In these, through four or five seasons of warfare, the Sheik and the
Chasseur had encountered each other, till each had grown to look for
the other's face as soon as the standards of the Bedouins flashed in
the sunshine opposite the guidons of the Imperial forces; till each
had watched and noted the other's unmatched prowess, and borne away
the wounds of the other's home-strokes, with the admiration of a bold
soldier for a bold rival's dauntlessness and skill; till each had
learned to long for an hour, hitherto always prevented by waves of
battle that had swept them too soon asunder, when they should meet in a
duello once for all, and try their strength together till one bore off
victory and one succumbed to death.
At last it came to pass that, after a lengthened term of this chivalrous
antagonism, the tribe were sorely pressed by the French troops, and
could no longer mass its fearless front to face them, but had to flee
southward to the desert, and encumbered by its flocks and its women, was
hardly driven and greatly decimated. Now among those women was one
whom the Sheik held above all earthly things except his honor in war; a
beautiful antelope-eyed creature, lithe and graceful as a palm, and the
daughter of a pure Arab race, on whom he could not endure for any other
sight than his to look, and whom he guarded in his tent as the chief
pearl of all his treasures; herds, flocks, arms, even his horses, all
save the honor of his tribe, he would have surrendered rather than
surrender Djelma.
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