A strange feeling of anxiety, almost of fear, had taken hold on the Master's heart. This fear was not in the least for himself or any of the men. Hard-bitted adventurers all, they had gone into this expedition with their eyes open, well knowing that some must inevitably die before its close. They had gambled at dice with Fate; and, losing, could have no complaint. It was all for "Captain Alden" that the Master's anxiety was now awakened. Here was a woman, not only exposed to risks of death, but also of capture by Orientals--and what it might mean to a white woman to be seized for some hidden harem in Jannati Shahr the Master knew only too well. He found a moment's pause to speak in a low tone to the "captain," unheard by any of the others. "Remember the mercy-bullet!" said he. "If anything happens and there's any risk of capture--remember, the last one for yourself!" "If the worst comes," she whispered, "we can at least share death together!" He gazed at her a moment, not quite fathoming her words, but with an inexplicable tightening round the heart. "We can at least share death together!" Why should those words so powerfully affect him? What were these uncomprehended, new emotions stirring in his hard soul, tempered by war and by unnumbered stern adventurings? The Master had no skill in self-analysis, to tell him. Leader of others, himself he did not understand. But as that night aboard Nìssr, when he had laid a hand on the woman's cabin door, something unknown to him seemed drawing him to her, making her welfare and her life assume a strange import. "Come, O Frank!" Bara Miyan was saying. The Olema's words recalled the Master to himself with a start. "Such food and drink as we men of El Barr have, gladly we share with thee and thine!" The old man entered the dark doorway of the citadel, noiselessly in soft sandals. Beside him walked the Master; and, well grouped and flanked and followed by the Arabs in their white robes--all silent, grave, watchful--the Legion also entered. Behind them once more closed the massive doors, silently. The eighteen Legionaries were pent in solid walls of metal, there in the heart of a vast city of fighting-men whose god was Allah and to whom all unbelievers were as outcasts and as pariah dogs--anathema. CHAPTER XLI THE MASTER'S PRICE A dim and subtly perfumed corridor opened out before them, its walls hung with tapestries, between which, by the light of sandal-oil _mash'als_, or cressets, the glimmer of the dull-gold walls could be distinguished.