urned him once more to the
dalal.

"At one thousand and six hundred philips this slave is thine, O
Sakr-el-Bahr, thou glory of Islam. May Allah increase thy victories!"

"Pay him, Ali," said the corsair shortly, and he advanced to receive his
purchase.

Face to face stood he now with Rosamund, for the first time since that
day before the encounter with the Dutch argosy when he had sought her in
the cabin of the carack.

One swift glance she bestowed on him, then, her senses reeling with
horror at her circumstance she shrank back, her face of a deathly
pallor. In his treatment of Ayoub she had just witnessed the lengths
of brutality of which he was capable, and she was not to know that this
brutality had been a deliberate piece of mummery calculated to strike
terror into her.

Pondering her now he smiled a tight-lipped cruel smile that only served
to increase her terror.

"Come," he said in English.

She cowered back against the dalal as if for protection. Sakr-el-Bahr
reached forward, caught her by the wrists, and almost tossed her to his
Nubians, Abiad and Zal-Zer, who were attending him.

"Cover her face," he bade them. "Bear her to my house. Away!"

CHAPTER XI. THE TRUTH

The sun was dipping swiftly to the world's rim when Sakr-el-Bahr with
his Nubians and his little retinue of corsairs came to the gates of that
white house of his on its little eminence outside the Bab-el-Oueb and
beyond the walls of the city.

When Rosamund and Lionel, brought in the wake of the corsair, found
themselves in the spacious courtyard beyond the dark and narrow
entrance, the blue of the sky contained but the paling embers of the
dying day, and suddenly, sharply upon the evening stillness, came a
mueddin's voice calling the faithful unto prayer.

Slaves fetched water from the fountain that played in the middle of the
quadrangle and tossed aloft a slender silvery spear of water to break
into a myriad gems and so shower down into the broad marble basin.
Sakr-el-Bahr washed, as did his followers, and then he went down upon
the praying-mat that had been set for him, whilst his corsairs detached
their cloaks and spread them upon the ground to serve them in like
stead.

The Nubians turned the two slaves about, lest their glances should
defile the orisons of the faithful, and left them so facing the wall
and the green gate that led into the garden whence were wafted on the
cooling air the perfumes of jessamine and laven