“Here is Asad returning in force,” he cried, and his voice trembled. “Do you consent?”
“But the kadi?” she inquired, and by the question he knew that she was won to his way of saving her.
“I said the kadi or his superior. Asad himself shall be our priest, his followers our witnesses.”
“And if he refuses? He will refuse!” she cried, clasping her hands before her in her excitement.
“I shall not ask him. I shall take him by surprise.”
“It … it must anger him. He may avenge himself for what he must deem a trick.”
“Ay,” he answered, wild-eyed. “I have thought of that, too. But it is a risk we must run. If we do not prevail, then—”
“I have the dagger,” she cried fearlessly.
“And for me there will be the rope or the sword,” he answered. “Be calm! They come!”
But the steps that pattered up the stairs were Ali’s. He flung upon the terrace in alarm.
“My lord, my lord! Asad-ed-Din is here in force. He has an armed following with him!”
“There is naught to fear,” said Sakr-el-Bahr, with every show of calm. “All will be well.”
Asad swept up the stairs and out upon that terrace to confront his rebellious lieutenant. After him came a dozen black-robed janissaries with scimitars along which the light of the torches rippled in little runnels as of blood.
The Basha came to a halt before Sakr-el-Bahr, his arms majestically folded, his head thrown back, so that his long white beard jutted forward.
“I am returned,” he said, “to employ force where gentleness will not avail. Yet I pray that Allah may have lighted thee to a wiser frame of mind.”
“He has, indeed, my lord,” replied Sakr-el-Bahr.
“The praise to Him!” exclaimed Asad in a voice that rang with joy. “The girl, then!” And he held out a hand.
Sakr-el-Bahr stepped back to her and took her hand in his as if to lead her forward. Then he spoke the fateful words.
“In Allah’s Holy Name and in His All-seeing eyes, before thee, Asad-ed-Din, and in the presence of these witnesses, I take this woman to be my wife by the merciful law of the Prophet of Allah the All-wise, the All-pitying.”
The words were out and the thing was done before Asad had realized the corsair’s intent. A gasp of dismay escaped him; then his visage grew inflamed, his eyes blazed.
But Sakr-el-Bahr, cool and undaunted before that royal anger, took the scarf that lay about Rosamund’s shoulders, and raising it, flung it over her head, so that her face was covered by it.
“May Allah rot off the hand of him who in contempt of our Lord Muhammad’s holy law may dare to unveil that face, and may Allah bless this union and cast into the pit of Gehenna any who shall attempt to dissolve a bond that is tied in His All-seeing eyes.”
It was formidable. Too formidable for Asad-ed-Din. Behind him his janissaries like hounds in leash stood eagerly awaiting his command. But none came. He stood there breathing heavily, swaying a little, and turning from red to pale in the battle that was being fought within him between rage and vexation on the one hand and his profound piety on the other. And as he yet hesitated perhaps Sakr-el-Bahr assisted his piety to gain the day.
“Now you will understand why I would not yield her, O mighty Asad,” he said. “Thyself hast thou oft and rightly reproached me with my celibacy, reminding me that it is not pleasing in the sight of Allah, that it is unworthy a good Muslim. At last it hath pleased the Prophet to send me such a maid as I could take to wife.”
Asad bowed his head. “What is written is written,” he said in the voice of one who admonished himself. Then he raised his arms aloft. “Allah is All-knowing,” he declared. “His will be done!”
“Ameen,” said Sakr-el-Bahr very solemnly and with a great surge of thankful prayer to his own long-forgotten God.
The Basha stayed yet a moment, as if he would have spoken. Then abruptly he turned and waved a hand to his janissaries. “Away!” was all he said to them, and stalked out in their wake.
XIV
The Sign
From behind her lattice, still breathless from the haste she had made, and with her whelp Marzak at her side, Fenzileh had witnessed that first angry return of the Basha from the house of Sakr-el-Bahr.
She had heard him bawling for Abdul Mohktar, the leader of his janissaries, and she had seen the hasty mustering of a score of these soldiers in the courtyard, where the ruddy light of torches mingled with the white light of the full moon. She had seen them go hurrying away with Asad himself at their head, and she had not known whether to weep or to laugh, whether to fear or to rejoice.
“It is done,” Marzak had cried exultantly. “The dog hath withstood him and so destroyed himself. There will be an end to Sakr-el-Bahr this night.” And he had added: “The praise to Allah!”
But from Fenzileh came no response to his prayer of thanksgiving. True, Sakr-el-Bahr must be destroyed, and by a sword that she herself had forged. Yet was it not inevitable that the stroke which laid him low must wound her on its repercussion? That was the question to which now she sought an answer. For all her eagerness to speed the corsair to his doom, she had paused sufficiently to weigh the consequences to herself; she had not overlooked the circumstance that an inevitable result of this must be Asad’s appropriation of that Frankish slave-girl. But at the time it had seemed to her that even this price was worth paying to remove Sakr-el-Bahr definitely and finally from her son’s path—which shows that, after all, Fenzileh the mother was capable of some self-sacrifice. She comforted herself now with the reflection that the influence, whose waning she feared might be occasioned
