Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1937-06-25

max, both the eavesdroppers could
readily observe.
Roberts pressed his lips close to the
triple golden earrings of his SER
want.
"What say they, Selim?"
"The eldest spoke of captive, the
white lalla-two Of the elders wish
to enslave her in the tribe. The young
Tchek argues to hold her to ransom;
the fourth takes no side as yet"
Parting the coarse hair, Roberts a.
gain pressed an eye to the slit and
saw that the argument was becoming
furious, in that one of the older men,
a villianous old chieftain with a few
teeth and but one eye, had joined the
side of the handsome young Touareg.
Louder and more angry grew the
discussion, until the four mahogany
faced Touaregs fairly spat their ar
guments at one another; then the one
eyed man threw down the stem Of a
small brass nargahli and clapped his
hands loudly together.
"Him first chief-Tchek Ismail,'
whispered Selim, "say bring white
lalla. See if she make good slave
In the malodorous darkness, Roberts
pulses commenced to pound madly
with the realization that in moment
Anne Cleeves would once more stand
before his eyes-and he was there to
kill her! Not much like the last time
they had met.
Evidently the Tchek of the Toua-
regs was taking matters in his own
hands.A huge flabby negro entered,
and salaamed acknowledgement rolls
of fat ripping along his sides with
the motion. He was clad only in a
pair of baggy and dirty blue trousers.
The old man fixed bitter and wary
glance upon the two DIRECTORS. He
uttered a brief, cultural command
that caused the two DIRECTORS to break
into loud cries of anxiety.
The old man, with a defiant ges-
ture, sank back on his cushions with
the light from a single oil lamp fall
ing squarely on his savage brown face.
The conventional tattoed hand of Fa-
TINA on his left cheek and the ortho-
dox crescent on the right were plainly
visible.
Roberts was in a quandary. Had
not the camp been so plunged in slum-
Der, he might have gone on with his
original plan, risking an escape in the
confusion attendant to his shot; but,
in entertaining the idea which occur
red to him and his follower, he ran an
almost impossible risk.
(Which is the principal tchek?" he
breathed, as the Senegalese pressed
his eye to the hairy surface of the
felidj.
"The old Tchek with but one eye,"
replied Selim. ''The young man is
his son."
While they waited, the disputants
fell silent; but their eyes shifted in the
watching the movements of
their companions like so many Gagged
leopards. The ruling Tchek calmly
caught up the mouthpiece of the narg-
hall he had abandoned and commenced
to smoke with short angry puffs, an
grily tugging his grey beard at the
same time.
Presently, from an adjoining tent,
Joined to the council chamber by
passage, came a subdued murmur of
voices, and as he lay on the cold sand,
Roberts stiffened. Through the peep
hole, he strained his eyes in the di-
rection of the passage and saw the
flabby, half-naked negro re-enter. The
slave, on reaching the edge of the
divan, fell forward in deep salaam
before the one-eyed grey-beard.
"The captive comes," he bleated in
a high, reedy voice, ooh, Tchek Ismail,
and with her he who speaks the ton
que of the Franzwazi."
With his heart beating like a saw
ages war drum and his hand convul-
sively gripping the butt of his auto
matte, the engineer pressed his face