"
"And should I fear the test?" she countered, nothing daunted. "I tell
thee, 0 father of Marzak, that I should hail it gladly. Why, hear me
now. Thou settest store by deeds, not words. Tell me, then, is it the
deed of a True-Believer to waste substance upon infidel slaves, to
purchase them that he may set them free?
Asad moved on in silence. That erstwhile habit of Sakr-el-Bahr's was
one not easy to condone. It had occasioned him his moments of
uneasiness, and more than once had he taxed his lieutenant with the
practice ever to receive the same answer, the answer which he now made
to Fenzileh. "For every slave that he so manumitted, he brought a dozen
into bondage."
"Perforce, else would he be called to account. 'Twas so much dust he
flung into the face of true Muslimeen. Those manumissions prove a
lingering fondness for the infidel country whence he springs. Is there
room for that in the heart of a true member of the Prophet's immortal
House? Hast ever known me languish for the Sicilian shore from which in
thy might thou wrested me, or have I ever besought of thee the life of a
single Sicilian infidel in all these years that I have lived to serve
thee? Such longings are betrayed, I say, by such a practice, and such
longings could have no place in one who had uprooted infidelity from his
heart. And now this voyage of his beyond the seas--risking a vessel
that he captured from the arch-enemy of Islam, which is not his to risk
but thine in whose name he captured it; and together with it he imperils
the lives of two hundred True-Believers.
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