“Why, your Excellency, I and my comrade here will undertake to carry her safely there.  What better guard should a daughter have than her father?”

“Are you more powerful than the elements?  Can you command the tempest?  Have you sufficient armament to combat all the enemies that scour the seas?  If any accident befall you, what is this promise of payment?—­Nothing.”

“At least, you will suffer me to make this voyage with my child.”

“I do not purpose to send her to Elche,” returned the old man, calmly.  “’Tis a risk I will not undertake.  I have said that when I am paid three thousand ducats, I will give Lala Mollah freedom, and I will keep my word.  To send her to Elche is a charge that does not touch my compact.  This I will write and tell my friend, Sidi ben Ahmed, and upon his payment and expressed agreement I will render you your daughter.  Not before.”

We could say nothing for a while, being so foundered by this reverse; but at length Dawson says in a piteous voice: 

“At least you will suffer me to see my daughter.  Think, if she were yours and you had lost her—­believing her a while dead—­”

Mohand ou Mohand muttered a few words that seemed to fix the old Moor’s wavering resolution.

“I cannot agree to that,” says he.  “Your daughter is becoming reconciled to her position.  To see you would open her wounds afresh to the danger of her life, maybe.  Reflect,” adds he, laying his hand on the letter, “if this business should come to nought, what could recompense your daughter for the disappointment of those false hopes your meeting would inspire?  It cannot be.”

With this he claps his hands, and a servant, entering at a nod from his master, lifts the hangings for us to go.

Dawson stammered a few broken words of passionate protest, and then breaking down as he perceived the folly of resisting, he dropped his head and suffered me to lead him out.  As I saluted the Moors in going, I caught, as I fancied, a gleam of triumphant gladness in the dark eyes of Mohand ou Mohand.

Coming back to the place where we had hid our bundles, Dawson cast himself on the ground and gave vent to his passion, declaring he would see his Moll though he should tear the walls down to get at her, and other follies; but after a time he came to his senses again so that he could reason, and then I persuaded him to have patience, and forbear from any outburst of violence such as we had been warned against, showing him that certainly Don Sanchez, hearing of our condition, would send the money speedily, and so we should get Moll by fair means instead of losing her (and ourselves) by foul; that after all, ’twas but the delay of a week or so that we had to put up with, and so forth.  Then, discussing what we should do next, I offered that we should return to Elche and make our case known rather than trust entirely to Ali Oukadi’s promise of writing; for I did suspect some treacherous