overheard the villainousscheme that he hath planned with his brother to take thy life, and atthe risk of mine own honour I determined to save thee. Allah aloneknoweth how terrible is my life alone in this place with my servants,bound to a fierce, brutal man who loveth me not, and upon whose brow theCafer hath set seal."
"Is thy husband neglectful, then?" I asked, noticing the poignantsorrow that in that moment seemed to have crushed her.
"Alas! yes. Whithersoever I go the curse of Sajin seemeth upon me," shesighed, passing her slim, bejewelled hand slowly across her whiteforehead. Tears welled in her brilliant eyes, as she added in a brokenvoice, "I am lost--lost to all; soulless, uncared for, unloved."
She hesitated a moment thoughtfully, glancing first at her ownbejewelled hands find then at mine. With a quick movement she drew fromone of her fingers a curious ring of silver, around which were Arabiccharacters in gold.
"See!" she cried, as if a sudden thought had occurred to her. "Takethis, and wear it. It is my talisman, and as long as it is upon thyfinger no harm can befall thee. It beareth the stamp of `La Belle,' andwill preserve thee in health and guard thee in the hour of tribulation."
She took my hand in hers, and drawing my own ring from my finger,replaced it by her strange-looking talisman, afterwards slipping my ownring upon her hand. A sob escaped her. "We have exchanged rings!" sheexclaimed brokenly, looking up into my face with tear-stained,world-weary eyes. Then, clutching her bare breast as if to still thethrobbing of her heart, she cried, "When--when thou art far away, thouwilt, peradventure, sometimes gaze upon mine, and remember that aservice was once rendered thee by a poor, unhappy woman--thou wiltrecollect that her name is Fathma Khadidja--that--that--ah! forgive me,for I am mad! mad!"
Raising my hand to her warm lips, she kissed it passionately with allthe fire and ardour of the Child of the Sun. Then, releasing me, shetottered back, panting, and sank upon her silken divan, with her faceburied in her hands, sobbing as if her heart would break.
"_Cama tafakal kathalika tola ki_," I said, quoting at random from theKoran. "Come, come," I added sympathetically, sinking down beside her,tenderly stroking her long, silky tresses. "Despair not. The OneWorthy of Praise knoweth how thou sufferest, and will give unto theestrength in the hour of thy need, and bring thee into the shadow of thegreat lote tree."
"Ah! Thy mouth uttereth pearls of wisdom," she cried wildly. "But Ihave touched thee, a Touareg, and am accursed by Allah. I care noughtfor the future, for already am I forsaken, already have I tasted of thebitter fruit of Al-Zakkum, and am doomed to the torture of Al-Hawiyat,the place prepared for the evil-doers." Then, raising her face to mine,with an intense look of passionate love, she said in a soft, sibilantwhisper, "Once only! Kiss me once! Then thou mayest go, and nevershall we meet--never!"
Her beautiful head fell upon my shoulder, and her hair--soft as spunsilk--strayed across my face. For a moment her lips met mine in a hot,passionate kiss, a caress enough to make any man's head reel.
"I love thee," she whispered, in low, half-frightened tones, as sheclung to me, and would not allow me to release myself. "Unseen by thee,I have watched thee many moons, and to-night have I brought thee hitherto tell thee--to confess to thee my secret."
I tried to draw my lingering lips from hers, but with the fire ofpassion gleaming in her brilliant eyes she gripped me with a force Ishould not have supposed her capable of.
"Stay," she whispered. "Without thee the canker-worm of love eatethaway my heart."
But I tore myself from her and left.
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Next day my business of selling sheep took me to the Haras Fortress,away behind the hills of Ahmar, and the voices of the _muddenin_ werealready calling the faithful for the _maghrib_ when I re-entered theKasbah. Kasneh, my slave, was playing _damma_ in the courtyard, butrose quietly, saluted, and told me that he had taken to my room a smallpackage which had been left by the negro servant that had brought theletter on the previous day.
Could it, I wondered, be a present from Khadidja? Rushing in, I foundon my table a small box, packed in white paper and secured with blackseals. Eagerly I tore away the wrappings and opened it.
As I did so a shriek of horror escaped me. I fell back awe-stricken atthe sight presented. Inside a satin-lined bracelet-case, bearing thename of a Paris jeweller, on a piece of pale-blue velvet, there wasstretched a human finger that had been roughly hacked off at the joint!It lay stiff, white, and cold, with the blood coagulated where the bluntknife had jagged the flesh. The finger was a woman's--slim,well-formed, with the nail stained by henna. It was loaded with costlyrings, which scintillated in the golden ray of sunset that strayed intothe room, and fell across them. As I looked, breathless in amazement, Isaw among the ornaments my own ring!
A scrap of paper that fluttered to the ground bore the words, scrawledin Arabic character, "From the husband of Fathma Khadidja!"
That same night I strode furiously along the seashore, watching theglimmering lights in the distance. In fear and trepidation, I took thehideous souvenir of love, and, when far from the city, cast it away fromme into the dark rolling waters.
Perhaps there, deep in its lonely hiding-place, it met the white, deadthing of which it had once formed part--the body of the matchlessdaughter of the sun whose wondrous hair enmeshed me, whose full, redlips held me like a magnet, shackling me to the inevitable. Who cantell?
Truly, in that brief hour when I lounged at her side, I was at thedreaded Bab-el-Hawiyat.
CHAPTER EIGHT.
THE QUEEN OF THE SILENT KINGDOM.
I entered the Silent Kingdom six years ago.
Praise be to Allah, whom the weight of a pearl upon the earth does notescape. May prayer and salvation be with the master of the first andlast, our Lord Mahommed. Of a verity have I been blessed with blessingsabundant, and enveloped by the cloak of his protection.
We had left the shore of Lake Tsad after pillaging a great caravan fromthe north, and were moving westward across the stern, sterile desert inthe direction of Gao, or Kou-kou, as it is popularly known among us,where we could dispose of our stolen merchandise. For months we hadtravelled across that immensity of sands where the very birds losethemselves, our camels often stumbling upon some skull, tibia, or evenan entire skeleton, the remains of bygone generations of travellers whohad perished on those lonely wastes. The sun blazed fiercely in theflaming sky, the skin cracked, the lips were parched. All the water wehad was warm and impure, and even that was insufficient to quench ourthirst. A scaly viper occasionally crossed our route, and at longintervals the swift flight of an antelope was seen. For days, months,nothing had rejoiced our eyes save the deceitful vision of the mirage,and one evening I decided upon a three days' halt for rest.
On the previous day our eyes had been gladdened by the sight of a smallwell, where we filled our water-skins, therefore we were enabled to takeour case; although being in an entirely unfamiliar country, thewatchfulness of our sentries was never for a single instantrelinquished. We were travelling with the sun only as our guide,therefore knew not into what territory we had entered, save that it wasas barren and inhospitable a region as it had ever been our lot toencounter,--a shadowless land of solitude, abandonment, and misery.
In our raid upon the caravan near Lake Tsad a bundle of papers had comeinto our possession, and these had been handed to me; but travellingconstantly, I had not had time or inclination to examine them. Thatnight, however, alone in my tent, I untied them and spread them out.Most of them, including a kind of diary, were written in the language ofthe Roumis, and as some bore the image of the Liberty of the Franks, Iconcluded that they must have belonged to some French officer in thenorthern region of the Desert, who had probably perished in an attemptto penetrate south.
One paper, however, the last I took up, was written in my own tongue,and I read it eagerly. It was an official letter, dated from Paris,urging its recipient to secure,
if possible, during his explorations,the _Fatassi_ of Koti, as the French Government were extremely anxiousto obtain possession of it, and by that letter offered to pay any sheikhor tribesman almost any sum in exchange for it.
I put the letter down, smiled, and resumed my pipe. The haplessexplorer, whoever he was, had probably died, and certainly his hopeswould never be realised, for the _Fatassi_ of the learned Koti was thephantom book of the Soudan. There was not a clansman in the whole ofthe Great Desert who did not know all about that priceless volume, yetno one had ever seen it. It had been lost to the world for ages.
Mohaman Koti, or Koutou, the great marabout, lived in Timbuktu in theyear 850 of the Hegira, and was the most esteemed and even tyrannicalcouncillor of our ancestor, its powerful king. His authority is said tohave originated in the following manner. The king one day distributedsome dried dates to his