第71章

WHERE IS SHE?

In Praousta, all was again uproar and confusion. Eight eunuchs of the mighty pacha, Cousrouf, accompanied by a detachment of twelve soldiers, came down from Cavalla at noon. They went directly to the house of the sheik, and demanded to see him.

Djumeila, her eyes red with weeping, came to the door and told them her master was ill with grief and anxiety on account of the disappearance of his daughter.

The eunuchs pushed her aside, and penetrated, in spite of her cries and attempts to bar their passage, into the room where the sheik lay on his divan, with pallid face and staring gaze. His lamentations were heartrending. His quivering lips continually cried: "Where is my daughter, where is my child?"They roughly forced him to his feet, and with savage threats demanded of the old man that he should deliver over to them their master's slave, his daughter Masa. Aroused from his torpor, he stares at them in amazement:

"Slave!" cried he. "And you call her Masa, and my daughter; and you say it is she? Who calls Masa, daughter of the sheik, his slave?""Our master does," said they--"our master, Cousrouf Pacha.""How can the stranger dare to call the daughter of a free man, a free girl, his slave?""He dares do it because it is so," replied the eunuchs, shrugging their shoulders; "Masa sold herself to his excellency, our gracious master, to Cousrouf Pacha, when she procured your release by paying the second tax. You thought it was done out of kindness. No, Masa sold herself to our gracious master, Cousrouf Pacha, for one hundred gold sequins.""That is false; you lie, you wretches! You lie in all you say! You lie!" cried the sheik. He now stood erect, regarding them threateningly. "Do not dare to speak to me thus again! Justice and law still live! No one can say that Masa, my daughter, is a slave;and may he who says it stand accursed before Allah and the prophets!"The two eunuchs threw themselves upon him and held him fast. They then called two of the soldiers to their assistance, and bound him hand and foot. This done, they threw the old man contemptuously down upon his divan, and proceeded to ransack every part of the house in search of Masa, their master's runaway slave.

There lay the sheik, bound and helpless, groaning and lamenting: "Iam mad! I hear that which is not. I hear voices say that which cannot be. No, I am mad! It is impossible that Masa, the daughter of the Sheik of Praousta, is the slave of the stranger Turk! Impossible that I can have heard such a thing! Death or even madness is approaching me. It creeps stealthily toward me and stares at me wildly. O Masa, my daughter, come save your father!"About him all was still, but in the rooms above was an uproar. He heard the heavy footsteps in the upper apartments, into which, until now, no man save the father had ever entered. They are going from room to room, throwing the daughter's things about, ransacking her bedchamber, overthrowing furniture, and looking under carpets and mattresses, searching everywhere for the only daughter of the poor sheik. Then they go to the yard, to the stables. Masa is sought everywhere. But, Allah be praised, she cannot be found!

Without, before the door, stand the men and women of the village in a wide circle, gazing with dismay upon the eunuchs and the twelve soldiers, who now come out of the door, fall in line before the house, and demand of the people to tell them where Masa, the sheik's daughter, is.

"We know not. We have not seen her. How can we tell you what has become of Masa, the sheik's only daughter? She was as pure and good as ever girl was. No one looked at her. Who can tell where she is?""This is all pretence. Enough! we will go from house to house and search for Masa!"With cries of rage the men attempt to oppose them, but the strange soldiers who have just arrived know no pity. They use their swords vigorously upon those who oppose them; the sight of blood terrifies the others, and the cries of the wounded silence them. The eunuchs'

soldiers are allowed to enter each house, for the men of Praousta are too poor to be able to provide for more than one wife, and the poor man's wife has no separate, secluded apartments. She goes about in the house unveiled, and attends to her domestic occupations while her husband is out hunting or fishing. The search of the eunuchs and soldiers for the girl is therefore easily conducted; in each house there is but one wife and she is unveiled, as are also the children;the maidens, however, timidly shrink back and draw their veils more closely about them. The strange soldiers, however, do not go so far in their boldness as to raise the veils of the girls. And what would it avail them to do so? Neither they nor the eunuchs have ever seen the face of the sheik's daughter.