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Yet he made his wish in earnest, after turning over several in his mind. To ask for his own future happiness, in spite of obstacles which would prove the marabout's power, was the most intelligent thing to do; but somehow the desire clamouring loudest at the moment was for Victoria, and the rest might go ungranted.
Though he was but eleven years old, and had travelled hard for days, he sat his horse with a princely air, worthy the son of a desert potentate; and like a prince he received the homage of the marabout's men who rushed to him with guttural cries, kissing the toes of his boots, in their short stirrups, and fighting for an end of his cloak to touch with their lips.
Near by, a little to the left of the Zaouïa hill, such an oasis lay, and the woman on the white roof could look across a short stretch of sand, down into its green depths. She could watch the marabout's men repairing the sloping sand-walls with palm trunks, which kept them from caving in, and saved the precious date-palms from being engulfed in a yellow tide.
He said, the sword of one of his grandfathers was laid up in the armoury of Stamboul, and submitted to me if I thought the Turks would give it to him if he were to make the demand. I told him to apply to the British Ambassador at the Porte, making the thing of the consequence suited to the Marabout's taste. "No," he replied, "I shall go myself one day and fetch it."
He's a romantic sort of chap, not unlike me in that; it's what appealed to me in him the minute we began to draw each other out. He'll snap at an adventure to help a pretty girl even though he's never seen her; and he knows the marabout's boy and the guardian-uncle. He was talking to me about them this afternoon. Let's go and rout him out. I bet he'll have a plan to propose."
If these missing ones were away, and even if they should never come back, it was because they were needed to carry out the marabout's wishes, at a vast distance. But now, the dearest wishes of Sidi Mohammed would never be fulfilled.
He banged away both barrels at haphazard into the night, and retreated as fast as his legs would carry him to the marabout's chapel-vault, leaving his knife standing up in the sand like a cross commemorative of the grandest panic that ever assailed the soul of a conqueror of hydras. "Help! this Way, prince; the lion is on me!" There was silence. "Prince, prince, are you there?"
Here, however, the tumult lulled a little, and Abderrahman's voice was heard declaring that he claimed the Daughter of the Silkworm as a wife for his son. Ibrahim then sprang to the Marabout's side, and was heard representing that the young lady was of high and noble blood.
Because of his religious vow to wear a mask always like a Touareg, none of the ruling race had ever seen the marabout's features, yet his power was known far and wide in Morocco; all along the caravan route to Tombouctou; in the capital of the Touaregs; in Algiers; and even in Paris itself.
And if the uncle's away, it will be nobody's business even if they see the marabout's son having a ride behind me on my horse, as he might with his own father. Trust me to lure the imp on with us afterward, step by step, in a dream of happiness. I was always a born lurer except when I wanted a thing or person for myself." "You say, lure him on with 'us'" Stephen cut in.
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