A Son of the Sahara Part 2

By the time Annette knew enough Arabic to make herself understood, and to understand what was said around her, she realized that if the Sultan learnt her boy was not his, this one joy of her tragic life would be taken from her. He would murder the son as he had murdered the father.

As the baby grew, her one idea was to keep its true parentage from her savage captor. If she could have done so, she would have kept his dark, blood-stained hands from touching her son. But this was impossible. When in El-Ammeh, the Sultan came every day to see the child, often sitting with it in his arms, watching it with an air of proud possession.

And fearsomely Annette would watch him, wondering why he never suspected. But he was too eaten up with his own desire for a son ever to give a thought to her dead husband.

The baby was given the name of Casim Ammeh. But Annette always called her boy by another name, "Raoul Le Breton."

And at the age of five he said to her:

"Why do you always call me 'Raoul,' not 'Casim,' as my father does?"

His father!

Annette's heart ached. His father had been dead these long years, murdered by the man her son now called by that name.

"The Sultan and myself are of different races," she said. "He calls you by his name. I, by one of my own choosing, Raoul Le Breton.'"

"Why do you always say 'the Sultan,' and never 'your father'?"

Sadly she smiled at her small questioner.

"Some day, my son, I'll tell you. When you are a man and understand things."

At five, Raoul Le Breton was a big, handsome boy, spoilt and pampered by the whole harem, and spoilt most of all by the man he proudly called "Father."

The Sultan in his flowing white robes, with his half-tamed horses, his horde of wild followers and barbaric splendour, was a picturesque figure, one to capture any brave boy's heart.

Annette did all she could to counteract her captor's influence, but, as the child grew, he was more with the Sultan than with her. What was more, he craved for men's company.

He soon tired of the amus.e.m.e.nts the harem could offer. He much preferred to be on his own horse, galloping with the Sultan or some of his men along the desert tracks about the city. And knowing Annette loved her son, and hated him, despite their years together, the Sultan did all he could to win the boy's affection and wean him from his mother.

He might have succeeded, except for one thing. The boy loved learning, and to hear of the great world that his mother came from; a world that seemed as remote from El-Ammeh as the paradise his Moslem teachers spoke of.

The Sultan was not averse to the mother teaching her son. He was a shrewd man, if savage and cruel. And that France from where the girl came was growing ever more powerful. It would be to the boy's advantage to learn all the arts and cunning of his mother's people.

The Sultan Casim gave Annette but one present that she took from him willingly; a sandalwood bureau with shelves and drawers and little sliding panels, an elaborately carved and handsome piece of furniture; stocked with slate and pencil, paper, quills and ink--such as the priests at the mosques used themselves. For this strange girl who hated him had more learning than all the priests put together.

But, for all that, the youngster had to sit at their feet at appointed times, and be taught all the Sultan had ever been taught, to read and write, and recite sc.r.a.ps from the Koran, and to be a true Moslem.

Annette hated this wild, profligate religion, and into her son she tried to instil her own Roman Catholic faith.

But at eight years, although he learnt with avidity all her other teachings, he laughed at her religion.

"Yours is a woman's religion, little mother," he said one day. "It's all right for you--a religion that prays to a woman, but it is not suitable for men. Give me my father's religion. A religion where men rule. In that, one does not bow the knee to a woman. A good religion, my father's, fierce and strong, of love and fighting, not a puling thing where one prays to a woman and a babe. No, little mother, keep your religion, and be happy with it. I prefer my father's and my own."

"Raoul, my son, you mustn't forget the white side when you are with the Sultan," she said gently, a touch of chiding in her sad voice.

The boy looked at her speculatively, knowing already that his mother had no affection for the man he called "father."

"You should be proud, not sorry, to be the Sultan's wife," he remarked.

"It is an honour for any woman to be loved by the Sultan. Even a woman as lovely and learned as you, little mother."

At twenty-seven Annette was even more beautiful than on the day the Sultan Casim Ammeh first saw her; but more fragile and ethereal.

Although her captor's fancy often strayed to other women, he never lost his pa.s.sion for her.

"Oh, my boy, you don't understand," she said sadly. "When you are a man I'll tell you, and then perhaps you'll think differently."

"When I am a man, I shall be like my father, but richer and more powerful, because I shall have more knowledge, thanks to you, my mother."

"I hope you will be like your father, Raoul, I ask for nothing better."

When her boy reached manhood Annette intended to tell him the truth, and to leave him to deal with the situation as he would.

At ten years, her son had as much general knowledge as the average French boy of his age, thanks to his mother's teachings. And he knew, too, a great deal more than she taught him.

He was a big lad for his years, handsome and quick-tempered, the Sultan's acknowledged heir. On every side there were people anxious to spoil him and curry favour with him. In the scented, sensual atmosphere of the harem, he learnt things his mother would have kept from him. But she was powerless among so many, all ready to flatter her boy and gain his good graces.

"When I grow up," he said to her one day, "I shall have a hundred wives, like my father."

"In the France I come from a man has but one. You must always remember that, Raoul."

"Only one! Then, mother, I call that a poor country. How can a man be satisfied with one woman? My father has promised me wives of my own when I am sixteen."

It seemed to Annette that in this profligate atmosphere her boy was drifting further and further away from her and his own nation; becoming daily more akin to the barbaric people around him.

Every day she felt she must tell him the truth. Yet every day she put it off. For her boy was only a child still, and in his anger and rage he would not be able to keep his knowledge from the Sultan; then evil would befall him.

It was written that many years were to pa.s.s before Raoul Le Breton learnt the truth about himself.

Soon after this episode the Sultan took the boy with him on some thieving expedition.

Whilst they were away, one of the deadly epidemics that occasionally visited El-Ammeh swept through the city, claiming among its many victims Annette Le Breton.

CHAPTER IV

With the pa.s.sing years, the Sultan Casim Ammeh increased in wealth and power. He gave very little thought to France now. It was a vague power, too far away to trouble him, and only once had it really sent a feeler in his direction; that ill-fated expedition headed by Colonel Le Breton.

Emboldened by his success, he had extended his marauding. But, if he heard nothing more of France, France occasionally heard of him, in the form of complaints from various parts of the Protectorate, from other chiefs whose territory he had raided. The Government knew his name but it had no idea where he came from.

On one occasion the Sultan and his robber horde swept down to within a hundred miles of St. Louis. But there he met with a severe defeat. He retired to his desert stronghold, deciding not to adventure in that direction again. And he owed his defeat to strange guns such as had not come into his life before. Guns that fired not a couple of shots, but a whole volley; an endless fusillade that even his wild warriors could not face.

He went back to El-Ammeh determined to get hold of some of those wonderful guns.

Obviously it was out of the question to attack St. Louis where they came from. If they were to be obtained, they must be searched for in some other direction.

Sore with defeat, he brooded on the strange guns. And very often he talked of them to the boy he called his son.