voices. The Genoese captain was heard exclaiming, 'Open, Madame! you
can do so safely. This is the Algerine captain, who is bound to
protect you.'

The maids huddled together behind their lady, who stood forward as the
door opened to admit a stout, squarely-built man in the typical dress
of a Turk,--white turban, purple coat, broad sash crammed with weapons,
and ample trousers,--a truculent-looking figure which made the maids
shudder and embrace one another with suppressed shrieks, but which
somehow, even in the midst of his Eastern salaam, gave the Countess a
sense that he was acting a comedy, and carried her involuntarily back
to the Moors whom she had seen in the Cid on the stage. And looking
again, she perceived that though brown and weather-beaten, there was a
certain Northern ruddiness inherent in his complexion; that his eyes
were gray, so far as they were visible between the surrounding puckers;
and his eyebrows, moustache, and beard not nearly so dark as the hair
of the Genoese who stood cringing beside him as interpreter. She
formed her own conclusions and adhered to them, though he spoke in bad
Arabic to the skipper, who proceeded to explain that El Reis Hamed
would offer no injury to Madame la Comtesse, her suite or property,
being bound by treaty between the Dey and the King of France, but that
he required to see her passport. There was a little blundering in the
Italian's French rendering, and Madame de Bourke was quick to detect
the perception of it in the countenance of the Reis, stolid though it
was. She felt no doubt that he was a renegade of European birth, and
watched, with much anxiety as well as curiosity, his manner of dealing
with her passports, which she would not let out of her own hand. She
saw in a moment that though he let the Genoese begin to interpret them,
his eyes were following intelligently; and she hazarded the
observation, 'You understand, sir. You are Frank.'