Asad’s gleaming eyes considered him in silence for a moment.
“How remove that cause?” he asked. “Wilt thou atone for the mockery of thy marriage, pronounce her divorced and relinquish her?”
“That were not to remove her,” replied Sakr-el-Bahr. “Consider well, Asad, what is thy duty to the Faith. Consider that upon our unity depends the glory of Islam. Were it not sinful, then, to suffer the intrusion of aught that may mar such unity? Nay, nay, what I propose is that I should be permitted — assisted even — to bear out the project I had formed, as already I have frankly made confession. Let us put to sea again at dawn — or this very night if thou wilt — make for the coast of France, and there set her ashore that she may go back to her own people and we be rid of her disturbing presence. Then we will return — there is time and to spare — and here or elsewhere lurk in wait for this Spanish argosy, seize the booty and sail home in amity to Algiers, this incident, this little cloud in the splendour of our comradeship, behind us and forgotten as though it had never been. Wilt thou, Asad — for the glory of the Prophet’s Law?”
The bait was cunningly presented, so cunningly that not for a moment did Asad or even the malicious Marzak suspect it to be just a bait and no more. It was his own life, become a menace to Asad, that Sakr-el-Bahr was offering him in exchange for the life and liberty of that Frankish slave-girl, but offering it as if unconscious that he did so.
Asad considered, temptation gripping, him. Prudence urged him to accept, so that affecting to heal the dangerous breach that now existed he might carry Sakr-el-Bahr back to Algiers, there, beyond the aid of any friendly mutineers, to have him strangled. It was the course to adopt in such a situation, the wise and sober course by which to ensure the overthrow of one who from an obedient and submissive lieutenant had suddenly shown that it was possible for him to become a serious and dangerous rival.
Sakr-el-Bahr watched the Basha’s averted, gleaming eyes under their furrowed, thoughtful brows, he saw Marzak’s face white, tense and eager in his anxiety that his father should consent. And since his father continued silent, Marzak, unable longer to contain himself, broke into speech.
“He is wise, O my father!” was his crafty appeal. “The glory of Islam above all else! Let him have his way in this, and let the infidel woman go. Thus shall all be well between us and Sakr-el-Bahr!” He laid such a stress upon these words that it was obvious he desired them to convey a second meaning.
Asad heard and understood that Marzak, too, perceived what was here to do; tighter upon him became temptation’s grip; but tighter, too, became the grip of a temptation of another sort. Before his fierce eyes there arose a vision of a tall stately maiden with softly rounded bosom, a vision so white and lovely that it enslaved him. And so he found himself torn two ways at once. On the one hand, if he relinquished the woman, he could make sure of his vengeance upon Sakr-el-Bahr, could make sure of removing that rebel from his path. On the other hand, if he determined to hold fast to his desires and to be ruled by them, he must be prepared to risk a mutiny aboard the galeasse, prepared for battle and perhaps for defeat. It was a stake such as no sane Basha would have consented to set upon the board. But since his eyes had again rested upon Rosamund, Asad was no longer sane. His thwarted desires of yesterday were the despots of his wits.
He leaned forward now, looking deep into the eyes of Sakr-el-Bahr.
“Since for thyself thou dost not want her, why dost thou thwart me?” he asked, and his voice trembled with suppressed passion. “So long as I deemed thee honest in taking her to wife I respected that bond as became a good Muslim; but since ’tis manifest that it was no more than a pretence, a mockery to serve some purpose hostile to myself, a desecration of the Prophet’s Holy Law, I, before whom this blasphemous marriage was performed, do pronounce it to be no marriage. There is no need for thee to divorce her. She is no longer thine. She is for any Muslim who can take her.”
Sakr-el-Bahr laughed unpleasantly. “Such a Muslim,” he announced, “will be nearer my sword than the Paradise of Mahomet.” And on the words he stood up, as if in token of his readiness.
Asad rose with him in a bound of a vigour such as might scarce have been looked for in a man of his years.
“Dost threaten?” he cried, his eyes aflash.
“Threaten?” sneered Sakr-el-Bahr. “I prophesy.” And on that he turned, and stalked away down the gangway to the vessel’s waist. There was no purpose in his going other than his perceiving that here argument were worse than useless, and that the wiser course were to withdraw at once, avoiding it and allowing his veiled threat to work upon the Basha’s mind.
Quivering with rage Asad watched his departure. On the point of commanding him to return, he checked, fearing lest in his present mood Sakr-el-Bahr should flout his authority and under the eyes of all refuse him the obedience due. He knew that it is not good to command where we are not sure of being obeyed or of being able to enforce obedience, that an authority once successfully flouted is in itself half-shattered.
Whilst still he hesitated, Marzak, who had also risen, caught him by the arm and poured into his ear hot, urgent arguments enjoining him to yield to Sakr-el-Bahr’s demand.
“It is the sure way,” he cried insistently. “Shall all be jeopardized for the sake of that whey-faced daughter of perdition? In the name of Shaitan, let us be rid of her; set her ashore as he demands, as the price of peace between us and him, and in the security of that peace let him be strangled when we come again to our moorings in Algiers. It is the sure way — the sure way!”
Asad turned at last to look into that handsome eager face. For a moment he was at a loss; then he had recourse to sophistry. “Am I a coward that I should refuse all ways but sure ones?” he demanded in a withering tone. “Or art thou a coward who can counsel none other?”
“My anxiety is all for thee, O my father,” Marzak defended himself indignantly. “I doubt if it be safe to sleep, lest he should stir up mutiny in the night.”
“Have no fear,” replied Asad. “Myself I have set the watch, and the officers are all trustworthy. Biskaine is even now in the forecastle taking the feeling of the men. Soon we shall know precisely where we stand.”
“In thy place I would make sure. I would set a term to this danger of mutiny. I would accede to his demands concerning the woman, and settle after-wards with himself.”
“Abandon that Frankish pearl?” quoth Asad. Slowly he shook his head. “Nay, nay! She is a garden that shall yield me roses. Together we shall yet taste the sweet sherbet of Kansar, and she shall thank me for having led her into Paradise. Abandon that rosy-limbed loveliness!” He laughed softly on a note of exaltation, whilst in the gloom Marzak frowned, thinking of Fenzileh.
“She is an infidel,” his son sternly reminded him, “so forbidden thee by the Prophet. Wilt thou be as blind to that as to thine own peril?” Then his voice gathering vehemence and scorn as he proceeded: “She has gone naked of face through the streets of Algiers; she has been gaped at by the rabble in the sôk; this loveliness of hers has been deflowered by the greedy gaze of Jew and Moor and Turk; galley-slaves and negroes have feasted their eyes upon her unveiled beauty; one of thy captains hath owned her his wife.” He laughed. “By Allah, I do not know thee, O my father! Is this the woman thou wouldst take for thine own? This the woman for whose possession thou wouldst jeopardize thy life and perhaps the very Bashalik itself!”
Asad clenched his hands until the nails bit into his flesh. Every word his son had uttered had been as a lash to his soul. The truth of it was not to be contested. He was humiliated and shamed. Yet was he not conquered of his madness, nor diverted from his course. Before he could make answer, the tall martial figure of Biskaine came up the companion.
“Well?” the Basha greeted him eagerly, thankful for this chance to turn the subject.
Biskaine was downcast. His news was to be read in his countenance. “The task appointed me was difficult,” said he. “I have done my best. Yet I could sc
arce go about it in such a fashion as to draw definite conclusions. But this I know, my lord, that he will be reckless indeed if he dares to take up arms against thee and challenge thine authority. So much at least I am permitted to conclude.”
“No more than that?” asked Asad. “And if I were to take up arms against him, and to seek to settle this matter out of hand?”
Biskaine paused a moment ere replying. “I cannot think but that Allah would vouchsafe thee victory,” he said. But his words did not delude the Basha. He recognized them to be no more than those which respect for him dictated to his officer. “Yet,” continued Biskaine, “I should judge thee reckless too, my lord, as reckless as I should judge him in the like circumstances.”
“I see,” said Asad. “The matter stands so balanced that neither of us dare put it to the test.”
“Thou hast said it.”
“Then is thy course plain to thee!” cried Marzak, eager to renew his arguments. “Accept his terms, and....”
But Asad broke in impatiently. “Every thing in its own hour and each hour is written. I will consider what to do.”
Below on the waist-deck Sakr-el-Bahr was pacing with Vigitello, and Vigitello’s words to him were of a tenor identical almost with those of Biskaine to the Basha.
“I scarce can judge,” said the Italian renegade. “But I do think that it were not wise for either thou or Asad to take the first step against the other.”
“Are matters, then, so equal between us?”
“Numbers, I fear,” replied Vigitello, “would be in favour of Asad. No truly devout Muslim will stand against the Basha, the representative of the Sublime Portal, to whom loyalty is a question of religion. Yet they are accustomed to obey thee, to leap at thy command, and so Asad himself were rash to put it to the test.”
“Ay — a sound argument,” said Sakr-el-Bahr. “It is as I had thought.”
Upon that he quitted Vigitello, and slowly, thoughtfully, returned to the poop-deck. It was his hope — his only hope now — that Asad might accept the proposal he had made him. As the price of it he was fully prepared for the sacrifice of his own life, which it must entail. But, it was not for him to approach Asad again; to do so would be to argue doubt and anxiety and so to court refusal. He must possess his soul in what patience he could. If Asad persisted in his refusal undeterred by any fear of mutiny, then Sakr-el-Bahr knew not what course remained him to accomplish Rosamund’s deliverance. Proceed to stir up mutiny he dared not. It was too desperate a throw. In his own view it offered him no slightest chance of success, and did it fail, then indeed all would be lost, himself destroyed, and Rosamund at the mercy of Asad. He was as one walking along a sword-edge. His only chance of present immunity for himself and Rosamund lay in the confidence that Asad would dare no more than himself to take the initiative in aggression. But that was only for the present, and at any moment Asad might give the word to put about and steer for Barbary again; in no case could that be delayed beyond the plundering of the Spanish argosy. He nourished the faint hope that in that coming fight — if indeed the Spaniards did show fight — some chance might perhaps present itself, some unexpected way out of the present situation.
He spent the night under the stars, stretched across the threshold of the curtained entrance to the poop-house, making thus a barrier of his body whilst he slept, and himself watched over in his turn by his faithful Nubians who remained on guard. He awakened when the first violet tints of dawn were in the east, and quietly dismissing the weary slaves to their rest, he kept watch alone thereafter. Under the awning on the starboard quarter slept the Basha and his son, and near them Biskaine was snoring.
CHAPTER XIX. 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 aske
d 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.
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