MUHAMMED SCORES TWICE
Muhammed's steps were bent away from the town towards the row of
dilapidated hovels which fringe the bank of sand below the nearer
blockhouse. And he walked quickly; there was definite purpose and no
sign of hesitation in his stride. He came to a halt before a dwelling,
half burrow, half barn, round the entrance of which were clustered half
a dozen ragged figures.
The Moor's face was dark in the shadow of his _haik_ hood, but he
appeared to need no introduction. He raised a finger and beckoned. One
of the lounging figures rose grudgingly and drew aside with him.
"I have it from Yakoob, Signor Luigi, that you leave to-morrow. That
must be altered. It may be necessary to make a start to-night."
The other raised a dark Italian face towards the Moor and eyed him
questioningly. He shrugged his shoulders.
"I have no charter from Yakoob," he said. "I return home to Salicudi--to
await the sponge-fishing season. I need a holiday; this contraband
running frets the nerves, do you see? I wish to forget the need of
having eyes--and a telescope--at the back of one's head."
For a moment Muhammed was silent, debating, as it seemed, something in
which memory or experience gave him no assistance.
"Salicudi?" he questioned.
"In the Lipari group," said the other, laconically. "My home."
"An island?" said the Moor. "And your home? What is it? A house--a
hut--a castle? Give me particulars. My chiefest need would be privacy.
Can you guarantee it?"
The Italian pondered.
"You flee from--what?" he demanded.
"From a curiosity which still seems to dog my footsteps," said the Moor,
drily. "Let it be sufficient for you to know that with three friends I
desire to vanish from Melilla to-night. We might find it convenient to
remain temporarily on Salicudi. It depends on your neighbors' thirst for
information and your capabilities of defeating it."
Signor Luigi gave an expressive and contemptuous wave of the hand.
"On Salicudi are six families--cousins of mine, all of them. I and my
brother Sandro alone possess boats or money. The others work for us and
are fed. We do not encourage them to think; they do not tire their
magnificent brains except under our direction."
Muhammed nodded appreciatively.
"The priest?" he suggested.
"Father Sigismondi serves six islands besides mine," said the smuggler.
"He visits us by favor of my boat, when Christian offices are in special
demand. It is a matter I regulate myself."
"Carabineers, tax collectors?"
"Of the former, none; we have leave to cut our own throats. Of the
latter, one yearly. He is due in about eight months' time."
"Food?"
"Polenta--fish--beans; at times of _festa_ a _risotto_ of kid. We have
goats, and therefore milk."
The Moor nodded.
"I am empowered to offer you for your hospitality for myself and friends
twenty _lire_ per head per week during our stay on your boat or island,"
he said slowly.
Luigi scratched his head.
"One hundred _lire_ for the lot?" he temporized. "You have appetites,
you Moors; that is notorious."
"We have appetites--for food," agreed Muhammed. "The bill of fare you
quote contains little that would be dignified as such in my way of
thinking. You will take eighty _lire_ per week, or lose this trade of
Yakoob's. Choose quickly."
For the second time the Italian's shoulders rose in a shrug.
"What you will," he said apathetically. "You hold a pistol to my head."
"Try to remember that it remains always loaded," replied the other, and
turned briskly towards the port. "You had better see to your
arrangements instantly."
He passed across the sand towards the dirty little Marina which fronts
the shipping offices and ship-chandlers' booths, leaving his companion
staring after him with a frown. Then, for the third time, Signor Luigi
shrugged his shoulders and followed, to enter finally a ship's dingy
which was tied to the Marina steps. In this he gained a large
lateen-rigged boat which swung at her moorings in the bay.
The motor launch floated idly on the ripples at the landing stage
immediately below the citadel. The engineer had come ashore and sat on a
bench beneath the tarpaulin which had been roughly erected to protect
some perishable government stores. In the shadow of the Marina booths,
Muhammed halted and looked thoughtfully at the man and then at the
launch and finally at the setting sun. The birth of a new and up-lifting
emotion could be seen working in his expressive eyes.
"Bismillah!" he exclaimed softly. "The one! Why not the three!"
He drew himself up; a deep breath escaped him. He slipped around the
back of the line of booths and reappeared coming as from the citadel.
And he had the aspect of haste and importance.
He walked straight up to the waiting engineer.
"I bring an order that you do not await your mistress but return for her
in three hours' time," he said in excellent English.
The man looked up in stolid surprise.
"Eh?" he questioned.
"Your mistress has accepted an invitation to dine with the governor,"
said Muhammed. "You are to return for her at ten o'clock."
The man got up and shook himself lazily as he strolled towards the
launch.
"Nice hospitable old cock--what?" he hazarded. "Didn't send me down a
small bottle of beer and a sandwich, now did he?"
Muhammed shook his head. The man grunted pessimistically, gave a surly
little nod, and sat down behind the launch's steering wheel. A moment
later he was grooving a white trail of foam out into the bay.
Muhammed sighed--a sigh which expressed relief, content, and the
expansion of a hitherto unleashed excitement. He turned and ran rapidly
back along the shore. A second visit to the hovels below the blockhouse
resulted in a conference with another of their deplorably clad
inhabitants. A taciturn fellow this, of apparently Spanish extraction.
But the fact that he wore the remains of an extremely dissolute _haik_
over a pair of remarkably tattered frieze trousers hinted at a
cosmopolitanism which was buttressed by his speech. He used the _lingua
franca_ and moved amid an almost palpable reek of garlic.
After the exchange of a few rapid sentences, he relapsed into silence
but not into inactivity. He paced solemnly down the sand and motioned
the Moor to help in the launching of a boat. In it they pulled round the
sweep of the bay into the inner port and moored themselves in the
berthing which the motor launch had vacated.
The dusk had now become darkness. Lights shone in the booths; the
distressing clangor of a gramophone sounded from one _albergar_, the
thrumming of a mandolin from another. There was a clink of spurs as half
a score of artillerymen clattered down the citadel ramp, eager for the
squalid debaucheries of the port. A _guardia civile_ sauntered along the
quayside edge and looked down into the waiting boat.
"Profitable evil-doing is surely at a low ebb when I find El Avispa
trying to make an honest penny," he meditated.
Muhammed's companion turned.
"Why do you term me The Wasp, Senor?" he asked with a grin of
complacence. "Have I been known to sting?"
The _guardia_ made a jerky motion of his thumb in the direction of the
great convict establishment upon the hill.
"I don't know, _amigo_. Your exploits are scheduled up there; have a
care that I do not need to refer to them. Whom do you await?"
"The Senor and the Senora who landed from the yacht," said the boatmen.
"They visit the Senor Intendente."
The _guardia_ looked doubtful.
"They landed from a boat, a motor boat," he objected.
"Precisely," agreed the other. "It appears that something affected the
engine of this, some leak of the jacketing which I do not understand,
but which I am informed cools the cylinders. The engineer returned while
he could, enlisting my services to await and explain matters to his
employer."
"Humph!" grunted the uniformed man. "His choice showed little
discretion. See to it that you do not disgrace your opportunity. That
seat is bespattered with fish-oil and scales. Wipe it!" He made a
commanding gesture towards the offending stain, and walked majestically
away.
At the far end of the Plaza he was seen to halt and observe two
newcomers, who appeared leisurely descending the citadel ramp. A
gold-braided official was in attendance on them, and his gestures were
rapid and deferential. The _guardia civile_ saluted and spoke. Muhammed,
watching keenly, gave another sigh. Fate was on his side. The very
guardians of law and order were unconsciously buttressing his plan. This
officious _guardia civile_ was already explaining the situation to Miss
Van Arlen and her companion. The onus of explanation--and possible
suspicion--was thus being lifted from shoulders possibly less capable
of bearing it. He muttered his satisfaction in a hurried undertone.
The girl and Aylmer advanced towards the quayside, the gesticulating
official still in attendance. The latter eyed the waiting boat
disdainfully.
"Let me demonstrate, Senora," he cried, "that our port can supply
something less deplorable in the way of shore boats. Let me summon a
pinnace and crew from the naval arsenal."
Muhammed's heart stood still. But fate smiled on him yet.
Miss Van Arlen protested that the boat would do well enough, that it was
hardly fair to have kept this man waiting by the instructions of her own
engineer, as it appeared, and then refuse to engage him. With a smile
and bow of farewell she took her seat in the stern, while the _guardia
civile_ muttered stern instructions to the rowers anent their duty. They
received them in stolid silence. Aylmer took the yoke lines, and amid a
renewed demonstration of respect from the men of gold braid, the boat
shot out into the darkness.
A slight mist hung over the water, but the riding lights of the yacht
were plain enough and Aylmer headed directly for them. He leaned forward
and asked a question of the man who pulled stroke oar.
"The Senor who came ashore with us?" he queried. "Did you mark him? Did
he return in the motor boat?"
The man shrugged his shoulders.
"I did not see it," he said laconically. "Have the goodness to steer
well to the right. Your present course will foul a line of net buoys."
Aylmer pulled the line and swerved as directed. And then Claire spoke,
with a hint of something in her voice which was nearly akin to
suspicion without exactly attaining it.
"Mr. Miller frankly puzzles me," she said.
Aylmer gave a little nod in the darkness.
"Yes," he agreed. "There is a sense of--of estrangement about him. He is
good company, a _mondain_, intelligent, but not--human. One feels that
at every turn."
The girl made a gesture towards the shore.
"What can he have to do in that--that ash heap?" she asked. "A man who
poses as a _flaneur_, a _dilettante_."
"Pottery?" suggested Aylmer. "He collects; I have seen his collections.
They are sound and in good taste, without being remarkable."
"That is what I think," she acquiesced. "For the life-work of a man they
are petty. It is mysterious; he is mysterious! Why did he not rejoin us
this evening at the governor's office as he promised?"
Aylmer smiled.
"The ardors of the chase," he hazarded. "He is probably sitting in the
sanctum of some Jew huckster, chaffering for the least worn of a
collection of Rabat rugs or old Mequinez steel-work. He will come on
board to-morrow to explain and bid us farewell, and we shall hear all
about it."
"About what?" asked the girl enigmatically.
Aylmer smiled again.
"About--what he chooses to tell us," he answered, and jerked the
yoke-line energetically, as a couple of oval dark objects loomed up on
the surface just ahead.
There was a swish and a dragging sound, and the dark objects disclosed
themselves alongside as net buoys. They hung below the gunwale
persistently; the boat was obviously brought to a standstill.
"In spite of my warning the Senor has fouled the fishing nets," growled
the boatman.
"On the contrary," retorted Aylmer, "your directions carried us straight
into them. A direct course would have avoided this."
The man shipped his oar and stood up.
"The Senor will permit me to pass him?" he said. "The rudder itself must
be unshipped to clear us."
Aylmer shifted his seat to one side as the man leaned over him. The next
instant he had cried out--a choking cry, smothered under the folds of
the sail which the man had heaped bodily upon his head. His hands were
grasped and drawn together in the loop of a rope. Lashings were knitted
about his limbs with almost miraculous rapidity. Stark and inert, he
felt himself rolled into the bottom of the boat, his rage and horror
almost suffocating him as he heard the quickly stifled cry which told
him that his companion was suffering like treatment. And then, for half
a minute, the rapid rumble of the rowlocks was evidence that the boat
was being furiously rowed--whither he could not guess.
There was a shock of wood meeting wood. They had run alongside another
vessel, or possibly the piles of a landing place. Whispered voices
joined those of their captors.
He felt himself lifted, borne staggeringly forward a few paces and then
lowered into arms which gripped him from below. There was the creak of
reluctant hinges. He was placed not ungently upon a floor of planking.
The voices whispered again, something was laid beside him, touching him.
The hinges grated, footsteps passed over a floor or deck above his head.
And then there was silence.
But out in the bay a few minutes later, the decent stillness of the
night was torn into tatters of uproar. The voice of the Spanish boatman
was uplifted in appeals for help to every listening saint in Paradise,
and to every inhabitant of the Melilla's citadel and port. The sounds
reached, as they were meant to reach, the quay. Every guardroom was
emptied; the roisterers surged into the street from a dozen _albergars_
and _cervecerias_. Half a score of boats put out into the night, one
manned by the naval police leading.
Lament guiding them, within five minutes they reached a point where El
Avispa clung disconsolately to the keel of his upturned boat, bewailing
the day of a birth which had developed for him into a life of
unremitting sorrow. He was dragged into the police boat and ordered to
explain himself.
It was the fault of the foreign Senor, he deposed. Justice to himself
compelled him to admit that, though he had every regard for the
reputation of a cavalier who was now without doubt drowned fathoms deep
below the very spot on which the rescuing pinnace swam. Being careless,
or perchance engrossed by the attractions of the Senora who was for
beauty a very swan, the amateur steersman had precipitated them among
the mackerel nets. The rudder was fouled. He, Ignacio Baril, sometimes
called El Avispa, had stood up to pass to the stern and release it. The
Senora, with entrancing but unfortunate timidity, had risen in her turn,
and the Senor, gesticulating in argument, had consummated the disaster.
He had leaned sideways, lost his balance, and caused the boat to lurch
completely over.
Yes, he himself had put forth the efforts of a Hercules to save, at
least, the woman. In deference to the memory of his mother, who was
already among the Saints after a lifetime of charity and benevolence, he
must bear witness to the fact that her son met this crisis with energy.
How was he defeated? The truth must out; again it was the foreign
cavalier. In his panic he had clutched and drawn back from the brink of
safety the Senora--alas! to perdition. The would-be rescuer had desisted
from his efforts only when his overtaxed lungs failed him. In a state of
semi-unconsciousness, Providence had guided his aimless hand to reach
and rest upon the keel of his overturned boat. He had been saved, it was
very true, but it was a question if death itself was not to be
poignantly preferred to safety coupled with such a burden of grief. His
days must be clouded to his life's end.
And thereupon the bay echoed with the shouts of a hundred searchers and
the waters glittered in carnival gaiety below the glare of their lights.
A couple of hours later one of them halted, as if to rest the rowers, in
the shadow of the felucca _Santa Margarita_. From her bows a long,
cord-lashed package was silently lifted on the larger vessel's deck,
while three figures scrambled hastily over the gunwale and crept below.
Then laboriously the clumsy anchor was hauled home, the broad sail
spread to the western breeze, and Signor Luigi steered a straight course
into the bosom of the night.