A Son of the Sahara Part 43

CHAPTER X

By the time the news of the disappearance of Sir George Barclay's party reached England, Pansy was well on her way to El-Ammeh.

She arrived there one night after dark, a darkness out from which high walls loomed and over them strange sounds came; the thin wail of stringed instruments; a tom-tom throbbing through the blue night; the plaintive song of some itinerant musician, and the shuffle of crowded human life.

She was not given much time to dwell upon those things. Her escort skirted the high walls. A big horse-shoe arch loomed up, with heavy iron gates; gates that clanged back as they approached. And the flare of torches showed a long pa.s.sage leading into darkness.

Into the pa.s.sage her litter was carried with a swaying, somnolent movement. Then the gates closed with a clang behind her, leaving the escort outside; and she and Alice were alone with the flaming torches, the black, engulfing pa.s.sage, and half a dozen huge negroes in gorgeous raiment.

With a sickly feeling, Pansy slipped from her litter.

Her journey's end!

The journey had lasted over six weeks. Under other circ.u.mstances Pansy would have enjoyed it. It could not have been more comfortable. She had travelled in the cool of the morning and in the cool of the evening. Always for the long midday halt the same sumptuous tent was up, awaiting her reception, taken down again after she had departed, and up again before she arrived at the next halting place.

The country she travelled through was an interesting one, park-like and gra.s.sy at first, as the weeks pa.s.sed becoming ever more sandy and arid, with occasional patches that were wonderfully fertile. Until, finally, like a glowing, yellow sea before her, she had her first glimpse of the Sahara on its southern side--billow upon billow of flaming sand, stretching away to a tensely blue sky, with here and there a stunted bush, a twist of coa.r.s.e gra.s.s, or a clump of distorted cacti with red flowers blazing against the heated, s.h.i.+mmering air--a vast solitude where nothing moved.

For a week they had journeyed through the desert. Late one evening a lake came into view, with fruitful gardens growing around it, where date palms, olives, and cl.u.s.tering vines flourished. On the far side a walled city showed.

It lay golden in the misty glow of evening, its minarets standing out against a shadowed sky. Even as she approached it had been swallowed by darkness. Softly the lake lapped as they skirted it, and the world was filled with a constant hissing sigh, the sound of s.h.i.+fting sand when the wind roamed over it--the voice of the desert.

Much as Pansy dreaded her journey's end, she welcomed it.

She lived for nothing now but to see the Sultan; to plead with him for her father, her friends, herself. And she buoyed herself up with the hope that her own riches would enable her to ransom them all.

But if she failed!

She grew sick at the thought. And the thought was with her as she stood in the stone pa.s.sage, her strained eyes on the gigantic negro guards who had come to escort her to her new quarters. They were attired from head to foot in rich, brightly coloured silks, and they literally blazed with jewels.

The man who was their master might have so much money that he would prefer revenge.

This thought was in Pansy's mind some minutes later when she sat alone with her maid in one of the many apartments in the palace of El-Ammeh.

It was a big room with walls and floor of gold mosaic, and a domed ceiling of sapphire-blue where cut rock-crystals flashed like stars.

Five golden lamps hung from it, suspended by golden chains; lamps set with flat emeralds and rubies and sapphires.

It was furnished very much as her tent had been, except that there were wide ottomans against the gilded walls, and the tables and stools were of sandalwood. In one corner stood a large bureau of the same sweet-scented wood, beautifully carved. Three heavy, pointed doors of sandalwood led into the apartment. The place was heavy with its sensuous odour.

In a little alcove draped with curtains of gold tissue the negroes deposited Pansy's belongings. Then they withdrew, leaving the girl and her maid alone; Pansy with the depressing feeling that money might not have much influence with the Sultan Casim Ammeh.

Two of the doors of her gilded prison were locked, Pansy quickly discovered. Outside of the one she had entered by a couple of negro guards were stationed, who refused to let her pa.s.s.

On learning this, she went out into the fretted gallery. Below a garden lay. She stood at the head of the steps leading into it, anxious to get away from the dim scented silence of the great room, in touch with the trees and stars and the cool, rose-scented breath of night that she understood.

She tried to argue that all the splendour and luxury placed at her disposal boded well for the future, that her captor might not be going to carry out his threats.

Her gaze turned towards the room, with its wealth and luxury--a fit setting for a Sultan's favourite.

Pansy s.h.i.+vered.

What price might she not have to pay for her father's life?

Then she thought of Raoul Le Breton. The dark blood in him seemed nothing now, compared with the thought of having to become the chattel of this wild, desert chief.

Slight sounds in the big room roused her from her reverie.

She started violently, expecting to see the Sultan coming to make his bargain.

But only a couple of white-robed servants were there.

The biggest of the inlaid tables was set for dinner; a dinner for one, set in a European way. And the meal that followed was the work of a skilled French _chef_.

But the sumptuous repast had no charm for a girl worried to death at the thought of her own fate and her father's. To please Alice she made some pretence of eating.

Leaving her maid to revel in the neglected dainties, Pansy went back to her vigil in the arches.

In course of time, the lamps burning low, Alice's prodigious yawns drove her to lie wakeful among the soft cus.h.i.+ons of one of the ottomans.

From fitful slumbers Alice's voice roused her the next morning. Alice with the usual early morning tea, a tray of choice fruit, and a basket full of rare and beautiful flowers.

Distastefully Pansy looked at the choice blossoms. She felt they were from the Sultan to his unwilling visitor; a silent message of admiration; of homage, perhaps.

"Take them away, Alice," she said quickly. "And put them where I can't see them."

With a curious glance at her mistress, the girl obeyed.

Pansy drank her tea, all the time pondering on her future.

If she had to go under, she would go under fighting. If this wild chief were prepared to give her her father's life in exchange for herself, she would see that he got as little pleasure as possible out of his bargain. If he were infatuated with her as Alice and Dr.

Edouard seemed to think, so much the better. All the more keenly he would feel the lashes her tongue would be able to give.

Pansy knew he spoke French, for this fact had come into the story her father had told her in years gone by.

In thinking of the cutting things she would be able to lay to her captor, Pansy tried to keep at bay the dread she felt. Since he was not there to hit at in person, she hit at him with sneers at his race to Alice.

"I don't suppose there's anywhere I can have a bath," she remarked when her tea was finished. "Cleanliness isn't one of the virtues of these Arabs."

"Dere be one," Alice a.s.sured her. "De most beautifullest one you eber saw."

Pansy agreed with her maid some minutes later when she was splas.h.i.+ng about in its cool waters.

Alice had pointed out the place to her. In dressing-gown and slippers, Pansy had pa.s.sed through the wide gallery, a lacy prison of stone it seemed to the girl, for although it gave a wide view of the desert, there was not one spot in its carved side that she could have put her hand through.

Immediately beneath lay a garden, surrounded by a high wall.

Pansy had seen many gardens, but none to equal the one before her in peace and beauty. It was a dream of roses. In the middle was a sunken pond where water-lilies floated and carp swam and gaped at her with greedy mouths when her shadow fell across them, as if expecting to be fed. Vivid green velvety turf surrounded the pond, a rarity in that arid country. There was nothing else in the garden but roses, of every shade and colour. They streamed in cascades over the high walls. They grew in banks by the pond, in trellised alleys and single bushes. The garden was a gem of cool greenness, scent and silence, and over it brooded the shadows of gigantic cypresses.