cloth
over him, for the nights were chill. Long did Arthur lie awake under the
strange sense of slavery and helplessness, and utter uncertainty as to
his fate, expecting, in fact, that Yusuf meant to keep him as a sort of
tame animal to talk Scotch; but hoping to work on him in time to favour
an escape, and at any rate to despatch a letter to Algiers, as a forlorn
hope for the ultimate redemption of the poor little unconscious child who
lay warm and heavy across his breast. Certainly, Arthur had never so
prayed for aid, light, and deliverance as now!

CHAPTER VIII--THE SEARCH

'The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks,
The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs. The deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends.'

TENNYSON.

Arthur fell asleep at last, and did not waken till after sunrise, nor did
Ulysse, who must have been exhausted with crying and struggling. When
they did awaken, Arthur thinking with heavy heart that the moment of
parting was come, he saw indeed the other three slaves busied in making
bales of the merchandise; but the master, as well as the Abyssinian,
Fareek, and the little negro were all missing. Bekir, who was a kind of
foreman, and looked on the new white slave with some jealousy, roughly
pointed to some coarse food, and in reply to the question whether the
merchant was taking leave of the sheyk, intimated that it was no business
of theirs, and assumed authority to make his new fellow-slave assist in
the hardest of the packing.

Arthur had no heart to resist, much as it galled him to be ordered about
by this rude fellow. It was only a taste, as he well knew, of what he
had embraced, and he was touched by poor little Ulysse's persistency in
keeping as close as possible, though his playfellows came down and tried
first to lure, then to drag him away, and finally remained to watch the
process of packing up. Though Bekir was too disdainful to reply to his
fellow-slave's questions, Arthur picked up from answers to the Moors who
came down that Yusuf had recollected that he had not finished his
transactions with a little village of Cabyle coral and sponge-fishers on
the coast, and had gone down thither, taking the little negro, to whom
the headman seemed to have taken a fancy, so as to become a possible
purchaser, and with the Abyssinian to attend to the mules.

A little before sundown Yusuf returned. Fareek lifted down a pannier
covered by a crimson and yellow