The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not need to be detailed.  Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark corridors of men carrying torches and flares.  There was no attempt at resistance.  That was seen to be useless.  Both the civil guard and the soldiery had deserted.  The Kasbah was betrayed.  Terror spread like fire.  In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of their disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on the southern side of it.

Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman.  He remembered that he had treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it.  There were fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people.  No one knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he had killed the mason who built it.  In the dark he found the place, and taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen.

It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground, near the wall of the Kasbah gate.  From that dark cell, crouching on the grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds of the night.  First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead; then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of the crowd.  “Damn it—­they’ve given us the slip.”  “Yes; they’ve crawled off like rats from a sinking ship.”  “Curse it all, it’s only a bungle.”  This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people:  “Sidi, try the palace.”  “Try the apartments of his women, Sidi.”  “Abd er-Rahman’s gone, but Ben Aboo’s hiding.”  “Death to the tyrant!” “Down with the Basha!” “Ben Aboo!  Ben Aboo!” Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence.  “Silence, you shrieking hell-babies, silence!”

Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.  So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it; and then he crept out, made for the women’s apartments, and rattled at their door.  It was folly, it was lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone.  He could hear the sounds of voices within—­wailing and weeping of the women—­but no one answered his knocking.  Again and again he knocked with his elbows (still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood.  Still the door remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for company, fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that led to the alley behind the Kasbah.