Parties were continually coming up from the beach laden with spoils of all kinds from the wreck, Lanty, Hebert, and a couple of negroes being driven up repeatedly, so heavily burthened as to be almost bent double.  All was thrown down in a heap at the other end of the adowara, and the old sheyk kept guard over it, allowing no one to touch it.  This went on till darkness was coming on, when, while the cattle were being collected for the night, the prisoners were allowed an interval, in which Hebert and Lanty told how the natives, swimming like ducks, had torn everything out of the wreck:  all the bales and boxes that poor Maitre Hebert had secured with so much care, and many of which he was now forced himself to open for the pleasure of these barbarians.

That, however, was not the worst.  Hebert concealed from his little lady what Lanty did not spare Victorine.  ’And there—­enough to melt the heart of a stone—­there lay on the beach poor Madame la Comtesse, and all the three.  Good was it for you, Victorine, my jewel, that you were not in the cabin with them.’

‘I know not,’ said the dejected Victorine; ’they are better off than we?’

‘You would not say so, if you had seen what I have,’ said Lanty, shuddering.  ’The dogs!—­they cut off Madame’s poor white fingers to get at her rings, and not with knives either, lest her blessed flesh should defile them, they said, and her poor face was an angel’s all the time.  Nay, nor that was not the worst.  The villainous boys, what must they do but pelt the poor swollen bodies with stones!  Ay, well you may scream, Victorine.  We went down on our knees, Maitre Hebert and I, to pray they might let us give them burial, but they mocked us, and bade Hassan say they never bury dogs.  I went round the steeper path, for all the load at my back, or I should have been flying at the throats of the cowardly vultures, and then what would have become of M. l’Abbe?’

Victorine trembled and wept bitterly for her companions, and then asked if Lanty had seen the corpse of the little Chevalier.

‘Not a sight of him or M. Arthur either,’ returned Lanty; ’only the ugly face of the old Turk captain and another of his crew, and them they buried decently, being Moslem hounds like themselves; while my poor lady that is a saint in heaven—­’ and he, too, shed tears of hot grief and indignation, recovering enough to warn Victorine by no means to let the poor young girl know of this additional horror.

There was little opportunity, for they had been appropriated by different masters:  Estelle, the Abbe, and Hebert to the sheyk, or headman of the clan; and Lanty and Victorine to a big, strong, fierce-looking fellow, of inferior degree but greater might.