United States or Niger ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
After everything had been dragged up to the adowara, there ensued a sort of auction or division of the plunder. Poor Maitre Hebert was doomed to see the boxes and bales he had so diligently watched broken open by these barbarians, nay, he had to assist in their own dissection when the secrets were too much for the Arabs.
Little recked the poor prisoners of the scene so fair; they only saw the remnant of the wreck below, the sea that parted them from hope, the savage rocks behind, the barbarous people around, the squalor and dirt of the adowara, as the hamlet was called.
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.
She had fallen to the lot of Ben Yakoub, who had been chestnut-gathering by the sea at the time of the wreck; but when he arrived on Mount Couco the Sheyk Abderrahman had claimed her and hers as the head of the tribe, and had carried her off to his own adowara in the valley of Ein Gebel.
A much larger number of Cabeleyzes came streaming into the forum of the adowara, and the prisoners were all again placed in a row, while the new- comers passed before them, staring hard, and manifestly making personal remarks which perhaps it was well that they did not understand.
The whole adowara seemed to be deserted except by a few frightened women and children, and Victorine and her Irish swain had no doubt been driven off into the woods by Eyoub no Achilles certainly, but equally unwilling with the great Pelides to resign Briseis as a substitute for Chryseis. It was too late to attempt anything more that night; indeed, at sundown it became very cold.
Yusuf further invented a story of having put the little Frank in charge of a Moorish woman in the adowara; but added he was so much attached to the Son of the Sea, that most likely he had wandered out in search of him, and the only wise course would be to seek him before he was devoured by any of the wild beasts near home.
For one moment, before emerging from the forest, looking through an opening in the trees, down a steep slope, a group of children could be seen on the grass in front of the huts composing the adowara, little brown figures in scanty garments, lying about evidently listening intently to the figure, the gleam of whose blonde hair showed her instantly to be Estelle de Bourke.
Word Of The Day