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"If I am to be killed, it is the will of God; but better that, a thousand times, than turn traitor!" "I knew that it would be so," Fatma said sorrowfully. "What can we do? At other times, the protection of the harem would cover even one who had slain a chief; but now that the Baggara are half starving, and mad with anger and disappointment, even that no longer avails.
"Father," she said, "do with me what you will; not without cause do the people call you 'The Wise One'." So Fatma was married to Abdul. But neither she nor any other ever knew that the iron casket connected with her young lord's rise and power was empty. The Caliph advised his son-in-law to maintain the deepest silence as to the absence of the magic jewels.
The Fatma travelled slowly, often in an almost breathless calm. And Isaacson, if he had ever wished, no longer wished her to hasten. Upon his sensitive and strongly responsive temperament the Nile had laid a spell. Never before had he been so intimately affected by an environment. Egypt laid upon him hypnotic hands.
But the Fatma, going always against the stream, would take a much longer time. At Assouan he could seek out this man, Baring Hartley. But she had suggested that! How entirely he distrusted this woman! Mrs. Armine and he were linked by their dislike. He had known they might be when he met her in London. To-day he knew that they were.
Soon after one o'clock in the full heat of the day, he set out in the tiny tub which was the only felucca on board of the Fatma, and he took Hassan with him. Definitely why he took Hassan, he perhaps could not have stated. He just thought he would take him, and did. Very swiftly he had returned with the tide in the night. Now, in the eye of day, he must go up river against it.
He called the chief overseer of the harem and bade him lead Fatma to the throne-room. The maiden had passed the night in weeping, for she had heard that she was to be given in marriage to a strange man. She shuddered at the thought, for as only child of the Caliph she had been thoroughly spoiled, and hated the idea of leaving her father's roof.
Outside the Café Maure D'oud was standing with the white hood of his burnous drawn forward over his head; one or two ragged Arabs stood with him. "They've been playing tom-toms in the village, D'oud?" "Monsieur asks if " "Tom-toms. Can't you understand?" "Ah! Monsieur is laughing. Tom-toms here! And dancers, too, perhaps! Monsieur thinks there are dancers? Fatma and Khadija and Aïchouch "
At last he heard the plash of oars quite near to the Fatma and deep voices of men chanting, almost muttering, a monotonous song that set the time for the oars. And although it rose up to him out of a golden world, it was like a chant of doom. He did not move, he did not look over the side. The chant died away, the plash of the oars was hushed. There was a slight impact.
Then in the night had risen the shrill wailing of the women, a wailing that seemed to pierce the stars and shudder out to the remotest confines of the desert, and in the cold white radiance of the moon a savage vision of grief had been presented to her eyes: naked arms gesticulating as if they strove to summon vengeance from heaven, claw-like hands casting earth upon the heads from which dangled Fatma hands, chains of tarnished silver and lumps of coral that reminded her of congealed blood, bodies that swayed and writhed as if stricken with convulsions or rent by seven devils.
At last they were going to meet these insolent invaders, and none doubted that they would easily defeat them. The greater portion of the harem and attendants were left behind, at Shendy, for but few camels were available. Fatma and another of Mahmud's wives rode on one. A tent was carried by another. Half a dozen slaves followed, and Gregory walked with these.
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