Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/229

Rh are to be respected. I am here to see these orders carried out."

"And who art thou? again I demand," said the bully, observing that his comrades showed a tendency to waver, "that dost presume to—"

"I am one," cried the young soldier, with a whirl of his gleaming blade so close to the man's nose that he staggered back in alarm—"I am one who knows how to fulfil his duty. Perchance I may be one who shall even presume some day to mount the throne when Hamet Dey is tired of it—in which case I know of a bully whose head shall grace the highest spike on Bab-Azoun!"

The quiet smile with which the latter part of this speech was delivered, and the determined air of the youth, combined to make the soldiers laugh, so that the bully felt himself under the necessity of retiring.

Sheathing his sword with a business-like air, and rudely pushing his prisoner into the house, whither Bacri had already retired, the young soldier entered and shut the door.

"Lucien!" exclaimed Bacri in surprise, as he grasped the hand of the young janissary, "thou hast managed this business well, considering that thou art no Turk. How didst thou come to think of it?"

"I should never have thought of it, had not my worthy father suggested the idea," replied Lucien, with a smile, as he removed the rope from the neck