n into French for his benefit.

There were captives--infidels--saved from the wreck, he knew not how
many, but he was sure of one--a little maid with hair like the unwound
cocoon, so that they called her the Daughter of the Silkworm. It was
about her that the chief struggle was. She had fallen to the lot of Ben
Yakoub, who had been chestnut-gathering by the sea at the time of the
wreck; but when he arrived on Mount Couco the Sheyk Abderrahman had
claimed her and hers as the head of the tribe, and had carried her off to
his own adowara in the valley of Ein Gebel.

The Turk, Murad, had been induced by Yakoub to join him and sixteen more
armed men whom he had got together to demand her. For it was he who had
rescued her from the waves, carried her up the mountains, fed her all
this time, and he would not have her snatched away from him, though for
his part Murad thought it would have been well to be quit of them, for
not only were they Giaours, but he verily believed them to be of the race
of Jinns. The little fair-haired maid had papers with strange signs on
them. She wrote--actually wrote--a thing that he believed no Sultana
Velide even had ever been known to do at Stamboul. Moreover, she twisted
strings about on her hands in a manner that was fearful to look at. It
was said to be only to amuse the children, but for his part he believed
it was for some evil spell. What was certain was that the other, a woman
full grown, could, whenever any one offended her, raise a Jinn in a cloud
of smoke, which caused such sneezing that she was lost sight of. And yet
these creatures had so bewitched their captors that there were like to be
hard blows before they were disposed of, unless his advice were taken to
make an end of them altogether. Indeed, two of the men, the mad Santon
and the chief slave, had been taken behind a bush to be sacrificed, when
the Daughter of the Silkworm came between with her incantations, and fear
came upon Sheyk Yakoub. Murad evidently thought it highly advisable that
the chief Marabout should intervene to put a stop to these doings, and
counteract the mysterious influence exercised by these strange beings.

High time, truly, Arthur and Ibrahim Aga likewise felt it, to go to the
rescue, since terror and jealousy might, it appeared, at any time impel
_ces barbares feroces_, as Ibrahim called them, to slaughter their
prisoners. To their great joy, the Marabout proved to be of the same
opinion, in