hem too
in hot Castilian. She drove her nails into the arms of one and spat
fiercely into the face of another of her corsair guards. Rosamund's
weary eyes quickened to horror as she watched her--a horror prompted as
much by the fate awaiting that poor child as by the undignified fury
of the futile battle she waged against it. But it happened that her
behaviour impressed a Levantine Turk quite differently. He rose, a short
squat figure, from his seat on the steps of the well.

"Sixty Philips will I pay for the joy of taming that wild cat," said he.

But Ibrahim was not to be outbidden. He offered seventy, the Turk
countered with a bid of eighty, and Ibrahim again raised the price to
ninety, and there fell a pause.

The dalal spurred on the Turk. "Wilt thou be beaten then, and by
an Israelite? Shall this lovely maid be given to a perverter of the
Scriptures, to an inheritor of the fire, to one of a race that would not
bestow on their fellow-men so much as the speck out of a date-stone? It
were a shame upon a True-Believer."

Urged thus the Turk offered another five Philips, but with obvious
reluctance. The Jew, however, entirely unabashed by a tirade against
him, the like of which he heard a score of times a day in the course of
trading, pulled forth a heavy purse from his girdle.

"Here are one hundred Philips," he announced. "'Tis overmuch. But I
offer it."

Ere the dalal's pious and seductive tongue could urge him further the
Turk sat down again with a gesture of finality.

"I give him joy of her," said he.

"She is thine, then, O Ibrahim, for one hundred philips."

The Israelite relinquished the purse to the dalal's white-robed
assistants and advanced to receive the girl. The corsairs thrust her
forward against him, still vainly battling, and his arms closed about
her for a moment.

"Thou has cost me dear, thou daughter of Spain," said he. "But I am
content. Come." And he made shift to lead her away. Suddenly, however,
fierce as a tiger-cat she writhed her arms upwards and clawed at his
face. With a scream of pain he relaxed his hold of her and in that
moment, quick as lightning she plucked the dagger that hung from his
girdle so temptingly within her reach.

"Valga me Dios!" she cried, and ere a hand could be raised to prevent
her she had buried the blade in her lovely breast and sank in a
laughing, coughing, heap at his feet. A final convulsive heave and she
lay there quite still, whilst Ibrahim glared