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 translation 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.