Frankish child who had brought shame and
destruction on them at Zaraila, and they longed to draw their steel
across the fair young throat, to plunge their lances into the bright,
bare bosom, to twine her hair round their spear handles, to rend her
delicate limbs apart, as a tiger rends the antelope, to torture, to
outrage, to wreak their vengeance on her. Their chief, only, motioned
their violence back from her, and bade them leave her untouched. At him
she looked still with the same fixed, serene, scornful resolve; she had
encountered these men so often in battle, she knew so well how rich a
prize she was to him. But she had one thought alone with her; and for it
she subdued contempt, and hate, and pride, and every passion in her.

"I surrender," she said, with the same tranquillity. "I have heard that
you have sworn by your God and your Prophet to tear me limb from limb
because that I--a child, and a woman-child--brought you to shame and to
grief on the day of Zaraila. Well, I am here; do it. You can slake your
will on me. But that you are brave men, and that I have ever met you in
fair fight, let me speak one word with you first."

Through the menaces and the rage around her, fierce as the yelling of
starving wolves around a frozen corpse, her clear, brave tones reached
the ear of the chief in the lingua sabir that she used. He was a young
man, and his ear was caught by that tuneful voice, his eyes by that
youthful face. He signed upward the swords of his followers, and
motioned them back as their arms were stretched to seize her, and their
shouts clamored for her slaughter.

"Speak on," he said briefly to her.

"You have sworn to take my body, sawn in two, to Ben-Ihreddin?" she
pursued, naming the Arab leader whom her Spahis had driven off the field
of Zaraila. "Well, here it is; you can take it to him; and you will
receive the piasters, and the horses, and the arms that he has promised
to whoever shall slay me. I have surrendered; I am yours. But you are
bold men, and the bold are never mean; therefore, I will ask one thing
of you. There is a man yonder, in my camp, condemned to death with the
dawn. He is innocent. I have ridden from Algiers to-day with the order
of his release. If it is not there by sunrise he will be shot; and he
is guiltless as a child unborn. My horse is worn out; he could not go
another half league. I knew that, since he had failed, my comrade would
perish, unless I found a fresh beast or a