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Updated: May 31, 2025
"Will he do all right now?" asked Diana anxiously. "I think so. The thumb is gone, as you saw, but I think I can save the rest of the hand. I will watch him carefully, but these men of Ahmed's are in such excellent condition that I do not think there will be any trouble." "I am going to ride," said Diana, turning away. "It is rather late, but there is just time. Will you come?"
Shafou, he says, will not come before the whole of the Soudan ghafalahs arrive, of which there are still some portions lagging behind. A Soudan caravan, as all Desert caravans, is an omnibus; it collects parties of merchants all along the line of route, and distributes them in the same way, but having a starting-post and a goal. Haj Ahmed's son wished to introduce the question of religion.
The pipe was cold in the hand of the reporter and Ahmed's cigar was dead, which always happens when one recounts an exciting tale and another listens. Among the flower beds beyond two young women wandered, followed by a young man in pongee, a Panama set carelessly upon his handsome head, his face brown, his build slender but round and muscular. "And that, Sahib, is the story," sighed Ahmed.
For a few minutes more the tramping feet surged backward and forward over the Sheik's prostrate body. Diana tried to get to him, faint and stumbling, flung here and there by the fighting, struggling men, until a strong hand caught her and drew her aside. She strained against the detaining arm, but it was one of Ahmed's men, and she gave in as a growing faintness came over her.
Ahmed's master had not found her. To wring the white man's heart was something. He dared not put him out of the way; too many knew. And the council was beginning to grow uneasy. How long could he hold them in leash? What a woman! As magnificent as the daughter of Firoz, shah of Delhi. Fear she knew not.
When the messenger did not return, the Old Man of the Mountains sent a second, and then a third, and finally the most daring and skilful of all his followers; but thanks to Ahmed's crystal cup, all attempts upon the life of the King failed. Then the King sent for Ahmed, and said: "Ask for anything in reason, and it shall be given thee."
He had to trust them; that was all there was to the matter. A sentinel came rushing up one of the keepers. "Something is stampeding the elephants!" he cried. Ahmed and the men with him rushed off. In Ahmed's opinion, considering what lay before them, elephants were more important than colored stones and yellow metal. Without the elephants they would indeed find themselves in sore straits.
He is such a magnificent-looking old man, so fierce and sad. Oh, now I know why that awful frown of Ahmed's has always seemed so familiar. Lord Glencaryll frowns like that. It is the famous Caryll scowl. But I still don't understand." She looked from Saint Hubert to the unconscious man on the divan and back to Saint Hubert with a new trouble growing in her eyes.
They examined the elephants, but were baffled there, owing to Ahmed's foresight. They entered the native quarters, looked under the canvases into the empty cages, from cellar to roof in the bungalow, when suddenly the captain missed Ahmed. "Where is the Colonel Sahib's man?" he asked bruskly. "Possibly he is going the rounds of the animal cages," said Bruce, outwardly calm and shaking within.
The black slave, with a smile on her curving lips, motioned to Dilama to precede her, and Dilama, with one look flung backward to Ahmed's couch in the full sunlight of the window, passed under the heavy blue curtain out into the passage. "Send Soutouma to me!" the words went through her with a cutting feeling, as a knife dividing her flesh.
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