to touch anything but the water; while the Abbe seemed unable to understand that the servants durst not demand anything better, and devoured her share and a quarter of Lanty's as well as his own. Meantime the Cabeleyzes had all ranged themselves in rows, cross-legged on the ground, opposite to the five unfortunate captives, to sit in judgment on them. As they kept together in one group, happily in the shade of a hut, Victorine, too faint and sick fully to know what was going on, lay with her head on the lap of her young mistress, who sat with her bright and strangely fearless eyes confronting the wild figures opposite.
Her uncle, frightened, though not comprehending the extent of his danger, crouched behind Lanty, who with Hebert stood somewhat in advance, the would-be guardians of the more helpless ones.
There was an immense amount of deafening shrieking and gesticulating among the Arabs. Hassan was responding, and finally turned to Lanty, when the anxious watchers could perceive signs as if of paying down coin made interrogatively. 'Promise them anything, everything,' cried Hebert; 'M. le Comte would give his last sou-so would Madame la Marquise-to save Mademoiselle.'
'I have told him so,' said Laurence presently; 'I bade him let them know it is little they can make of us, specially now they have stripped us as bare as themselves, the rascals! but that their fortunes would be made-and little they would know what to do with them-if they would only send M. l'Abbe and Mademoiselle to Algiers safe and sound. There! he is trying to incense them. Never fear, Master Phelim, dear, there never was a rogue yet, black or white, or the colour of poor Madame's frothed chocolate, who did not love gold better than blood, unless indeed 'twas for the sweet morsel of revenge; and these, for all their rolling eyes and screeching tongues, have not the ghost of a quarrel with us.'
'My beads, my breviary,' sighed the Abbe. 'Get them for me, Lanty.'
'I wish they would end it quickly,' said Estelle. 'My head aches so, and I want to be with mamma. Poor Victorine! yours is worse,' she added, and soaked her handkerchief in the few drops of water left in the gourd to lay it on the maid's forehead.
The howling and shrieking betokened consultation, but was suddenly interrupted by some half-grown lads, who came running in with their hands full of what Lanty recognised to his horror as garments worn by his mistress and fellow-servants, also a big kettle and a handspike. They pointed down to the sea, and with yells of haste and exultation all the wild conclave started up to snatch, handle, and examine, then began rushing headlong to the beach. Hassan's explanations were scarcely needed to show that they were about to ransack the ship, and he evidently took credit to himself for having induced them to spare the prisoners in case their assistance should be requisite to gain full possession of the plunder.
Estelle and Victorine were committed to the charge of a forbidding- looking old hag, the mother of the sheyk of the party; the Abbe was allowed to stray about as he pleased, but the two men were driven to the shore by the eloquence of the club. Victorine revived enough for a burst of tears and a sobbing cry, 'Oh, they will be killed! We shall never see them again!'
'No,' said Estelle, with her quiet yet childlike resolution, 'they are not going to kill any of us yet. They said so. You are so tired, poor Victorine! Now all the hubbub is over, suppose you lie still and sleep. My uncle,' as he roamed round her, mourning for his rosary, 'I am afraid your beads are lost; but see here, these little round seeds, I can pierce them if you will gather some more for me, and make you another set. See, these will be the Aves, and here are shells in the grass for the Paters.'
The long fibre of grass served for the string, and the sight of the Giaour girl's employment brought round her all the female population who had not repaired to the coast. Her first rosary was torn from her to adorn an almost naked baby; but the Abbe began to whimper, and to her surprise the mother restored it to him. She then made signs that she would construct another necklace for the child, and she was rewarded by a gourd being brought to her full of milk, which she was able to share with her two companions, and which did something to revive poor Victorine. Estelle was kept threading these necklaces and bracelets all the wakeful hours of the day-for every one fell asleep about noon-though still so jealous a watch was kept on her that she was hardly allowed to shift her position so as to get out of the sun, which even at that season was distressingly scorching in the middle of the day.
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.
This time Estelle was to be kept for the night among the sheyk's women, who, though too unsophisticated to veil their faces, had a part of the hut closed off with a screen of reeds, but quite as bare as the outside. Hebert, who could not endure to think of her sleeping on the ground, and saw a large heap of grass or straw provided for a little brown cow, endeavoured to take an armful for her. Unluckily it belonged to Lanty's master, Eyoub, who instantly flew at him in a fury, dragged him to a log of wood, caught up an axe, and had not Estelle's screams brought up the sheyk, with Hassan and one or two other men, the poor Maitre d'Hotel's head would have been off. There was a sharp altercation between the sheyk and Eyoub, while Estelle held the faithful servant's hand, saying, 'You did it for me! Oh, Hebert, do not make them angry again. It would be beautiful to die for one's faith, but not for a handful of hay.'
'Ah! my dear demoiselle, what would my poor ladies say to see you sleeping on the bare ground in a filthy hut?'
'I slept well last night,' returned Estelle; 'indeed, I do not mind! It is only the more like the dungeon at Lyon, you know! And I pray you, Hebert, do not get yourself killed for nothing too soon, or else we shall not all stand out and confess together, like St. Blandina and St. Ponticus and St Epagathius.'
'Alas, the dear child! The long names run off her tongue as glibly as ever,' sighed Hebert, who, though determined not to forsake his faith, by no means partook her enthusiasm for martyrdom. Hassan, however, having explained what the purpose had been, Hebert was pardoned, though the sheyk scornfully observed that what was good enough for the daughters of a Hadji was good enough for the unclean child of the Frankish infidels.
The hay might perhaps have spared a little stiffness, but it would not have ameliorated the chief annoyances- the closeness, the dirt, and the vermin. It was well that it was winter, or the first of these would have been far worse, and, fortunately for Estelle, she was one of those whom suffocating air rather lulls than rouses.
Eyoub's hovel did not rejoice in the refinement of a partition, but his family, together with their animals, lay on the rocky floor as best they might; and Victorine's fever came on again, so that she lay in great misery, greeted by a growl from a great white dog whenever she tried to relieve her restless aching limbs by the slightest movement, or
