THE MUTINEERS
Later that morning, some time after the galeasse had awakened to life
and such languid movement as might be looked for in a waiting crew,
Sakr-el-Bahr went to visit Rosamund.
He found her brightened and refreshed by sleep, and he brought her
reassuring messages that all was well, encouraging her with hopes which
himself he was very far from entertaining. If her reception of him was
not expressedly friendly, neither was it unfriendly. She listened to
the hopes he expressed of yet effecting her safe deliverance, and
whilst she had no thanks to offer him for the efforts he was to exert
on her behalf—accepting them as her absolute due, as the inadequate
liquidation of the debt that lay between them—yet there was now none of
that aloofness amounting almost to scorn which hitherto had marked her
bearing towards him.
He came again some hours later, in the afternoon, by when his Nubians
were once more at their post. He had no news to bring her beyond the
fact that their sentinel on the heights reported a sail to westward,
beating up towards the island before the very gentle breeze that was
blowing. But the argosy they awaited was not yet in sight, and he
confessed that certain proposals which he had made to Asad for landing
her in France had been rejected. Still she need have no fear, he added
promptly, seeing the sudden alarm that quickened in her eyes. A way
would present itself. He was watching, and would miss no chance.
“And if no chance should offer?” she asked him.
“Why then I will make one,” he answered, lightly almost. “I have been
making them all my life, and it would be odd if I should have lost the
trick of it on my life’s most important occasion.”
This mention of his life led to a question from her.
“How did you contrive the chance that has made you what you are? I
mean,” she added quickly, as if fearing that the purport of that
question might be misunderstood, “that has enabled you to become a
corsair captain.”
“’Tis a long story that,” he said. “I should weary you in the telling
of it.”
“No,” she replied, and shook her head, her clear eyes solemnly meeting
his clouded glance. “You would not weary me. Chances may be few in
which to learn it.”
“And you would learn it?” quoth he, and added, “That you may judge me?”
“Perhaps,” she said, and her eyes fell.
With bowed head he paced the length of the small chamber, and back
again. His desire was to do her will in this, which is natural
enough—for if it is true that who knows all must perforce forgive all,
never could it have been truer than in the case of Sir Oliver
Tressilian.
So he told his tale. Pacing there he related it at length, from the
days when he had toiled at an oar on one of the galleys of Spain down
to that hour in which aboard the Spanish vessel taken under Cape
Spartel he had determined upon that voyage to England to present his
reckoning to his brother. He told his story simply and without too
great a wealth of detail, yet he omitted nothing of all that had gone
to place him where he stood. And she, listening, was so profoundly
moved that at one moment her eyes glistened with tears which she sought
vainly to repress. Yet he, pacing there, absorbed, with head bowed and
eyes that never once strayed in her direction, saw none of this.
“And so,” he said, when at last that odd narrative had reached its end,
“you know what the forces were that drove me. Another stronger than
myself might have resisted and preferred to suffer death. But I was not
strong enough. Or perhaps it is that stronger than myself was my desire
to punish, to vent the bitter hatred into which my erstwhile love for
Lionel was turned.”
“And for me, too—as you have told me,” she added.
“Not so,” he corrected her. “I hated you for your unfaith, and most of
all for your having burnt unread the letter that I sent you by the hand
of Pitt. In doing that you contributed to the wrongs I was enduring,
you destroyed my one chance of establishing my innocence and seeking
rehabilitation, you doomed me for life to the ways which I was
treading. But I did not then know what ample cause you had to believe
me what I seemed. I did not know that it was believed I had fled.
Therefore I forgive you freely a deed for which at one time I confess
that I hated you, and which spurred me to bear you off when I found you
under my hand that night at Arwenack when I went for Lionel.”
“You mean that it was no part of your intent to have done so?” she
asked him.
“To carry you off together with him?” he asked. “I swear to God I had
not premeditated that. Indeed, it was done because not premeditated,
for had I considered it, I do think I should have been proof against
any such temptation. It assailed me suddenly when I beheld you there
with Lionel, and I succumbed to it. Knowing what I now know I am
punished enough, I think.”
“I think I can understand,” she murmured gently, as if to comfort him,
for quick pain had trembled in his voice.
He tossed back his turbaned head. “To understand is something,” said
he. “It is half-way at least to forgiveness. But ere forgiveness can be
accepted the evil done must be atoned for to the full.”
“If possible,” said she.
“It must be made possible,” he answered her with heat, and on that he
checked abruptly, arrested by a sound of shouting from without.
He recognized the voice of Larocque, who at dawn had returned to his
sentinel’s post on the summit of the headland, relieving the man who
had replaced him there during the night.
“My lord! My lord!” was the cry, in a voice shaken by excitement, and
succeeded by a shouting chorus from the crew.
Sakr-el-Bahr turned swiftly to the entrance, whisked aside the curtain,
and stepped out upon the poop. Larocque was in the very act of
clambering over the bulwarks amidships, towards the waist-deck where
Asad awaited him in company with Marzak and the trusty Biskaine. The
prow, on which the corsairs had lounged at ease since yesterday, was
now a seething mob of inquisitive babbling men, crowding to the rail
and even down the gangway in their eagerness to learn what news it was
that brought the sentinel aboard in such excited haste.
From where he stood Sakr-el-Bahr heard Larocque’s loud announcement.
“The ship I sighted at dawn, my lord!”
“Well?” barked Asad.
“She is here—in the bay beneath that headland. She has just dropped
anchor.”
“No need for alarm in that,” replied the Basha at once. “Since she has
anchored there it is plain that she has no suspicion of our presence.
What manner of ship is she?”
“A tall galleon of twenty guns, flying the flag of England.
“Of England!” cried Asad in surprise. “She’ll need be a stout vessel to
hazard herself in Spanish waters.”
Sakr-el-Bahr advanced to the rail.
“Does she display no further device?” he asked.
Larocque turned at the question. “Ay,” he answered, “a narrow blue
pennant on her mizzen is charged with a white bird—a stork, I think.”
“A stork?” echoed Sakr-el-Bahr thoughtfully. He could call to mind no
such English blazon, nor did it seem to him that it could possibly be
English. He caught the sound of a quickly indrawn breath behind him. He
turned to find Rosamund standing in the entrance, not more than half
concealed by the curtain. Her face showed white and eager, her eyes
were wide.
“What is’t?” he asked her shortly.
“A stork, he thinks,” she said, as though that were answer enough.
“I’ faith an unlikely bird,” he commented. “The fellow is mistook.”
“Yet not by much, Sir Oliver.”
“How? Not by much?” Intrigued by something in her tone and glance, he
stepped quickly up to her, whilst below the chatter of voices
increased.
“That which he takes to be a stork is a heron—a white heron, and white
is argent in heraldry, is’t not?”
“It is. What then?”
“D’ye not see? That ship will be the Silver Heron.”
He looked at her. “’S life!” said he, “I reck little whether it be the
silver heron or the golden grasshopper. What odds?”
“It is Sir John’s ship—Sir John Killigrew’s,” she explained. “She was
all but ready to sail when... when you came to Arwenack. He was for the
Indies. Instead—don’t you see?—out of love for me he will have come
after me upon a forlorn hope of overtaking you ere you could make
Barbary.”
“God’s light!” said Sakr-el-Bahr, and fell to musing. Then he raised
his head and laughed. “Faith, he’s some days late for that!”
But the jest evoked no response from her. She continued to stare at him
with those eager yet timid eyes.
“And yet,” he continued, “he comes opportunely enough. If the breeze
that has fetched him is faint, yet surely it blows from Heaven.”
“Were it...?” she paused, faltering a moment.
Then, “Were it possible to communicate with him?” she asked, yet with
hesitation.
“Possible—ay,” he answered. “Though we must needs devise the means, and
that will prove none so easy.”
“And you would do it?” she inquired, an undercurrent of wonder in her
question, some recollection of it in her face.
“Why, readily,” he answered, “since no other way presents itself. No
doubt ’twill cost some lives,” he added, “but then....” And he shrugged
to complete the sentence.
“Ah, no, no! Not at that price!” she protested. And how was he to know
that all the price she was thinking of was his own life, which she
conceived would be forfeited if the assistance of the Silver Heron were
invoked?
Before he could return her any answer his attention was diverted. A
sullen threatening note had crept into the babble of the crew, and
suddenly one or two voices were raised to demand insistently that Asad
should put to sea at once and remove his vessel from a neighbourhood
become so dangerous. Now, the fault of this was Marzak’s. His was the
voice that first had uttered that timid suggestion, and the infection
of his panic had spread instantly through the corsair ranks.
Asad, drawn to the full of his gaunt height, turned upon them the eyes
that had quelled greater clamours, and raised the voice which in its
day had hurled a hundred men straight into the jaws of death without a
protest.
“Silence!” he commanded. “I am your lord and need no counsellors save
Allah. When I consider the time come, I will give the word to row, but
not before. Back to your quarters, then, and peace!”
He disdained to argue with them, to show them what sound reasons there
were for remaining in this secret cove and against putting forth into
the open. Enough for them that such should be his will. Not for them to
question his wisdom and his decisions.
But Asad-ed-Din had lain overlong in Algiers whilst his fleets under
Sakr-el-Bahr and Biskaine had scoured the inland sea. The men were no
longer accustomed to the goad of his voice, their confidence in his
judgment was not built upon the sound basis of past experience. Never
yet had he led into battle the men of this crew and brought them forth
again in triumph and enriched by spoil.
So now they set their own judgment against his. To them it seemed a
recklessness—as, indeed, Marzak had suggested—to linger here, and his
mere announcement of his purpose was far from sufficient to dispel
their doubts.
The murmurs swelled, not to be overborne by his fierce presence and
scowling brow, and suddenly one of the renegades—secretly prompted by
the wily Vigitello—raised a shout for the captain whom they knew and
trusted.
“Sakr-el-Bahr! Sakr-el-Bahr! Thou’lt not leave us penned in this cove
to perish like rats!”
It was as a spark to a train of powder. A score of voices instantly
took up the cry; hands were flung out towards Sakr-el-Bahr, where he
stood above them and in full view of all, leaning impassive and stern
upon the poop-rail, whilst his agile mind weighed the opportunity thus
thrust upon him, and considered what profit was to be extracted from
it.
Asad fell back a pace in his profound mortification. His face was
livid, his eyes blared furiously, his hand flew to the jewelled hilt of
his scimitar, yet forbore from drawing the blade. Instead he let loose
upon Marzak the venom kindled in his soul by this evidence of how
shrunken was his authority.
“Thou fool!” he snarled. “Look on thy craven’s work. See what a devil
thou hast raised with thy woman’s counsels. Thou to command a galley!
Thou to become a fighter upon the seas! I would that Allah had stricken
me dead ere I begat me such a son as thou!”
Marzak recoiled before the fury of words that he feared might be
followed by yet worse. He dared make no answer, offer no excuse; in
that moment he scarcely dared breathe.
Meanwhile Rosamund in her eagerness had advanced until she stood at
Sakr-el-Bahr’s elbow.
“God is helping us!” she said in a voice of fervent gratitude. “This is
your opportunity. The men will obey you.”
He looked at her, and smiled faintly upon her eagerness. “Ay, mistress,
they will obey me,” he said. But in the few moments that were sped he
had taken his resolve. Whilst undoubtedly Asad was right, and the wise
course was to lie close in this sheltering cove where the odds of their
going unperceived were very heavily in their favour, yet the men’s
judgment was not altogether at fault. If they were to put to sea, they
might by steering an easterly course pass similarly unperceived, and
even should the splash of their oars reach the galleon beyond the
headland, yet by the time she had weighed anchor and started in pursuit
they would be well away straining every ounce of muscle at the oars,
whilst the breeze—a heavy factor in his considerations—was become so
feeble that they could laugh at pursuit by a vessel that depended upon
wind alone. The only danger, then, was the danger of the galleon’s
cannon, and that danger was none so great as from experience
Sakr-el-Bahr well knew.
Thus was he reluctantly forced to the conclusion that in the main the
wiser policy was to support Asad, and since he was full confident of
the obedience of the men he consoled himself with the reflection that a
moral victory might be in store for him out of which some surer profit
might presently be made.
In answer, then, to those who still called upon him, he leapt down the
companion and strode along the gangway to the waist-deck to take his
stand at the Basha’s side. Asad watched his approach with angry
misgivings; it was with him a foregone conclusion that things being as
they were Sakr-el-Bahr would be ranged against him to obtain complete
control of these mutineers and to cull the fullest advantage from the
situation. Softly and slowly he unsheathed his scimitar, and
Sakr-el-Bahr seeing this out of the corner of his eye, yet affected not
to see, but stood forward to address the men.
“How now?” he thundered wrathfully. “What shall this mean? Are ye all
deaf that ye have not heard the commands of your Basha, the exalted of
Allah, that ye dare raise your mutinous voices and say what is your
will?”
Sudden and utter silence followed that exhortation. Asad listened in
relieved amazement; Rosamund caught her breath in sheer dismay.
What could he mean, then? Had he but fooled and duped her? Were his
intentions towards her the very opposite to his protestations? She
leant upon the poop-rail straining to catch every syllable of that
speech of his in the lingua franca, hoping almost that her indifferent
knowledge of it had led her into error on the score of what he had
said.
She saw him turn with a gesture of angry command upon Larocque, who
stood there by the bulwarks, waiting.
“Back to thy post up yonder, and keep watch upon that vessel’s
movements, reporting them to us. We stir not hence until such be our
lord Asad’s good pleasure. Away with thee!”
Larocque without a murmur threw a leg over the bulwarks and dropped to
the oars, whence he clambered ashore as he had been bidden. And not a
single voice was raised in protest.
Sakr-el-Bahr’s dark glance swept the ranks of the corsairs crowding the
forecastle.
“Because this pet of the hareem,” he said, immensely daring, indicating
Marzak by a contemptuous gesture, “bleats of danger into the ears of
men, are ye all to grow timid and foolish as a herd of sheep? By Allah!
What are ye? Are ye the fearless sea-hawks that have flown with me, and
struck where the talons of my grappling-hooks were flung, or are ye but
scavenging crows?”
He was answered by an old rover whom fear had rendered greatly daring.
“We are trapped here as Dragut was trapped at Jerba.”
“Thou liest,” he answered. “Dragut was not trapped, for Dragut found a
way out. And against Dragut there was the whole navy of Genoa, whilst
against us there is but one single galleon. By the Koran, if she shows
fight, have we no teeth? Will it be the first galleon whose decks we
have overrun? But if ye prefer a coward’s counsel, ye sons of shame,
consider that once we take the open sea our discovery will be assured,
and Larocque hath told you that she carries twenty guns. I tell you
that if we are to be attacked by her, best be attacked at close
quarters, and I tell you that if we lie close and snug in here it is
long odds that we shall never be attacked at all. That she has no
inkling of our presence is proven, since she has cast anchor round the
headland. And consider that if we fly from a danger that doth not
exist, and in our flight are so fortunate as not to render real that
danger and to court it, we abandon a rich argosy that shall bring
profit to us all.”
“But I waste my breath in argument,” he ended abruptly. “You have heard
the commands of your lord, Asad-ed-Din, and that should be argument
enough. No more of this, then.”
Without so much as waiting to see them disperse from the rail and
return to their lounging attitudes about the forecastle, he turned to
Asad.
“It might have been well to hang the dog who spoke of Dragut and
Jerba,” he said. “But it was never in my nature to be harsh with those
who follow me.” And that was all.
Asad from amazement had passed quickly to admiration and a sort of
contrition, into which presently there crept a poisonous tinge of
jealousy to see Sakr-el-Bahr prevail where he himself alone must
utterly have failed. This jealousy spread all-pervadingly, like an oil
stain. If he had come to bear ill-will to Sakr-el-Bahr before, that
ill-will was turned of a sudden into positive hatred for one in whom he
now beheld a usurper of the power and control that should reside in the
Basha alone. Assuredly there was no room for both of them in the
Bashalik of Algiers.
Therefore the words of commendation which had been rising to his lips
froze there now that Sakr-el-Bahr and he stood face to face. In silence
he considered his lieutenant through narrowing evil eyes, whose message
none but a fool could have misunderstood.
Sakr-el-Bahr was not a fool, and he did not misunderstand it for a
moment. He felt a tightening at the heart, and ill-will sprang to life
within him responding to the call of that ill-will. Almost he repented
him that he had not availed himself of that moment of weakness and
mutiny on the part of the crew to attempt the entire superseding of the
Basha.
The conciliatory words he had in mind to speak he now suppressed. To
that venomous glance he opposed his ever ready mockery. He turned to
Biskaine.
“Withdraw,” he curtly bade him, “and take that stout sea-warrior with
thee.” And he indicated Marzak.
Biskaine turned to the Basha. “Is it thy wish, my lord?” he asked.
Asad nodded in silence, and motioned him away together with the cowed
Marzak.
“My lord,” said Sakr-el-Bahr, when they were alone, “yesterday I made
thee a proposal for the healing of this breach between us, and it was
refused. But now had I been the traitor and mutineer thou hast dubbed
me I could have taken full advantage of the humour of my corsairs. Had
I done that it need no longer have been mine to propose or to sue.
Instead it would have been mine to dictate. Since I have given thee
such crowning proof of my loyalty, it is my hope and trust that I may
be restored to the place I had lost in thy confidence, and that this
being so thou wilt accede now to that proposal of mine concerning the
Frankish woman yonder.”
It was unfortunate perhaps that she should have been standing there
unveiled upon the poop within the range of Asad’s glance; for the sight
of her it may have been that overcame his momentary hesitation and
stifled the caution which prompted him to accede. He considered her a
moment, and a faint colour kindled in his cheeks which anger had made
livid.
“It is not for thee, Sakr-el-Bahr,” he answered at length, “to make me
proposals. To dare it, proves thee far removed indeed from the loyalty
thy lips profess. Thou knowest my will concerning her. Once hast thou
thwarted and defied me, misusing to that end the Prophet’s Holy Law.
Continue a barrier in my path and it shall be at thy peril.” His voice
was raised and it shook with anger.
“Not so loud,” said Sakr-el-Bahr, his eyes gleaming with a response of
anger. “For should my men overhear these threats of thine I will not
answer for what may follow. I oppose thee at my peril sayest thou. Be
it so, then.” He smiled grimly. “It is war between us, Asad, since thou
hast chosen it. Remember hereafter when the consequences come to
overwhelm thee that the choice was thine.”
“Thou mutinous, treacherous son of a dog!” blazed Asad.
Sakr-el-Bahr turned on his heel. “Pursue the path of an old man’s
folly,” he said over his shoulder, “and see whither it will lead thee.”
Upon that he strode away up the gangway to the poop, leaving the Basha
alone with his anger and some slight fear evoked by that last bold
menace. But notwithstanding that he menaced boldly the heart of
Sakr-el-Bahr was surcharged with anxiety. He had conceived a plan; but
between the conception and its execution he realized that much ill
might lie.
“Mistress,” he addressed Rosamund as he stepped upon the poop. “You are
not wise to show yourself so openly.”
To his amazement she met him with a hostile glance.
“Not wise?” said she, her countenance scornful. “You mean that I may
see more than was intended for me. What game do you play here, sir,
that you tell me one thing and show me by your actions that you desire
another?”
He did not need to ask her what she meant. At once he perceived how she
had misread the scene she had witnessed.
“I’ll but remind you,” he said very gravely, “that once before you did
me a wrong by over-hasty judgment, as has been proven to you.”
It overthrew some of her confidence. “But then....” she began.
“I do but ask you to save your judgment for the end. If I live I shall
deliver you. Meanwhile I beg that you will keep your cabin. It does not
help me that you be seen.”
She looked at him, a prayer for explanation trembling on her lips. But
before the calm command of his tone and glance she slowly lowered her
head and withdrew beyond the curtain.