TO CAPTURE AN HEIRESS
The _Parakeet_ had discharged the last of her coal into the lighters
alongside, had cast off from the mooring buoys, and was steaming out of
the baking heat of Suez harbor on her way down toward the worse heat of
the Red Sea beyond. The clatter and dirt of the-working ships, with the
smells of hot iron and black humanity, were dying out astern, and
presently she slowed up to drop the pilot into his boat, and then stood
on again along her course.
A passenger, a young man of eight or nine-and-twenty, lounged on a
camp-stool under the upper bridge awning, and watched the _Parakeet's_
captain as he walked briskly across and across, and presently, when the
little sailor faced him, he nodded as though he had decided something
that was in his thoughts.
"Well, sir?" said Captain Kettle.
"I wish you wouldn't look so anxious. We've started now, and may as well
make up our minds to go through it comfortably."
"Quite so," said Kettle. "I'm thinking out how we are to do this
business in comfort--and safety," and with that he resumed his walk.
The man beside him had introduced himself when the black workers were
carrying the _Parakeet's_ cargo of coal in baskets from the holds to the
lighters alongside; and Kettle had been rather startled to find that he
carried a letter of introduction from the steamboat's owners. The letter
gave him no choice of procedure. It stated with clearness that Mr. Hugh
Wenlock, solicitor, had laid his wishes before them, and that they had
agreed to further these wishes (through the agency of their
servant--Captain Owen Kettle) in consideration of the payment of
£200 sterling.
The _Parakeet_ was a cargo tramp, and carried no passenger certificate,
but a letter of recommendation like this was equivalent to a direct
order, and Kettle signed Mr. Wenlock on to his crew list as "Doctor,"
and put to sea with an anxious mind.
Wenlock waited awhile, watching squalid Suez sink into the sea behind;
and then he spoke again.
"Look here, Captain," he said, "those South Arabian ports have got a lot
worse reputation than they really deserve. The people down there twenty
years ago were a pack of pirates, I'll grant you, but nowadays they know
that if they get at any of their old games, a British gunboat promptly
comes up next week and bombards them at two-mile range, and that's not
good enough. They may not be honest from inclination, but they've got
the fear of the gunboat always handy, and that's a wonderful civilizing
power. I tell you, captain, you needn't be frightened; that pirate
business is exploded for now and always."
"I know all about the piratical hankerings of those South Arabian
niggers, sir," said Kettle stiffly, "and I know what they can do and
what they can't do as well as any man living. And I know also what I can
do myself at a push, and the knowledge leaves me pretty comfortable. But
if you choose to think me frightened, I'll own I am. It's the
navigation down there that gave me cold shivers the first moment you
mentioned it."
"Why, it's no worse than the Red Sea here, anyway."
"Red Sea's bad, but you can get good charts of it and rely on them.
South Arabian coast is no better, and the charts aren't worth the paper
they're printed on. There are bad tide-rips down there, sir, and there
are bad reefs, and there's bad fog, and the truth of it is, there's no
handier place to lose a ship in all the big, wide world."
"I wouldn't like you to wreck the steamer down there. It might be
awkward for me getting back."
"Quite so," said Kettle, "you're thinking of yourself, and I don't blame
you. I'm thinking of myself also. I'm a man that's met a great deal of
misfortune, sir, and from one thing and another I've been eight years
without a regular command. I had the luck to bring in a derelict the
other day, and pocket a good salvage out of her, and my present owners
heard of it, and they put me as master of this steamer, just because of
that luck."
"Nothing like luck."
"If you don't lose it. But I am not anxious to pile up this steamboat on
some uncharted reef just because luck has left me, and have to wait
another eight years before I find another command."
"And, as I say, I'm as keen as you are not to get the steamer wrecked,
and if there's any way she can be kept out of a dangerous area, and you
can manage to set me ashore where I want in a boat, just you say, and
I'll meet you all I can. But at the same time, Skipper, if you don't
mind doing a swap, you might give me a good deal of help over my matter
in return."
"I haven't heard your business yet, sir. All you've told me is that you
want to be set down in this place, Dunkhot, and be taken off again after
you've stayed there four-and-twenty hours."
"Well, you see I didn't want it talked over beforehand. If the
newspapers got hold of the yarn, and made a lot of fuss about it, they
might upset a certain marriage that I've very much set my heart upon."
Captain Kettle looked puzzled. "I don't seem to quite follow you, sir."
"You shall hear the tale from the beginning. We have plenty of time
ahead of us just now. You remember the wreck of the _Rangoon_?"
"She was coming home from East Indian ports, wasn't she, and got on fire
somewhere off Cape Guardafui? But that'll have been twenty years back,
in the old overland days, before the Ditch was opened. Only about ten of
her people saved, if I remember."
"That's about right," said Wenlock, "though it's twenty years ago now.
She was full of Anglo-Indians, and their loss made a great sensation at
the time. Amongst others was a Colonel Anderson, and his wife, and their
child Teresa, aged nine; and what made their deaths all the more sad was
the fact that Anderson's elder brother died just a week before, and he
would have come home to find a peerage and large estates waiting
for him."
"I can feel for that man," said Kettle.
"I can feel most for the daughter," said Wenlock.
"How do you mean, sir?"
"Well, Colonel Anderson's dead, and his wife's dead, but the daughter
isn't, or at any rate she was very much alive twelve months ago, that's
all. The whole lot of them, with others, got into one of the _Rangoon's_
boats, and after frizzling about at sea till they were nearly starved,
got chucked on that South Arabian coast (which you say is so rocky and
dangerous), and were drowned in the process. All barring Teresa, that
is. She was pulled out of the water by the local niggers, and was
brought up by them, and I've absolutely certain information that not a
year ago she was living in Dunkhot as quite a big personage in her way."
"And she's 'My Lady' now, if she only knew?"
"Well, not that. The title doesn't descend in the female line, but
Colonel Anderson made a will in her favor after she was born, and the
present earl, who's got the estates, would have to shell out if she
turned up again."
"My owners, in their letter, mentioned that you were a solicitor. Then
you are employed by his lordship, sir?"
Mr. Wenlock laughed. "Not much," he said. "I'm on my own hook. Why, hang
it all, Captain, you must see that no man of his own free will would be
idiot enough to resurrect a long-forgotten niece just to make himself
into a beggar."
"I don't see why not, sir, if he got to know she was alive. Some men
have consciences, and even a lord, I suppose, is a man."
"The present earl has far too good a time of it to worry about running a
conscience. No, I bet he fights like a thief for the plunder, however
clear a case we have to show him. And as he's the man in possession and
has plenty of ready cash for law expenses, the odds are he'll turn out
too big to worry at through all the courts, and we shall compromise.
I'd like that best myself. Cash down has a desirable feel about it."
"It has, sir," said Kettle with a reminiscent sigh. "Even to pocket a
tenth of what is rightfully yours is better than getting mixed up with
that beastly law. But will the other relatives of the young lady, those
that are employing you, I mean, agree to that?"
"Don't I tell you, Captain, I'm on my own hook? There are no other
relatives--or at least none that would take a ha'porth of interest in
Teresa's getting the estates. I've gone into the thing on sheer spec,
and for what I can make out of it, and that, if all's well, will be the
whole lump."
"But how? The young lady may give you something in her gratitude, of
course, but you can't expect it all."
"I do, though, and I tell you how I'm going to get it. I shall marry the
fair Teresa. Simple as tumbling off a house."
Kettle drew himself up stiffly and walked to the other end of the
bridge, and began ostentatiously to look with a professional eye over
his vessel.
Wenlock was quick to see the change. "Come, what is it now, Captain?" he
asked with some surprise.
"I don't like the idea of those sort of marriages," said the little
sailor, acidly.
Wenlock shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly.
"Neither do I, and if I were a rich man, I wouldn't have dreamed of it.
Just think of what the girl probably is: she's been with those niggers
since she was quite a kid; she'll be quite uneducated; I'm in hopes
she's good-looking and has a decent figure; but at the best she'll be
quite unpresentable till I've had her in hand for at least a couple of
years, if then. Of course you'll say there's 'romance' about the thing.
But then I don't care tuppence about romance, and anyway it's beastly
unconfortable to live with."
"I was not looking at that point of view."
"Let me tell you how I was fixed," said Wenlock with a burst of
confidence. "I'd a small capital. So I qualified as a solicitor, and put
up a door-plate, and waited for a practice. It didn't come. Not a client
drifted near me from month's end to month's end. And meanwhile the
capital was dribbling away. I felt I was getting on my back legs; it was
either a case of the Colonies or the workhouse, and I'd no taste for
either; and when the news of this girl Teresa came, I tell you I just
jumped at the chance. I don't want to marry her, of course; there are
ten other girls I'd rather have as wife; but there was no other way out
of the difficulty, so I just swallowed my squeamishness for good and
always. See?"
"It was Miss Teresa Anderson I was pitying," said Kettle pointedly.
"Good Lord, man, why? Isn't it the finest thing in the world for her?"
"It might be fine to get away from where she is, and land home to find a
nice property waiting. But I don't care to see a woman have a husband
forced on her. It would be nobler of you, Mr. Wenlock, to let the young
lady get to England, and look round her for a while, and make her
own choice."
"I'm too hard up to be noble," said Wenlock drily. "I've not come here
on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business.
Besides, hang it all, man, think of what she is, and think of what I
am." He looked himself up and down with a half humorous smile--"I know
nice people at home who would be civil to her, and after all, hang it,
I'm not unmarriageable personally."
"Still," said Kettle doggedly, "I don't like the idea of it."
"Then let me give you an inducement. I said I was not down here on
philanthropy, and I don't suppose you are either. You'll have my
passage money?"
"Two and a-half per cent of it is my commission. The rest goes to the
owners, of course."
"Very well, then. In addition to that, if you'll help this marriage on
in the way I ask, I'll give you £50."
"There's no man living who could do more usefully with £50 if I saw my
way of fingering it."
"I think I see what you mean. No, you won't have to wait for it. I've
got the money here in hard cash in my pocket ready for you to take over
the minute it's earned."
"I was wondering, sir, if I could earn it honorably. You must give me
time to think this out. I'll try and give you an answer after tea. And
for the present I shall have to leave you. I've got to go through the
ship's papers: I have to be my own clerk on board here just now, though
the Company did certainly promise me a much better ship if I beat up
plenty of cargo, and made a good voyage of it with this."
The _Parakeet_ worked her way along down the Red Sea at her steady nine
knots, and Mr. Hugh Wenlock put a couple of bunk pillows on a canvas
boat-cover under the bridge deck awnings, and lay there and amused
himself with cigarettes and a magazine. Captain Owen Kettle sat before a
table in the chart-house with his head on one side, and a pen in his
fingers, and went through accounts. But though Wenlock, when he had
finished his magazine, quickly went off to sleep, Captain Kettle's
struggles with arithmetic were violent enough to keep him very
thoroughly awake, and when a due proportion of the figures had been
checked, he put the papers in a drawer, and was quite ready to tackle
the next subject.
He had not seen necessary to mention the fact to Mr. Wenlock, but while
that young man was talking of the Miss Teresa Anderson, who at present
was "quite a big personage in her way" at Dunkhot, a memory had come to
him that he had heard of the lady before in somewhat less prosaic terms.
All sailormen who have done business on the great sea highway between
West and East during recent years have had the yarn given to them at one
time or another, and most of them have regarded it as gratuitous legend.
Kettle was one of these. But he was beginning to think there was
something more in it than a mere sailor's yarn, and he was anxious to
see if there was any new variation in the telling.
So he sent for Murray, his mate, a smart young sailor of the newer
school, who preferred to be called "chief officer," made him sit, and
commenced talk of a purely professional nature. Finally he said: "And
since I saw you last, the schedule's changed. We call in at Dunkhot, for
that passenger Mr. Wenlock to do some private business ashore, before we
go on to our Persian Gulf ports."
Murray repeated the name thoughtfully. "Dunkhot? Let's see, that's on
the South Arabian coast, about a day's steam from Aden, and a beast of a
place to get at, so I've heard. Oh, and of course, that's the place
where the She-Sultan, or Queen, or whatever she calls herself, is boss."
"So there is really a woman of that kind there, is there? I'd heard of
her, like everybody else has, but I thought she was only a yarn."
"No, she's there in the flesh, sir, right enough; lots of flesh,
according to what I've gathered. A serang of one of the B. and I. boats,
who'd been in Dunkhot, told me about her only last year. She makes war,
leads her troops, cuts off heads, and does the Eastern potentate up to
the mark. The serang said she was English, too, though I don't believe
much in that. One-tenth English would probably be more near the truth.
The odds are she'll be Eurasian, and those snuff-and-butter colored
ladies, when they get amongst people blacker than themselves, always try
to ignore their own lick of the tar-brush."
"Fat, is she?"
"The serang said she-was a big buffalo bull of a woman, with a terror of
a temper. I don't know what's Mr. Wenlock's business, sir; but whether
he wants to start a dry-goods agency, or merely to arrange for smuggling
in some rifles, he'd better make up his mind to square her first and
foremost. She will have a finger in every pie. She's as curious as a
monkey, too, and there's no doing anything without letting her know. And
when she says a thing, it's got to be done."
"Is she the head chief's favorite wife, then?"
"That's the funny part of it: she isn't married. These Orientals always
get husbands early as a general thing, and you'd have thought that in
her juvenile days, before she got power, they'd have married her to some
one about the town, whether she liked it or not. But it seems they
didn't, because she said she'd certainly poison any man if they sent her
into his zenana. And later on, when she came to be boss, she still kept
to spinsterhood. Guess there wasn't any man about the place white enough
to suit her taste."
"H'm. What you've told me seems to let daylight on to things."
"Beg pardon, sir?"
Captain Kettle put his hand kindly on Murray's shoulder. "Don't ask me
to explain now, my lad, but when the joke comes you shall share the
laugh. There's a young man on this ship (I don't mind telling you in
confidence) whose ways I don't quite like, and I think he's going to get
a lesson."
He went out then under the awnings of the bridge deck, and told Wenlock
that he would probably be able to earn his fee for helping on the
marriage, and Wenlock confidently thought that he quite understood the
situation.
"Skipper's a bit of a methody," thought Mr. Hugh Wenlock, "but his
principles don't go very deep when there are fifty sovereigns to be
earned. Well, he's a useful man, and if he gets me snugly married to
that little girl, he'll be cheap at the price."
The _Parakeet's_ voyage to Dunkhot was not swift. Eight-and-a-half knots
was her most economical pace for coal consumption, and at that gait she
steamed. With a reputation to make with his new owners, and two and
a-half per cent, commission on all profits, Kettle had developed into a
regular glutton for cargo; and the knowledge of men and places which he
had so laboriously acquired in former days served him finely. Three
times he got doles of cargo at good stiff freights at points where few
other men would have dreamed of looking. He was an ideal man for the
master of an ocean tramp. He was exactly honest; he had a world of
misfortunes behind to spur him on; he was quick of decision; and he had
developed a nose for cargo, and a knack of extorting it from merchants,
that were little short of miraculous. And, in fact, if things went on as
they had started, he stood a very good chance of making 50 per cent, on
the _Parakeet's_ capital for the voyage, and so earning promotion to one
of the firm's better ships.
But though in the many days of his adversity Captain Kettle had never
shunned any risks which came in his way, with this new prosperity fresh
and pleasant at his feet, he was beginning to tell himself that risks
were foolish things. He arrived off Dunkhot and rang off his engines,
and frowned angrily at the shore.
The town stood on an eminence, snugly walled, and filled with cool,
square houses. At one side, the high minaret of a mosque stood up like a
bayonet, and at the other, standing in a ring of garden, was a larger
building, which seemed to call itself palace. There was a small fringe
of cultivation beside the walls of the town, and beyond was arid desert,
which danced and shimmered under the violent sun.
But all this lay small and far off, like a tiny picture in some huge
frame, and showing only through the glass. A maze of reefs guarded the
shore, and tore up the sleek Indian Ocean swells into spouting breakers;
and though there was anchorage inside, tenanted indeed by a score of
sailing craft, the way to it was openly perilous. And so for the present
the _Parakeet_ lay to, rolling outside the entrance, flying a pilot
jack, and waiting developments.
Captain Kettle might have his disquieting thoughts, still outwardly he
was cool. But Mr. Hugh Wenlock was on deck in the sprucest of his
apparel, and was visibly anxious and fidgety, as befitted a man who
shortly expected to enter into the bonds of matrimony.
A double-ended boat came off presently, manned by naked Arabs, and
steered by a man in a white burnous. She swept up alongside, caught a
rope and made fast, and the man in white introduced himself as a pilot.
They are all good Mohammedans down there, or nominally, and so of course
there was no question of a clean bill of health. Islam is not impious
enough to check the spread of any disease which Allah may see good to
send for its chastening.
The pilot wanted to take them in at once. He spoke some English, and
carried an air of confidence. He could guide them through the reefs in
the most complete of safety, and he could guarantee fine openings for
trade, once inside.
"I dare say," grunted Kettle under his breath, "but you're a heap too
uncertificated for my taste. Why, you don't even offer a book of forged
logs to try and work off your humbug with some look of truth. No, I know
the kind of pilot you are. You'd pile up the steamboat on the first
convenient reef, and then be one of the first to come and loot her."--He
turned to Murray: "Now, look here, Mr. Mate. I'll leave you in charge,
and see you keep steam up and don't leave the deck. Don't let any of
these niggers come on board on any pretence whatever, and if they try it
on, steam out to sea. I'll get through Mr. Wenlock's business ashore as
quick as lean, and perhaps pick up a ton or two of cargo for ourselves."
Below, in the dancing boat which ground against the steamer's side, the
pilot clamored that a ladder might be thrown to him so that he might
come on board and take the _Parakeet_ forthwith into the anchorage; and
to him again Kettle turned, and temporized. He must go ashore himself
first, he said, and see what offer there was of trade, before he took
the steamer in. To which the pilot, though visibly disappointed, saw fit
to agree, as no better offer was forthcoming.
"Now, sir," said Kettle to Wenlock, "into the boat with you. The less
time that's wasted, the better I shall be pleased."
"All right," said Wenlock, pointing to a big package on the deck. "Just
tell some of your men to shove that case down into the boat, and
I'm ready."
Kettle eyed the bulky box with disfavor. "What's in it?" he asked.
"A present or a bribe; whichever you care to call it. If you want to
know precisely, it's rifles. I thought they would be most acceptable."
"Rifles are liked hereabouts. Is it for a sort of introductory present?"
"Well, if you must know, Captain, it's occurred to me that Teresa is
probably an occupant of somebody's harem, and that I shall have to buy
her off from her husband. Hence the case of rifles."
A queer look came over Captain Kettle's face. "And you'd still marry
this woman if she had another husband living?"
"Of course. Haven't I told you that I've thought the whole thing
thoroughly over already, and I'm not inclined to stick at trifles? But I
may tell you that divorce is easy in these Mohammedan countries, and I
shall take care to get the girl set legally free before we get away from
here. You don't catch me getting mixed with bigamy."
"But tell me. Is a Mohammedan marriage made here binding for an
Englishman?"
"It's as legally binding as if the Archbishop of Canterbury tied the
knot."
"Very well," said Kettle. "Now let me tell you, sir, for the last time,
that I don't like what you're going to do. To my mind, it's not a nice
thing marrying a woman that you evidently despise, just for her money."
Wenlock flushed. "Look here," he said, "I refuse to be lectured,
especially by you. Aren't you under promise to get £50 from me the
moment I'm safely married? And didn't you fairly jump at the chance of
fingering it."
Captain Kettle did not hit this man who cast such an unpleasant
imputation on him; he did not even let him feel the lash of his tongue
in return. He merely smiled grimly, and said: "Get down into the boat,
you and your case of rifles."
For the moment Wenlock started and hesitated. He seemed to detect
something ominous in this order. But then he took a brace on his
courage, and after a couple of deck hands had lowered the rifles into
the dancing boat, he clambered gingerly down after them, and sat himself
beside the white-robed man in the stern sheets. Kettle followed, and
the boat headed off for the opening between the reefs.
The Indian Ocean swells swung beneath them, and presently were breaking
on the grim stone barriers on either hand in a roar of sound. The
triangular dorsal fins of a couple of sharks convoyed them in, in case
of accidents; and overhead a crowd of sea-fowl screamed and swooped and
circled. But none of these things interested them. The town ahead, which
jerked nearer to every tug of the oars, held the eye. In it was Teresa
Anderson, heiress, a personage of whom each of them had his own private
conception. In it also were fanatical Arabs, whom they hoped the fear of
shadowy British gunboats would deter from open piracy.
The boat passed between a cluster of ragged shipping which swayed at the
anchorage, and Wenlock might have stared with curious eyes (had he been
so minded) on real dhows which had even then got real slaves ready for
market in their stuffy 'tween decks. But he was gazing with a fascinated
stare at the town. Over the arch of the water-gate, for which they were
heading, was what at first appeared to be a frieze of small rounded
balls; but a nearer view resolved these into human heads, in various
stages of desiccation. Evidently justice in Dunkhot was determined that
the criminal who once passed through its hands should no more tread the
paths of unrighteousness.
The boat landed against a jetty of stone, and they stepped out dryshod.
Wenlock stared at the gate with its dressing of heads as though they
fascinated him.
"And Teresa will have been brought up within sight of all this," he
murmured to himself, "and will be accustomed to it. Fancy marrying a
woman who has spent twenty years of her life in the neighborhood of all
this savagery."
"Strong place in its way," said Kettle, squinting up at the brass cannon
on the walls. "Those guns up there are well kept, you can see. Of course
one of our cheapest fourpenny gunboats could knock the whole shop into
bricks in half an hour at three-mile range; but it's strong enough to
hold out against any niggers along the coast here, and that's all the
Queen here aims at. By the way, Emir, not Queen, is what she calls
herself, so the pilot tells me. I suppose she thinks that as she's doing
a man's job in a man's way, she may as well take a full man's ticket."
They passed in through the gate, the sentries staring at them curiously,
and once inside, in the full heat and smell of the narrow street beyond,
Wenlock said: "Look here, Skipper, you're resourceful, and you know
these out-of-the-way places. How had we better start to find the girl?"
Kettle glanced coolly round at the grim buildings and the savage Arabs
who jostled them, and said, with fine sarcasm: "Well, sir, as there
doesn't appear to be a policeman about, I should recommend you to apply
at the post office."
"I don't want to be mocked."
"Then, if you'll take the tip from me, you'll crowd back to my steamboat
as fast as you can go. You'll find it healthier."
"I'm going on with it," said Wenlock doggedly. "And I ask you to earn
your £50, and give me help."
"Then, if you distinctly ask me to help you on into trouble like that,
of course, the best thing to do is to go straight on to the palace."
"Show the way, then," said Wenlock curtly.
Kettle gave the word to the white-robed pilot, and together they set off
down the narrow winding streets, with an ever-increasing train of Arabs
and negroes following in their wake. Wenlock said nothing as he walked,
but it was evident from the working of his face that his mind was very
full. But Kettle looked about him with open interest, and thoughts in
verse about this Eastern town came to him with pleasant readiness.
The royal residence was the large building encircled with gardens which
they had seen from the sea, and they entered it with little formality.
There was no trouble either about obtaining an audience. The Lady Emir
had, it appeared, seen the steamer's approach with her own eyes; indeed,
the whole of Dunkhot was excited by such an unusual arrival; and the
Head of the State was as human in her curiosity as the meanest nigger
among her subjects.
The audience hall was imposing. It was bare enough, according to the
rule of those heated Eastern lands, but it had an air of comfort and
coolness, and in those parts where it was not severely plain, the beauty
of its architecture was delicious. Armed guards to the number of some
forty men were posted round the walls, and at the further end,
apparently belonging to the civil population, were some dozen other men
squatting on the floor. In the centre of the room was a naked wretch in
chains; but sentence was hurriedly pronounced on him, and he was hustled
away as the two Englishmen entered, and they found themselves face to
face with the only woman in the room, the supreme ruler of this savage
South Arabian coast town.
She was seated on a raised divan, propped by cushions, and in front of
her was a huge water-pipe at which she occasionally took a meditative
pull. She was dressed quite in Oriental fashion, in trousers, zouave
jacket, sash, and all the rest of it; but she was unmistakably English
in features, though strongly suggestive of the Boadicea. She was a
large, heavily-boned woman, enormously covered with flesh, and she
dandled across her knees that very unfeminine sceptre, an English
cavalryman's sword. But the eye neglected these details, and was
irresistibly drawn by the strongness of her face. Even Kettle was almost
awed by it.
But Captain Owen Kettle-was not a man who could be kept in awe for long.
He took off his helmet, marched briskly up toward the divan, and bowed.
"Good afternoon, your Ladyship," he said. "I trust I see you well. I'm
Captain Kettle, master of that steamboat now lying in your roads, and
this is Mr. Wenlock, a passenger of mine, who heard that you were
English, and has come to put you in the way of some property at home."
The lady sat more upright, and set back her great shoulders. "I am
English," she said. "I was called in the Giaour faith Teresa Anderson."
"That's the name," said Kettle. "Mr. Wenlock's come to take you away to
step into a nice thing at home."
"I am Emir here. Am I asked to be Emir in your country?"
"Why, no," said Kettle; "that job's filled already, and we aren't
thinking of making a change. Our present Emir in England (who, by the
way, is a lady like yourself) seems to suit us very well. No, you'll be
an ordinary small-potato citizen, like everybody else, and you will
probably find it a bit of a change."
"I do not onderstand," said the woman. "I have not spoke your language
since I was child. Speak what you say again."
"I'll leave it to Mr. Wenlock, your Majesty, if you've no objections, as
he's the party mostly interested; and if you'd ask one of your young men
to bring me a long drink and a chair, I'll be obliged. It's been a hot
walk up here. I see you don't mind smoke," he added, and lit a cheroot.
Now, it was clear from the attitude of the guards and the civilians
present, that Kettle was jostling heavily upon court etiquette, and at
first the Lady Emir was very clearly inclined to resent it, and had
sharp orders for repression ready upon her lips. But she changed her
mind, perhaps through some memory that by blood she was related to this
nonchalant race; and presently cushions were brought, on which Captain
Kettle bestowed himself tailor-fashion (with his back cautiously up
against a wall), and then a negro slave knelt before him and offered
sweet sticky sherbet, which he drank with a wry face.
But in the mean while Mr. Wenlock was stating his case with small
forensic eloquence. The sight of Miss Teresa Anderson in the flesh awed
him. He had pictured to himself some slim, quiet exile, perhaps a little
gauche and timid, but at any rate amenable to instruction and to his
will. He had forgotten the developing power of tropical suns. The woman
before him, whose actual age was twenty-nine, looked fifty, and even for
a desperate man like himself was impossible as a wife in England.
He felt daunted before her already. It flashed through his mind that it
was she who had ordered those grisly heads to be stuck above the
water-gate, and he heartily wished himself away back on the steamer,
tramping for cargo. He was not wanting in pluck as a usual thing, this
unsuccessful solicitor, but before a woman like this, with such a record
behind her, a man may well be scared and yet not be accused of
cowardice.
But the Lady Emir looked on Wenlock in a very different way to that in
which she had regarded Kettle. Mr. Wenlock possessed (as indeed he had
himself pointed out on the _Parakeet_) a fine outward appearance, and in
fact anywhere he could have been remarked on as a personable man. And
things came about as Kettle shrewdly anticipated they would. The Lady
Emir had not remained unmarried all these years through sheer distaste
for matrimony. She had been celibate through an unconquerable pride of
blood. None but men of colored race had been around her in all her wars,
her governings, and her diplomacies; and always she had been too proud
to mate with them. But here now stood before her a male of her own race,
handsome, upstanding, and obviously impressed by her power and majesty.
He would not rule her; he would not even attempt a mastery; she would
still be Emir--and a wife. The chance had never occurred to her before;
might never occur again. She was quick to make her decision.
Ruling potentates are not as other folk with their love affairs, and the
Lady Emir of Dunkhot (forgetting that she was once Teresa Anderson, and
a modest English maiden) unconsciously fell in with the rule of her
caste. The English speech, long disused, came to her unhandily, but the
purport of what she said was plain. She made proclamation that the
Englishman Wenlock should there and then become her husband, and let
slaves fetch the mullah to unite them before the sun had dropped below
another bar of the windows.
She did not ask her future husband's wishes or his permission. She
simply stated her sovereign will and looked that it should be carried
out forthwith.
A couple of slaves scurried out on their missions--evidently their Emir
was accustomed to have her orders carried out with promptness--and for
long enough Wenlock stood wordless in front of the divan, far more like
a criminal than a prospective bridegroom. The lady, with the tube of the
water-pipe between her lips, puffed smoke and made no further speech.
She had stated her will: the result would follow in due course.
But at last Wenlock, as though wrenching himself into wakefulness out of
some horrid dream, turned wildly to Kettle, and in a torrent of words
implored for rescue.
The little sailor heard him quite unmoved. "You asked my help," he said,
"in a certain matter, and I've given it, and things have turned out just
as I've guessed they would. You maundered about your dear Teresa on my
steamboat till I was nearly sick, and, by James! you've got her now, and
no error about it."
"But you said you didn't approve," cried the wretched man.
"I quite know what I said," retorted Kettle grimly. "I didn't approve of
your way. But this is different. You're not a very fine specimen, but
anyway you're English, and it does good to the old shop at home to
have English people for kings and queens of foreign countries. I've got
a theory about that."
[Illustration: "I'M A BRITISH SUBJECT"]
Now the Lady Emir was not listening to all this tirade by any means
unmoved. To begin with, it was not etiquette to speak at all in her
presence if unaddressed, and to go on with, although she did not
understand one word in ten of what was being spoken, she gathered the
gist of it, and this did not tend to compose her. She threw away the
snaky stem of water-pipe, and gripped both hands on the trooper's sword,
till the muscles stood out in high relief.
"Do you say," she demanded, "you onwilling marry me?"
"Yes," said Wenlock, with sullen emphasis.
She turned her head, and gave orders in Arabic. With marvellous
readiness, as though it was one of the regular appointments of the
place, a couple of the guards trundled a stained-wooden block into the
middle of the floor, another took his station beside it with an
ominous-looking axe poised over his shoulder, and almost before Wenlock
knew what was happening, he was pinned by a dozen men at wrist and
ankle, and thrust down to kneel "with his neck over the block.
"Do you say," the Lady Emir repeated, "you onwilling marry me?"
"I'm a British subject," Wenlock shouted. "I've a Foreign Office
passport in my pocket. I'll appeal to my Government over this."
"My lad," said Kettle, "you won't have time to appeal. The lady isn't
being funny. She means square biz. If you don't be sensible, and see
things in the same way she does, it'll be one _che-opp_, and what
happens afterward won't interest you."
"Those spikes," said Wenlock faintly.
"Above the water-gate?" said Kettle. "Queer, but the same thing occurred
to me, too. You'd feel a bit lonely stuck up there getting sun-dried."
"I'll marry her."
"You'd better spread a bit more politeness about," Kettle advised. "It
will be all the more comfortable for you afterward if you do." And so
Wenlock, with desperation nerving him, poured out all the pretty
speeches which he had in store, and which he had looked to use to this
very woman under such very different circumstances. But he did not even
suggest taking his future spouse back to England.
She, too, when she graciously pardoned his previous outburst, mentioned
her decision on this matter also.
"I am Emir here," she said, "and I could not be Emir in your England
without many fights. So here I shall stay, and you with me. When there
is war, you shall ride at my side; in peace I will give you a
governorship over a ward of this town, from which you can get your
taxes. And if there are children, you shall bring them up."
The mullah, who knew better than to keep his ruler waiting, had come in,
and they were forthwith married, solemnly and irrevocably, according to
the rites and ceremonies of the Mohammedan Church, as practised in the
kingdom of Dunkhot. And in witness thereof, Captain Kettle wrote his
name from left to right, in contradistinction to all the other
signatories, who wrote from right to left, except the bridegroom.
"And now, Mr. Wenlock, if you please," said Kettle, "as you're
comfortably tied to the lady of your choice, I'll trouble you for that
fee you promised."
"I'll see you in somewhere hotter than Arabia," said the bridegroom,
mopping his pale face.
"Now look," said Kettle, "I'm not going to scrap with you here, and I
don't want to break up this happy home with domestic unpleasantness; but
if you don't hand me over that £50, I shall ask your good lady to get
it for me."
Wenlock sullenly handed out a note.
"Thank you. I know you feel injured, but I'm earning this money exactly
according to promise, and of you don't quite like what's been done, you
must remember that it's your own fault for not wording the agreement a
bit more carefully. And now, as I seem to have got through my business
here, if it's agreeable to all parties, I'll be going. Good-by, Mrs.
Wenlock, madam. Let me call you by your name for the first time."
The Lady Emir set back her great shoulders. "That is not my name," she
said. "I am Emir. My name does not change."
"Beg pardon," said Kettle, "he takes yours, does he? Didn't know that
was the custom of this country. Well, good-afternoon."
"But do you want," said the lady, "no present?"
"Thank you," said Kettle, with a cock of the head, "but I take presents
from no one. What bit of a living I get, your ladyship, I earn."
"I do not onderstand. But you are sailor. You have ship. You wish
cargo?"
Captain Kettle snapped his fingers ecstatically. "Now, ma'am, there
you've hit it. Cargo's what I do want. I'll have to tell you that
freights are up a good deal just now, and you'll have to pay for
accommodation, but my ship's a good one, and my firm's reliable, and
will see that you are dealt by honest at the other end."
"I do not onderstand."
"Of course you don't, your Majesty; of course you don't. Ladies like you
don't have to bother with the shipping trade. But just you give me a
line to the principal merchants in the town saying that you'd like me to
have a few tons of their stuff, and that'll do. I guess that what your
ladyship likes round here is usually done."
"You wish me write. I will write. Now we will wash hands, and there is
banquet."
And so it came to pass that, some twenty-four hours later, Captain
Kettle returned to the _Parakeet_ sun-scorched, and flushed with
success, and relieved the anxious Murray from his watch. The mate was
naturally curious to know what happened ashore.
"Let me get a glass of Christian beer to wash all their sticky
nastinesses from my neck, and I'll tell you," said Kettle, and he did
with fine detail and circumstance.
"Well, Wenlock's got his heiress anyway," said Murray, with a sigh, when
the tale was over. "I suppose we may as well get under way now, sir."
"Not much," said Kettle jubilantly. "Why, man, I've squeezed every ton
of cargo they have in the place, and stuck them for freights in a way
that would surprise you. Here's the tally: 270 bags of coffee, 700
packets of dates, 350 baskets of figs, and all for London. And, mark
you," said Kettle, hitting the table, "that or more'll be waiting for me
there every time I come, and no other skipper need apply."
"H'm," said the mate thoughtfully; "but will Wenlock be as civil and
limp next time you call, sir?"
Captain Kettle winked pleasantly, and put a fifty-pound note in his
lock-up drawer. "That's all right, my lad. No fear of Master Wenlock
getting his tail up. If you'd seen the good lady, his wife, you'd know
why. That's the man that went hunting an heiress, Mr. Murray; and by the
holy James he's got her, and no error."