The market of El-Ammeh was situated in the centre of the city. It was
surrounded by a huddle of whitewashed houses, of varying heights and
shapes, leaning one against the other, with here and there, over some
high wall, a glimpse of greenery--the feathery head of a palm, the
shiny leaves of a camphor tree, a pomegranate, an orange or a fig tree.
On the side overlooking the square the houses were practically without
windows, and the few there were were small and iron-barred.
Under most of the buildings were dim, cave-like shops hung with rare
silks and ostrich feathers, or littered with articles in beaten silver,
copper, and iron. There was quaint leatherwork and coarse pottery and
a good sprinkling of European goods.
Several narrow, passage-like streets led into the square, entering it,
in some cases, under dark archways. Sometimes these ways were barred
to the mere public--the poorer people who daily sold produce in the
square--and only those with special permits were allowed to enter: men
of wealth and substance.
Every month a sale of slaves was held in the market, generally of Arab
and negro girls; but occasionally something very different figured
there--perhaps some black-haired, black-eyed, creamy beauty brought
right across the Sahara from the Barbary States, a thousand miles away;
or some half-caste girl from the Soudan, even further afield.
When this happened there were always plenty of buyers. Men of wealth
flocked in from hundreds of miles around, for any skin lighter than
brown was a rarity.
Within the last few weeks word had gone round the district, blown
hither and thither in the desert, that a girl even more beautiful than
those creamy beauties from the Barbary States was to be on sale at the
next auction--a girl hailing from, Allah alone knew, what far
land--Paradise, if her description were a true one. A girl with a skin
white as milk, hair golden as the sunshine, and eyes of a blue deep as
desert night; a maid, moreover, not another man's discarded fancy.
For days before the sale, as flies are drawn towards a honey-pot, the
caravans of wealthy merchants came trickling in from the desert.
When the day itself arrived they hurried with their retinues to the
square; some to buy, if possible; others, less wealthy, to see if the
maid were as beautiful as report said.
On one side of the market square was a raised platform. From the house
behind a room opened on it, a big, shadowy room, whitewashed and
stone-flagged, with a barred window high up near the ceiling.
Into that room Pansy was taken by her escort in a curtained litter.
During the journey to the market she had had the sensation of moving in
some ghastly nightmare from which she could not wake herself, much as
she tried.
It could not be possible that she, Pansy Langham, the feted and
much-courted heiress, was to be sold as one might sell a horse or a cow.
She had the horrible feeling of having lost her own identity and taken
on someone else's, yet all the time remembering what had happened when
she was Pansy Langham. She felt she must have slipped back hundreds of
years to some previous existence, when girls were sold as slaves; for
surely this appalling fate could not be happening to her in the
twentieth century?
A riot of thought ran through the girl's head during the journey from
the palace to the market; a riot of numb, sickly terror, the
outstanding feature of which was an inability to credit the fate before
her.
When Pansy reached the room she gave up all hope. She knew she was
awake--painfully, horribly wide awake, with a future before her that
made her shudder to contemplate.
There were a dozen or more girls in the room, but they were railed off
from Pansy by a thick wooden trellis, like sheep in a pen; brown and
black girls, the majority attired in nothing more than a cloth reaching
from waist to knee. They had been chattering shrilly among themselves
at her entry, apparently in no way appalled at the fate before them;
but they broke off when she came in, and crowded to the lattice to get
a closer view, gazing at the newcomer and giving vent to little
exclamations of awe and envy and admiration.
Pansy's arrival brought a stout, bearded man in white burnoose in from
the house behind.
His glance ran over the English girl, but he made no attempt to touch
her. Then he looked at her escort, who had stationed themselves on
either side of her.
"By Allah!" he exclaimed. "This is a houri straight from Paradise you
have brought me. Never have I sold such loveliness. There will be
high bidding in the market of El-Ammeh this morning."
"I, for one, can't understand why the Sultan has not kept this pearl
for himself," the leader of the escort said.
The auctioneer smiled in a peculiar, knowing fashion.
"Our Sultan has been in lands where there are many such," he replied.
"Now he gives his subjects a chance to revel in delights that have been
his."
Other men appeared from behind, negroes.
At a word from their master they opened the door leading out on the
platform. Then they stood on either side whilst he passed through.
Through the open door came a blaze of sunshine, the buzz of a
multitude, and presently a long declamation in Arabic as the auctioneer
enlarged upon the quality of his wares.
The girls behind the trellis craned their necks to see what was going
on, chattering shrilly among themselves.
From where Pansy stood she could see nothing. She did not want to see
anything. The horror would be upon her quite soon enough.
One of the negro assistants opened a gate in the trellis and motioned
to a girl. As she appeared on the platform, from outside there came a
sigh of disappointment, then guttural voices bidding.
Another and another of the girls passed out, all apparently indifferent
to the ordeal before them.
Then the auctioneer appeared on the threshold.
On seeing him Pansy felt her turn had come, and the world started
reeling around her.
She knew she passed from shadow into sunshine, that dead silence
greeted her appearance on the dais--a silence that was followed by a
din of wild, excited shouting.
It seemed to her that the world was nothing but eyes: the eyes of a
surging crowd of dark-faced men, watching her with desire and
admiration.
To Pansy, high-bred and fastidious, it was a vision of hell, this swarm
of wild men looking at her with covetous desire. The Pit gaped at her
feet, peopled with demons, any one of which might spring upon her.
Then the din died down to a subdued hum as men whispered one to
another, their eyes still on the golden-haired girl on the dais. There
was a horrible sort of despair on the faces of some as they thought of
their more wealthy neighbours; lustful triumph on the faces of others
as they thought of their own hoarded gold.
[Illustration: For sale as a common slave at the Taureg auction
block.....]
Then out from the crowd a voice made an offer.
The sum staggered the auctioneer. It equalled nearly five hundred
pounds of English money. No girl, even the creamy Barbary beauties,
had ever fetched that amount.
Wild commotion followed. But the price went up and up, doubling itself
in ten minutes.
To escape for a moment from the sea of covetous eyes, Pansy raised her
own.
There was someone watching her from a window, someone who looked as
tortured as herself--another soul condemned to hell.
It was a moment before she recognised that drawn, haggard face as her
fathers; it looked an old man's. He was there, the father she loved,
condemned by his enemy to see her sold.
She tried to smile. It was a woeful effort. And when the blur of
tears that seeing him brought to her eyes had passed he was gone.
It seemed to Pansy that for an eternity she stood on the edge of the
Pit, waiting until one of the devils, more powerful than the rest,
should drag her in.
The din died down as the sale proceeded, lost in tense excitement. Of
the twenty or more who had started bidding for her, only three were
left now. One of them, mad with lust and excitement, had forced his
way up to the edge of the dais and was clinging to it with grimy
hands--a lean man in turban and loin-cloth only, with long matted hair
and beard, who, foaming at the mouth, was cursing his competitors, yet
always bidding higher as he stared at Pansy with the glare of a
maddened beast.
Pansy tried not to see him, but he was always there, horrible beyond
comprehension, the worst of the demons in the hell surrounding her.
Presently, over the murmur of the crowd, came the thunder of a horse's
hoofs; of someone riding at breakneck speed through one of the
resounding arches leading into the market.
Pansy did not notice this. She realised nothing now but the
half-naked, foaming horror at her feet.
Suddenly another cry rang through the market-place.
Fortunately for Le Breton's plans Pansy knew no Arabic or she would
have recognised that cry as:
"The Sultan! The Sultan!"
For Casim Ammeh had had his vengeance, and now had come in pursuit of
love.
The cry grew to such a roar of sound that it penetrated the world of
dumb terror in which Pansy moved, and made her raise her eyes.
The crowd in the square had opened up, giving way to a khaki-clad man
on a huge, prancing black stallion.
Across the market-place tortured blue eyes met fiery black ones.
Then it seemed to Pansy that she must be dreaming--a vision of heaven
beyond this hell.
For Raoul Le Breton was there, a god among these demons. Some figment
of her own creating that must vanish as she gazed.
But he did not vanish.
He came closer, straight towards her, the crowd receding like a wave
before him. Raoul Le Breton, looking more handsome, more arrogant,
more of a king than ever; sitting his black horse like a centaur.
Pansy's hands went to her heart, and the world started spinning around
her.
Like a knight of old, he had come to her rescue.
How he could have got there she was in no condition to consider. It
was enough that he was there, in time to save her from the Pit of Hell
gaping at her feet.
He rode ride up to the dais, reining in at her side.
With outstretched arms, he went towards her.
"Come, Heart's Ease, my own brave little girl, there's nothing to fear
now," he said.
Swaying slightly, Pansy looked at him again as if he were some vision.
Then, for the first time in her life, she fainted.
With a little laugh of tender triumph, he caught her and lifted her on
his horse.
As he turned to go, grimy, covetous hands clutched Pansy's skirts--the
hands of the miser feather merchant.
With a savage oath, the Sultan raised his heavy riding whip and felled
the defiler.
Then he rode off with Pansy.
But before this happened Sir George Barclay had been taken from the
room overlooking the slave market. He did not see the Sultan Casim
Ammeh come in person to save the girl. He did not know that, in
Pansy's case, at any rate, the auction had been but a pretence.