eve--one of the crew from
Algiers, but art come to strive for the release of thy sister?'

Arthur gave the history as best he could, for his month's practice had
made him able to speak the vernacular so as to be fairly comprehensible,
and the Marabout, who was evidently a man of very high abilities, often
met him half way, and suggested the word at which he stumbled. He was
greatly touched by the account, even in the imperfect manner in which the
youth could give it; and there was no doubt that he was a man of enlarged
mind and beneficence, who had not only mastered the fifty sciences, but
had seen something of the world.

He had not only made his pilgrimage to Mecca more than once, but had been
at Constantinople, and likewise at Tunis and Tripoli; thus, with powers
both acute and awake, he understood more than his countrymen of European
Powers and their relation to one another. As a civilised and cultivated
man, he was horrified at the notion of the tenderly-nurtured child being
in the clutches of savages like the Cabeleyzes; but the first difficulty
was to find out where she was; for, as he said, pointing towards the
mountains, they were a wide space, and it would be hunting a partridge on
the hills.

Looking at his chief councillor, Azim Reverdi, he demanded whether some
of the wanderers of their order, whom he named, could not be sent through
the mountains to discover where any such prisoners might be; but after
going into the court in quest of these persons, Azim returned with
tidings that a Turkish soldier had returned on the previous day to the
town, and had mentioned that on Mount Couco, Sheyk Abderrahman was almost
at war with his subordinates, Eyoub and Ben Yakoub, about some
shipwrecked Frank captives, if they had not already settled the matter by
murdering them all, and, as was well known, nothing would persuade this
ignorant, lawless tribe that nothing was more abhorrent to the Prophet
than human sacrifices.

Azim had already sent two disciples to summon the Turk to the presence of
the Grand Marabout, and in due time he appeared--a rough, heavy,
truculent fellow enough, but making awkward salaams as one in great awe
of the presence in which he stood--unwilling awe perhaps--full of
superstitious fear tempered by pride--for the haughty Turks revolted
against homage to one of the subject race of Moors.

His language was only now and then comprehensible to Arthur, but Ibrahim
kept up a running translatio