty yards away. Guided by the sound she went in that direction.

It was the work of a few moments to unfasten the animal. But to Pansy it seemed an age. Her hands trembled as she fumbled at the halter, for she heard pursuit in every sound.

Then she led the animal out of the building, into the moonlight, and closed the door behind her.

She was an expert bare-back rider.

Leading the horse to the fence, she mounted. Then she trotted him back to the middle of the enclosure, and with voice and hand urged him towards the fence again.

In his old steeplechasing days, a hurdle the height of the rails had presented no difficulties to "The Sultan." And, even now, he took the fence at an easy bound.

Once over, it seemed to Pansy that the last obstacle between herself and freedom had been circ.u.mvented.

She leant forward, patting her horse encouragingly.

"Oh, Sultan," she said hysterically. "I don't mind where you take me, so long as I can get away from here."

Left to itself, after the manner of horses, the animal picked the route it knew the best; the sandy track along which the Sultan Casim generally took it for exercise.

For the first mile or so Pansy was conscious of nothing except that she had escaped--escaped from a love she could not conquer, a man she could not hate.

White and billowy the world lay around her, an undulating sea of sand with only one dark patch upon it, the city of El-Ammeh. The track the horse followed wound through tufted hillocks, mounds of silver in the moonlight. Here and there a stunted shrub cast black lines on the all-prevailing whiteness.

At the end of an hour Pansy discovered she was not the rider she once was. Her months of confinement had left her sadly "out of form." She was worn out with the exertion and the excitement of escape. It took all her skill to keep her seat on the horse. And the animal knew, for it slackened speed as a good horse will when conscious of a tired rider.

Others, also, seemed aware that something weak and helpless was abroad, and with the strange magnetism of the wild they were drawn towards the girl.

Here and there in the melting, misty distance, a dark form appeared, lopping along at a safe range, keeping pace with the old horse and its rider, every now and again glancing at the two with glaring green eyes, and calling one to another with shrieks of maniacal laughter.

Pansy hardly heard the hyenas. She was too intent on keeping her seat.

But the horse heard them and he snorted with rage and fear.

As the miles sped by, the girl was aware of nothing except a desire to get further and further away from her lover, and to keep her seat on the horse.

Then she became aware of something else.