Part 28 (1/2)
”You filthy blackae
”He is ue,” said Ali ”His teood, you see I have said five philips I'll say no an his circuit of the well, the corsairs thrusting Lionel after him Here one rose to handle him, there another, but none seemed disposed to purchase
”Five philips is the foolish price offeredFrank,” cried the dalal ”Will no True-Believer pay ten for such a slave? Wilt not thou, O Ayoub? Thou, Hamet--ten philips?”
But one after another those to whoardness of Lionel's face was too unprepossessing They had seen slaves with that look before, and experience told theood was ever to be done with such fellows Moreover, though shapely, his ht, his flesh looked too soft and tender Of what use a slave who ht very well die in the process? Even at five philips he would be dear So the disgusted dalal came back to Ali
”He is thine, then, for five philips--Allah pardon thy avarice”
Ali grinned, and his round to join the two negroes previously purchased
And then, before Ali could bid for another of the slaves he desired to acquire, a tall, elderly Jew, dressed in black doublet and hose like a Castilian gentlerey locks, and a serviceable dagger hanging froold, had claimed the attention of the dalal
In the pen that held the captives of the lesser raids conducted by Biskaine sat an Andalusian girl of perhaps some twenty years, of a beauty entirely Spanish
Her face was of the warm pallor of ivory, her massed hair of an ebony black, her eyebroere finely pencilled, and her eyes of deepest and softest brown She was dressed in the becoarb of the Castilian peasant, the folded kerchief of red and yellow above her bodice leaving bare the glories of her neck She was very pale, and her eyes ild in their look, but this detracted nothing from her beauty
She had attracted the jew's notice, and it is not ie upon her so, confiscations, and banishment suffered by the men of his race at the hands of the hettos, of Jewish maidens ravished, and Jewish children butchered in the name of the God those Spanish Christians worshi+pped, for there was so almost of conte out to indicate her
”Yonder is a Castilian wench for whoive fifty Philips, O dalal,” he announced The datalforth
”So ht for fifty Philips, O Ibrahim,”
said he ”Yusuf here will pay sixty at least” And he stood expectantly before a resplendent Moor
The Moor, however, shook his head
”Allah knows I have three wives ould destroy her loveliness within the hour and so leavehi every step of the ith those who i them 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 pro 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 ta that wild cat,” said he
But Ibrahim was not to be outbidden He offered seventy, the Turk countered with a bid of eighty, and Ibrahiain 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 iven 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 shaed thus the Turk offered another five Philips, but with obvious reluctance The Jeever, entirely unabashed by a tirade against him, the like of which he heard a score of ti, pulled forth a heavy purse froirdle
”Here are one hundred Philips,” he announced ”'Tis overmuch But I offer it”
Ere the dalal's pious and seductive tongue could urge hiesture of finality
”I give him joy of her,” said he