knew a few words of English.

She stopped and faced them, and asked if nobody could take her to the
ship. Instantly they crowded round her, pointing and gesticulating; but
whether they understood, and what they meant, Marjorie could not
imagine. She remembered the name of the ship's agents, and spoke that
aloud several times, and there were more cries and more crowding and
gesticulation. Each man seemed struggling to get possession of her, and
Marjorie grew so frightened at the strange sounds, and the fierce
faces--as they seemed to her--and the gathering darkness, that she
completely lost her head. She looked wildly round her, gave a little
shrill cry of terror, and seeing the ring thinner in one place than
another, she made a dart through it, and began to run as if for her very
life. It was the maddest thing to do. Hitherto there had been no real
danger. Nobody had any thought of molesting the English lady, though her
behaviour had excited much curiosity. Anybody would have taken her down
to the quay, as they all knew where she came from. But this head-long
flight first startled them, and then roused that latent demon of
savagery which lies dormant in every son of the desert. Instantly, with
yells which sounded terrific in Marjorie's ears, they gave chase. Fear
lent her wings, but she heard the pursuit coming nearer and nearer. She
knew not where she was flying, whether towards safety or into the heart
of danger. Her breath came in sobbing gasps, her feet slipped and seemed
as though they would carry her no farther. The cries behind and on all
sides grew louder and fiercer. She was making blindly for the entrance
to the arcade. Each moment she expected to feel a hand grasping her from
the rear. There was no getting away from her pursuers in these terrible
arcades. Oh, why had she ever trusted herself alone in this awful old
city!

She darted through the archway, and then, uttering a faint cry, gave
herself up for lost, for she felt herself grasped tightly in a pair of
powerful arms, and all the terrible stories she had heard from
fellow-passengers about Europeans taken captive in Morocco, and put up
for ransom recurred to her excited fancy. She had nobody to ransom her.
She would be left to languish and die in some awful Moorish prison.
Perhaps nobody would ever know of her fate. That was what came of always
doing as one chose, and making one's friends believe a falsehood.

Like a lightning flash all this passed thr