A Son of the Sahara

In the days when France was pursuing a vigorous forward policy in Africa, a policy started by General Faidherbe and carried on by subsequent governors, one of the bravest among...

The city of El-Ammeh lies about a hundred miles within the Sahara proper. It is a walled town of Moorish aspect, built of brown rock and baked mud. Within the walls is a tangle...

By the time Annette knew enough Arabic to make herself understood, and to understand what was said around her, she realized that if the Sultan learnt her boy was not his, this o...

With the passing years, the Sultan Casim Ammeh increased in wealth and power. He gave very little thought to France now. It was a vague power, too far away to trouble him, and o...

When the skirmish was over, Barclay and his junior, with half a dozen Hausas and a lantern or two, made a round of the compound, counting the dead and attending to the wounded.

To Pansy it was some new Arabian Nights, vastly interesting because her father was one of the principal characters. Although she had heard it quite fifty times, she was ready to...

Somewhere off the Boulevard St. Michel there is a cabaret. The big dancing hall has red walls painted with yellow shooting stars, and, overhead, electric lights blaze under red...

In a select French boarding-school a girl sat reading a letter. She was about fifteen years old, a slender, lovely child, light and graceful, with a cascade of golden curls reac...

Paris always has a welcome for millionaires. And it always had a specially warm welcome for Raoul Le Breton, the African merchant-prince. Not only was he fabulously rich, but he...

The harem in the palace of El-Ammeh led into a large hall with carved doors and tiny arabesque windows, fretted and scrolled, with no one spot big enough to squeeze more than a...

In one of the hotels in the Island of Grand Canary dinner had just been served. Around the door of the large dining-hall the manager, the head waiter and several underlings hove...

Just off the main road between the Port and the city of Las Palmas, Grand Canary, a villa stood. It was situated on a hill; a white, flat-roofed building, set in a pleasant gard...

Beneath, the hotel grounds spread, running down to the shore. Beyond, the sea stretched, a silver mirror, away to the sparkling, frosty mist of the horizon. In the milky sky the...

A slim, boyish figure entered the room, clad in a well-cut white riding suit, the neatest of brown boots and leggings, and a white felt hat pulled well on to a mop of curls.

In the large palm-decked patio of the hotel, Le Breton sat sipping coffee as he went through the newspapers solicitous waiters had placed on a table at his elbow. It was not oft...

At six o'clock in the morning the road that joins the port and the city of Las Palmas shows very little sign of the peaceful English invasion. It is given over to the Islanders....

In the library of the villa, Le Breton sat alone. The hour was late, getting on to midnight. He was stretched in a deep chair smoking, his gaze fixed on a desk close by, on whic...

At a spot about ten miles away from Las Palmas there are some well-known orange groves. Stretch upon stretch of scented trees, they made a lattice-work of smooth boughs and shin...

Under the trees that shadowed one corner of the tennis-courts of the hotel a couple stood. One was a young man of about twenty-four, in white flannel trousers and shirt-sleeves,...

Raoul Le Breton took Pansy's riddle home to solve. He went about it in his own private sanctum. Seating himself at the desk, he wrote out the verse, with a French-English dictio...

Le Breton did not run after the girl. He watched her go, with a feeling that he could afford to bide his time. But at six o'clock the next morning he was round at the hotel wait...

When night came Pansy tried not to think of Le Breton, but the idea of him out there in the moonlight haunted her. She wondered how long he would wait; patience did not look to...

The next morning the sun streaming into Pansy's bedroom roused her. She awoke with the feeling of having indulged in some delightful dream, which, like all dreams, must melt wit...

Considering it was nearly two in the morning before Le Breton would let Pansy out of his arms, he did not expect her to be out and about at six o'clock for her usual ride. Never...

Along the deserted corridor of the big hotel Pansy was hurrying. Her outing with Le Breton had made her late. By the time she was dressed and ready dinner was well started. She...

A flood of light poured out from Le Breton's villa, from wide-open French windows on to a moonlit lawn. Around the house, palms drooped and bamboos whispered. The night was lade...

He turned quickly. Then he stood surveying the speaker with surprise, for the girl beside him looked very different from the Pansy he knew. There was an almost tortured air abou...

The task appeared easy. He would get one of his men to note when she left the hotel and mark which route she took. There were not many roads in the place, and it would not be di...

In his study Sir George Barclay sat alone. Sixteen years had passed since, in far-away Gambia, he had had to condemn to death the marauding Arab chief. In a few weeks' time he w...

In a fashionable London hotel a little party of three sat at dinner. The dining-room was a large place, full of well-dressed people. It was bright with electric light, and under...

One day when Le Breton returned from one of the mad rides he frequently indulged in, in a vain effort to assuage the pain and chagrin that raged within him, he found among a pil...

Over El-Ammeh great stars flashed, like silver lamps in the purple dome above the desert city. Their light gave a faint, misty white tinge to the scented blueness of the harem g...

Over the old fort near the river the British flag drooped limply. Many years had passed since it had last hung there. Nowadays, the place was not used. The country was too peace...

Within it now were encamped what looked to be a large party of Arab merchants. There were about a hundred of them, and they had come early that morning, with horses, and camels,...

In the guard-house of the old fort where George Barclay had once housed his wounded Arab prisoners, Captain Cameron sat propped up with pillows in a camp bed. It was a cool, dim...

So far there had been no hitch in his schemes. Sir George and his staff had proved an easy prey. Already one portion of his Arab following, with Barclay's officers, had set out...

The light flickered on the couch where Pansy still lay, limp and white among the silken cushions, her curls making a halo about her pain-drawn face. She was no longer clad in he...

In one of the tents in the glade Sir George Barclay sat, an Arab guard on either side of him. There was an almost stupefied air about him; of a man whose world has suddenly got...

Three days elapsed before Pansy returned to full consciousness, and even then the world was a very hazy place. One morning she woke up, almost too weak to move, with a feeling t...

In Bathhurst, the deputy Governor awaited news of Sir George Barclay. More than a month had passed since he had left the town, and during most of the time letters had come throu...

She arrived there one night after dark, a darkness out from which high walls loomed and over them strange sounds came; the thin wail of stringed instruments; a tom-tom throbbing...

Sir George Barclay and most of his staff had a knowledge of Eastern prisons from the outside. They knew them to be abodes of misery; dark, insanitary dens, alive with vermin, sq...

The market of El-Ammeh was situated in the centre of the city. It was surrounded by a huddle of whitewashed houses, of varying heights and shapes, leaning one against the other,...

When Pansy returned to consciousness she felt she had awakened from some nightmare and was back in her own world, a civilized world; her capture by the Sultan Casim Ammeh and al...

Great stars flashed in a desert sky, a sky deep and soft, like purple velvet. They looked down on a sea of sand over which the wind roamed; and always and ever in its train ther...

Giving no thought to the grimy wretch out there in the desert, the Sultan was seated in one of the deep, open galleries of his palace. Some ten feet below a garden sighed, and t...

Night filled the harem with shadows and scent. The silver lamps cast a soft glow through the huge hall, glinting on wide ottomans and piles of cushions, on little tables set wit...

On the terrace of her quarters, Pansy sat at dinner with her host. Three days had passed since her rescue from the slave-market; three delightful days for the girl, assured of h...

Pansy saw nothing of her host until the following afternoon. Almost immediately after his declaration Le Breton left her. Most of his time had been spent in contemplating the tr...

There was a new slave in the Sultan's harem, a dazed girl who looked as if she moved in dreams. She was not reclining on a lounge or cushions, as the other girls around the foun...

On one of the terraces of his palace the Sultan sat and brooded, his face hard and savage, as he glowered at the scene ahead of him; a harmless scene where night shadows settled...

All the following day Rayma waited for the Sultan's coming. Pansy waited, also. By now she realised more fully what she had done: struck and infuriated the man who held her fath...

Early the next morning when Pansy was splashing about in the great underground tank, a voice made her look up in a startled fashion. So far no one had intruded on her ablutions.

On seeing them Rayma's screams broke out afresh. Piteous little pleas for mercy, wild promises never to offend again, that he ignored completely. Then she fell a sobbing, golden...

One bar of moonlight fell on a couch where Pansy lay, her face buried in the cushions. By her side the Sultan knelt, one arm across her, watching her with glowing, passionate eyes.

The next morning Pansy awoke to find herself back in her gilded prison, and Alice beside her with the customary morning tea, a dish of fruit and a basket of flowers, all as if t...

When Sir George Barclay returned to prison, he was a broken man. His officers were surprised to see him back alive, and anxious to hear what had occurred. But a day or two passe...

She knew she loved the Sultan, but all her standards revolted against marrying him. She could not bear to think about the wild past that was his, but she equally could not bear...

Outside a little French military settlement several ragged tents had been pitched. In the largest of them the miser feather merchant was sitting, cross-legged, on a pile of dirt...

"Do you still wish to escape?" she asked, watching her supplanter as if she could not believe such a desire could lie in the heart of any woman the Sultan pleased to favour.

The sound of that desperate conflict rang through the stillness of the night, reaching the ears of a man who was riding at break-neck speed along the sandy track leading in the...

On a wide ottoman in her room Pansy lay. The golden lamps were burning low, casting black shadows on the gilded walls of her cage. Through the open arches the moonlight streamed...

On one of the terraces of his palace the Sultan sat at breakfast. As he lingered in the sweet cool air of early morning, he pondered on the happenings of the night before.

Evening shadows were settling over El-Ammeh; deep, grey shadows that, for all their gloomy darkness, were not as dark and gloomy as the thoughts of a man who was a prisoner in o...