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Show of the Aissaoui, they who stand in the fire and eat scorpions and glass, and drive in the steel behind their eyes, and are carried with their naked breasts upon sharp knives." Sir Claude twisted his body in a sort of heavy shudder. "Cheerful!" he ejaculated. "How long shall we be?" "Monsieur, I cannot tell. The mules arc weary. This is a cruel journey." He sighed, keenly regarding Sir with his one eye. "Never before, after hunting all the day, have I been made to travel all the night." Sir Claude's mule stumbled. "Hold up!" he cried, in English. He felt a certain compunction. "It's your own fault!" he growled. "My fault, monsieur?" . Achmed's voice quivered with in-nocent astonishment. "Well, if it isn't-" Sir Claude broke off. After all, he did not know anything. He was only suspicious. And it seemed to him impossible either to confirm or to destroy his suspicions at present. For how could he question Achmed without showing that he was anxious for his wife's safety? And how could he let a "damned black" know that he had ever, in his thoughts, connected her beauty and purity with the desires of a Spahi ? "You shouldn't have put me up to this expedition," he said. " I thought monsieur had never shot gazelle." "No more I had. that?" "All the English gentlemen who come to El-Akbara want to shoot gazelle." Sir Claude began to wonder whether he had wronged the guide. Now that us |
