"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. Still the door
remained unopened, and Ben Aboo, thinking better of his quest for
company, fled to the patio, hoping to escape by a little passage that
led to the alley behind the Kasbah.

Here he encountered Katrina and a guard of five black soldiers who were
helping her flight. "We are safe," she whispered--"they've gone back into
the Feddan--come;" and by the light of a lamp which she carried she made
for the winding corridor that led past the bath and the sanctuary to the
Kasbah gate. But Ben Aboo only cursed her, and fumbled at the low
door of the passage that went out from the alcove to the alley. He was
lumbering through with his armless roll, intending to clash the door
back in Katrina's face, when there was a fierce shout behind him, and
for some minutes Ben Aboo knew no more.

The shout was Ali's. After leaving the Mahdi on the heath outside the
Bab Toot, the black lad had hunted for the Basha. When the Spanish
soldiers abandoned the Kasbah he continued his search. Up and down he
had traversed the place in the darkness; and finding Ben Aboo at last,