Page 289 - A Knight of the White Cross

One evening the merchant returned from the town accompanied by one of
the sultan's officers and four soldiers. Ben Tbyn was evidently much

depressed and disturbed; he told Muley as he entered, to fetch Gervaise.
When the latter, in obedience to the order, came in from the garden, the

officer said in Italian, "It having come to the ears of the sultan my master
that the merchant Ben Ibyn has ventured, contrary to the law, to purchase a
Christian slave brought secretly into the town, he has declared the slave to

be forfeited and I am commanded to take him at once to the slaves'
quarter."

"I am at the sultan's orders," Gervaise said, bowing his head. "My master
has been a kind one, and I am grateful to him for his treatment of me."

Gervaise, although taken aback by this sudden change in his fortunes, was

not so cast down as he might otherwise have been; he would now be free to
carry out any plan for escape that he might devise, and by his being
addressed in Italian it was evident to him that his knowledge of Turkish

was unsuspected. When among the other slaves he had always maintained
his character of a mute; and it was only when alone in his master's family

that he had spoken at all. He had no doubt that his betrayal was due to one
of the gardeners, who had several times shown him signs of ill will, being
doubtless jealous of the immunity he enjoyed from hard labour, and who

must, he thought, have crept up and overheard some conversation; but in
that case it was singular that the fact of his knowledge of Turkish had not

been mentioned. Gervaise afterwards learned that Ben Ibyn had been fined
a heavy sum for his breach of the regulations.

He was now placed between the soldiers, and marched down to the town,
without being allowed to exchange a word with the merchant. On his

arrival there he was taken to the slaves' quarter; here his clothes were
stripped from him, and he was given in their place a ragged shirt and
trousers, and then turned into a room where some fifty slaves were lying.

Of these about half were Europeans, the rest malefactors who had been
condemned to labour.