Then followed a sort of council, with much gesticulation, in which Hassan took his share.  Then, followed by the sheyk, Eyoub, and some other headmen, he advanced, and demanded that the captives should become true believers.  This was eked out with gestures betokening that thus they would be free, in that case; while, if they refused, the sword and the smouldering flame were pointed to, while the whole host loudly shouted ‘Islam!’

Victorine trembled, sobbed, tried to hide herself; but Estelle stood up, her young face lighted up, her dark eyes gleaming, as if she were realising a daydream, as she shook her head, cried out to Lanty, ’Tell him, No—­never!’ and held to her breast a little cross of sticks that she had been forming to complete her uncle’s rosary.  Her gesture was understood.  A man better clad than the rest, with a turban and a broad crimson sash, rushed up to her, seized her by the hair, and waved his scimitar over her head.  The child felt herself close to her mother.  She looked up in his face with radiant eyes and a smile on her lips.  It absolutely daunted the fellow:  his arm dropped, and he gazed at her like some supernatural creature; and the sheyk, enraged at the interference with his property, darted forth to defend it, and there was a general wrangling.

Seconded by their interpreter, Hassan, who knew that the Koran did not prescribe the destruction of Christians, Hebert and Lanty endeavoured to show that their conversion was out of the question, and that their slaughter would only be the loss of an exceedingly valuable ransom, which would be paid if they were handed over safe and sound and in good condition.

There was no knowing what was the effect of this, for the council again ended in a rush to secure the remaining pillage of the wreck.  Hebert and Lanty dreaded what they might see, but to their great relief those poor remains had disappeared.  They shuddered as they remembered the hyenas’ laughs and the jackals’ howls they had heard at nightfall; but though they hoped that the sea had been merciful, they could even have been grateful to the animals that had spared them the sight of conscious insults.

The wreck was finally cleared, and among the fragments were found several portions of books.  These the Arabs disregarded, being too ignorant even to read their own Koran, and yet aware of the Mohammedan scruple which forbids the destruction of any scrap of paper lest it should bear the name of Allah.  Lanty secured the greater part of the Abbe’s breviary, and a good many pages of Estelle’s beloved Telemaque; while the steward gained possession of his writing case, and was permitted to retain it when the Cabeleyzes, glutted with plunder, had ascertained that it contained nothing of value to them.