s, their gleaming teeth, and dancing eyes, the messenger who
had been sent for Naomi came back with the news that she was gone. Then
Ben Aboo rose in silent consternation, but his guests only laughed the
louder, until a second messenger, a soldier of the guard, came running
with more startling news. Marteel had been bombarded by the Spaniards;
the army of Marshall O'Donnel was under the walls of Tetuan, and their
own people were opening the gates to him.

The tumult and confusion which followed upon this announcement does not
need to be detailed. Shoutings for the mkhaznia, infuriated commands to
the guards, racings to the stables and the Kasbah yard, unhobbling of
horses, stamping and clattering of hoofs, and scurryings through dark
corridors of men carrying torches and flares. There was no attempt at
resistance. That was seen to be useless. Both the civil guard and the
soldiery had deserted. The Kasbah was betrayed. Terror spread like fire.
In very little time the Sultan and his company with their women and
eunuchs, were gone from the town through the straggling multitude of
their disorderly and dissolute and worthless soldiery lying asleep on
the southern side of it.

Ben Aboo did not fly with Abd er-Rahman. He remembered that he had
treasure, and as soon as he was alone he went in search of it. There
were fifty thousand dollars, sweat of the life-blood of innocent people.
No one knew the strong-room except himself, for with his own hand he
had killed the mason who built it. In the dark he found the place, and
taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his
selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen.

It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and
Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground,
near the wall of the Kasbah gate. From that dark cell, crouching on the
grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds
of the night. First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead;
then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of
the crowd. "Damn it--they've given us the slip." "Yes; they've crawled
off like rats from a sinking ship." "Curse it all, it's only a bungle."
This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country
Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people: "Sidi, try the
palace." "Try the apartments of his women, Sidi." "Abd er-Rahman's gone,
but Ben Aboo's hidin