It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground, near the wall of the Kasbah gate.From that dark cell, crouching on the grain, which was alive with vermin, he listened in terror to the sounds of the night.First the galloping of horses on the courtyard overhead; then the furious shouts of the soldiers, and, finally, the mad cries of the crowd."Damn it--they've given us the slip" "Yes; they've crawled off like rats from a sinking ship.""Curse it all, it's only a bungle." This in the Spanish tongue, and then in the tongue of his own country Ben Aboo heard the guttural shouts of his own people: "Sidi, try the palace.""Try the apartments of his women, Sidi." "Abd er-Rahman's gone, but Ben Aboo's hiding." "Death to the tyrant!" "Down with the Basha!""Ben Aboo! Ben Aboo!" Last of all a terrific voice demanding silence.
"Silence, you shrieking hell-babies, silence!"Ben Aboo was in safety; but to lie in that dark hole underground and to hear the tumult above him was more than he could bear without going mad.So he waited until the din abated, and the soldiers, who had ransacked the Kasbah, seemed to have deserted it;and then he crept out, made for the women's apartments, and rattled at their door.It was folly, it was lunacy; but he could not resist it, for he dared not be alone.He could hear the sounds of voices within--wailing and weeping of the women--but no one answered his knocking.Again and again he knocked with his elbows (still gripping his money-bags with both hands), until the flesh was raw through selham and kaftan by beating against the wood.