The Sunakite, beginning to make strange contortions and mutterings in a low voice, seemed to terrify Eyoub greatly.  Whether he pointed it out or not, or whether Eyoub was induced by his gestures to show it, was not clear to Arthur’s mind; but at the chief abode, an assemblage of two stone hovels and rudely-built walls, the party halted, and made a loud knocking at the door, Hadji Eseb’s solemn tones bidding those within to open in the name of Allah.

It was done, disclosing a vista of men with drawn scimitars.  The Marabout demanded without ceremony where were the prisoners.

‘At yonder house,’ he was answered by Yakoub himself, pointing to the farther end of the village.

‘Dog of a liar,’ burst forth the Sunakite.  ’Dost thou think to blind the eyes of the beloved of Allah, who knoweth the secrets of heaven and earth, and hath the sigil of Suleiman Ben Daoud, wherewith to penetrate the secret places of the false?’

The ferocious-looking guardians looked at each other as though under the influence of supernatural terror, and then Hadji Eseb spoke:  ’Salaam Aleikum, my children; no man need fear who listens to the will of Allah, and honours his messengers.’

All made way for the dignified old man and his suite, and they advanced into the court, where two men with drawn swords were keeping guard over the captives, who were on their knees in a corner of the court.

The sabres were sheathed, and there was a shuffling away at the advance of the Marabouts, Sheyk Yakoub making some apology about having delayed to admit such guests, but excusing himself on the score of supposing they were emissaries sent by those whose authority he so defied that he had sworn to slaughter his prisoners rather than surrender them.

Hadji Eseb replied with a quotation from the Koran forbidding cruelty to the helpless, and sternly denounced wrath on the transgressors, bidding Yakoub draw off his savage bodyguard.

The man was plainly alarmed, more especially as the Sunakite broke out into one of his wild wails of denunciation, waving his hands like a prophet of wrath, and predicting famine, disease, pestilence, to these slack observers of the law of Mohammed.

This completed the alarm.  The bodyguard fled away pell-mell, Yakoub after them.  His women shut themselves into some innermost recesses, and the field was left to the Marabouts and the prisoners, who, not understanding what all this meant, were still kneeling in their corner.  Hadji Eseb bade Arthur and the interpreter go to reassure them.

At their advance a miserable embrowned figure, barefooted and half clad in a ragged haik, roped round his waist, threw himself before the fair-haired child, crying out in imperfect Arabic, ’Spare her, spare her, great Lord! much is to be won by saving her.’

‘We are come to save her,’ said Arthur in French.  ’Maitre Hebert, do you not know me?’