"I thought he would never sleep to-night," she whispered.
Her eyelids drooped, and her cheeks grew deadly white, and the strong
man felt the furious beating of her heart against his own breast. He was
Aristarchi, the Greek captain who had sold her for a slave, and she
loved him.
In the wild days of sea-fighting among the Greek islands he had taken a
small trading galley that had been driven out of her course. He left not
a man of her crew alive to tell whether she had been Turkish or
Christian, and he took all that was worth taking of her poor cargo. The
only prize of any price was the captive Georgian girl who was being
brought westward to be sold, like thousands of others in those days,
with little concealment and no mystery, in one of the slave markets of
northern Italy. Aristarchi claimed her for himself, as his share of the
booty, but his men knew her value. Standing shoulder to shoulder between
him and her, they drew their knives and threatened to cut her to pieces,
if he would not promise to sell her as she was, when they should come to
land, and share the price with them. They judged that she must be worth
a thousand or fifteen hundred pieces of gold, for she was more beautiful
than any woman they had ever seen, and they had already heard her
singing most sweetly to herself, as if she were quite sure that she was
in no danger, because she knew her own value.
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