“Why waste a thought upon so poor a thing? My life was forfeit already. If I go back to Algiers they will assuredly hang me. Asad will see to it, and not all my sea-hawks could save me from my fate.”
She sank down again upon the divan, and sat there rocking her arms in a gesture of hopeless distress.
“I see,” she said. “I see. I am bringing this fate upon you. When you sent Lionel upon that errand you voluntarily offered up your life to restore me to my own people. You had no right to do this without first consulting me. You had no right to suppose I would be a party to such a thing. I will not accept the sacrifice. I will not, Sir Oliver.”
“Indeed, you have no choice, thank God!” he answered her. “But you are astray in your conclusions. It is I alone who have brought this fate upon myself. It is the very proper fruit of my insensate deed. It recoils upon me as all evil must upon him that does it.” He shrugged his shoulders as if to dismiss the matter. Then in a changed voice, a voice singularly timid, soft, and gentle, “it were perhaps too much to ask,” said he, “that you should forgive me all the suffering I have brought you?”
“I think,” she answered him, “that it is for me to beg forgiveness of you.”
“Of me?”
“For my unfaith, which has been the source of all. For my readiness to believe evil of you five years ago, for having burnt unread your letter and the proof of your innocence that accompanied it.”
He smiled upon her very kindly. “I think you said your instinct guided you. Even though I had not done the thing imputed to me, your instinct knew me for evil; and your instinct was right, for evil I am — I must be. These are your own words. But do not think that I mock you with them. I have come to recognize their truth.”
She stretched out her hands to him. “If... if I were to say that I have come to realize the falsehood of all that?”
“I should understand it to be the charity which your pitiful heart extends to one in my extremity. Your instinct was not at fault.”
“It was! It was!”
But he was not to be driven out of his conviction. He shook his head, his countenance gloomy. “No man who was not evil could have done by you what I have done, however deep the provocation. I perceive it clearly now — as men in their last hour perceive hidden things.”
“Oh, why are you so set on death?” she cried upon a despairing note.
“I am not,” he answered with a swift resumption of his more habitual manner. “’Tis death that is so set on me. But at least I meet it without fear or regret. I face it as we must all face the inevitable — the gifts from the hands of destiny. And I am heart-ened — gladdened almost — by your sweet forgive-ness.”
She rose suddenly, and came to him. She caught his arm, and standing very close to him, looked up now into his face.
“We have need to forgive each other, you and I, Oliver,” she said. “And since forgiveness effaces all, let... let all that has stood between us these last five years be now effaced.”
He caught his breath as he looked down into her white, straining face
“Is it impossible for us to go back five years? Is it impossible for us to go back to where we stood in those old days at Godolphin Court?”
The light that had suddenly been kindled in his face faded slowly, leaving it grey and drawn. His eyes grew clouded with sorrow and despair.
“Who has erred must abide by his error — and so must the generations that come after him. There is no going back ever. The gates of the past are tight-barred against us.”
“Then let us leave them so. Let us turn our backs upon that past, you and I, and let us set out afresh together, and so make amends to each other for what our folly has lost to us in those years.”
He set his hands upon her shoulders, and held her so at arm’s length from him considering her with very tender eyes.
“Sweet lady!” he murmured, and sighed heavily. “God! How happy might we not have been but for that evil chance....” He checked abruptly. His hands fell from her shoulders to his sides, he half-turned away, brusque now in tone and manner. “I grow maudlin. Your sweet pity has so softened me that I had almost spoke of love; and what have I to do with that? Love belongs to life; love is life; whilst I... Moriturus te salutat!”
“Ah, no, no!” She was clinging to him again with shaking hands, her eyes wild.
“It is too late,” he answered her. “There is no bridge can span the pit I have dug myself. I must go down into it as cheerfully as God will let me.”
“Then,” she cried in sudden exaltation, “I will go down with you. At the last, at least, we shall be together.”
“Now here is midsummer frenzy!” he protested, yet there was a tenderness in the very impatience of his accents. He stroked the golden head that lay against his shoulder. “How shall that help me?” he asked her. “Would you embitter my last hour — rob death of all its glory? Nay, Rosamund, you can serve me better far by living. Return to England, and publish there the truth of what you have learnt. Be yours the task of clearing my honour of this stain upon it, proclaiming the truth of what drove me to the infamy of becoming a renegade and a corsair.” He started from her. “Hark! What’s that?”
From without had come a sudden cry, “Afoot! To arms! To arms! Holâ! Balâk! Balâk!”
“It is the hour,” he said, and turning from her suddenly sprang to the entrance and plucked aside the curtain.
CHAPTER XXII. THE SURRENDER
Up the gangway between the lines of slumbering slaves came a quick patter of feet. Ali, who since sunset had been replacing Larocque on the heights, sprang suddenly upon the poop still shouting.
“Captain! Captain! My lord! Afoot! Up! or we are taken!”
Throughout the vessel’s length came the rustle and stir of waking men. A voice clamoured somewhere on the forecastle. Then the flap of the awning was suddenly whisked aside and Asad himself appeared with Marzak at his elbow.
From the starboard side as suddenly came Biskaine and Othmani, and from the waist Vigitello, Jasper — that latest renegade — and a group of alarmed corsairs.
“What now?” quoth the Basha.
Ali delivered his message breathlessly. “The galleon has weighed anchor. She is moving out of the bay.”
Asad clutched his beard, and scowled. “Now what may that portend? Can knowledge of our presence have reached them?”
“Why else should she move from her anchorage thus in the dead of night?” said Biskaine.
“Why else, indeed?” returned Asad, and then he swung upon Oliver standing there in the entrance of the poop-house. “What sayest thou, Sakr-el-Bahr?” he appealed to him.
Sakr-el-Bahr stepped forward, shrugging. “What is there to say? What is there to do?” he asked. “We can but wait. If our presence is known to them we are finely trapped, and there’s an end to all of us this night.”
His voice was cool as ice, contemptuous almost, and whilst it struck anxiety into more than one it awoke terror in Marzak.
“May thy bones rot, thou ill-omened prophet!” he screamed, and would have added more but that Sakr-el-Bahr silenced him.
“What is written is written!” said he in a voice of thunder and reproof.
“Indeed, indeed,” Asad agreed, grasping at the fatalist’s consolation. “If we are ripe for the gardeners hand, the gardener will pluck us.”
Less fatalistic and more practical was the counsel of Biskaine.
“It were well to act upon the assumption that we are indeed discovered, and make for the open sea while yet there may be time.”
“But that were to make certain what is still doubtful,” broke in Marzak, fearful ever. “It were to run to meet the danger.”
“Not so!” cried Asad in a loud, confident voice. “The praise to Allah who sent us this calm night. There is scarce a breath of wind. We can row ten leagues while they are sailing one.”
A murmur of quick approval sped through the ranks of officers and men.
“Let us but wi
n safely from this cove and they will never overtake us,” announced Biskaine.
“But their guns may,” Sakr-el-Bahr quietly reminded them to damp their confidence. His own alert mind had already foreseen this one chance of escaping from the trap, but he had hoped that it would not be quite so obvious to the others.
“That risk we must take,” replied Asad. “We must trust to the night. To linger here is to await certain destruction.” He swung briskly about to issue his orders. “Ali, summon the steersmen. Hasten! Vigitello, set your whips about the slaves, and rouse them.” Then as the shrill whistle of the boatswain rang out and the whips of his mates went hissing and cracking about the shoulders of the already half-awakened slaves, to mingle with all the rest of the stir and bustle aboard the galeasse, the Basha turned once more to Biskaine. “Up thou to the prow,” he commanded, “and marshal the men. Bid them stand to their arms lest it should come to boarding. Go!” Biskaine salaamed and sprang down the companion. Above the rumbling din and scurrying toil of preparation rang Asad’s voice.
“Crossbowmen, aloft! Gunners to the carronades! Kindle your linstocks! Put out all lights!”
An instant later the cressets on the poop-rail were extinguished, as was the lantern swinging from the rail, and even the lamp in the poop-house which was invaded by one of the Basha’s officers for that purpose. The lantern hanging from the mast alone was spared against emergencies; but it was taken down, placed upon the deck, and muffled.
Thus was the galeasse plunged into a darkness that for some moments was black and impenetrable as velvet. Then slowly, as the eyes became accustomed to it, this gloom was gradually relieved. Once more men and objects began to take shape in the faint, steely radiance of the summer night.
After the excitement of that first stir the corsairs went about their tasks with amazing calm and silence. None thought now of reproaching the Basha or Sakr-el-Bahr with having delayed until the moment of peril to take the course which all of them had demanded should be taken when first they had heard of the neighbourhood of that hostile ship. In lines three deep they stood ranged along the ample fighting platform of the prow; in the foremost line were the archers, behind them stood the swordsmen, their weapons gleaming lividly in the darkness. They crowded to the bulwarks of the waist-deck and swarmed upon the rat-lines of the mainmast. On the poop three gunners stood to each of the two small cannon, their faces showing faintly ruddy in the glow of the ignited match.
Asad stood at the head of the companion, issuing his sharp brief commands, and Sakr-el-Bahr, behind him, leaning against the timbers of the poop-house with Rosamund at his side, observed that the Basha had studiously avoided entrusting any of this work of preparation to himself.
The steersmen climbed to their niches, and the huge steering oars creaked as they were swung out. Came a short word of command from Asad and a stir ran through the ranks of the slaves, as they threw forward their weight to bring the oars to the level. Thus a moment, then a second word, the premonitory crack of a whip in the darkness of the gangway, and the tomtom began to beat the time. The slaves heaved, and with a creak and splash of oars the great galeasse skimmed forward towards the mouth of the cove.
Up and down the gangway ran the boatswain’s mates, cutting fiercely with their whips to urge the slaves to the very utmost effort. The vessel gathered speed. The looming headland slipped by. The mouth of the cove appeared to widen as they approached it. Beyond spread the dark steely mirror of the dead-calm sea.
Rosamund could scarcely breathe in the intensity of her suspense. She set a hand upon the arm of Sakr-el-Bahr.
“Shall we elude them, after all?” she asked in a trembling whisper.
“I pray that we may not,” he answered, muttering. “But this is the handiwork I feared. Look!” he added sharply, and pointed.
They had shot clear to the headland. They were out of the cove, and suddenly they had a view of the dark bulk of the galleon, studded with a score of points of light, riding a cable’s length away on their larboard quarter.
“Faster!” cried the voice of Asad. “Row for your lives, you infidel swine! Lay me your whips upon these hides of theirs! Bend me these dogs to their oars, and they’ll never overtake us now.”
Whips sang and thudded below them in the waist, to be answered by more than one groan from the tormented panting slaves, who already were spending every ounce of strength in this cruel effort to elude their own chance of salvation and release. Faster beat the tomtom marking the desperate time, and faster in response to it came the creak and dip of oars and the panting, stertorous breathing of the rowers.
“Lay on! Lay on!” cried Asad, inexorable. Let them burst their lungs — they were but infidel lungs! — so that for an hour they but maintained the present pace.
“We are drawing away!” cried Marzak in jubilation. “The praise to Allah!”
And so indeed they were. Visibly the lights of the galleon were receding. With every inch of canvas spread yet she appeared to be standing still, so faint was the breeze that stirred. And whilst she crawled, the galeasse raced as never yet she had raced since Sakr-el-Bahr had commanded her, for Sakr-el-Bahr had never yet turned tail upon the foe in whatever strength he found him.
Suddenly over the water from the galleon came a loud hail. Asad laughed, and in the darkness shook his fist at them, cursing them in the name of Allah and his Prophet. And then, in answer to that curse of his, the galleon’s side belched fire; the calm of the night was broken by a roar of thunder, and something smote the water ahead of the Muslim vessel with a resounding thudding splash.
In fear Rosamund drew closer to Sakr-el-Bahr. But Asad laughed again.
“No need to fear their marksmanship,” he cried. “They cannot see us. Their own lights dazzle them. On! On!”
“He is right,” said Sakr-el-Bahr. “But the truth is that they will not fire to sink us because they know you to be aboard.”
She looked out to sea again, and beheld those friendly lights falling farther and farther astern.
“We are drawing steadily away,” she groaned. “They will never overtake us now.”
So feared Sakr-el-Bahr. He more than feared it. He knew that save for some miraculous rising of the wind it must be as she said. And then out of his despair leapt inspiration — a desperate inspiration, true child of that despair of which it was begotten.
“There is a chance,” he said to her. “But it is as a throw of the dice with life and death for stakes.”
“Then seize it,” she bade him instantly. “For though it should go against us we shall not be losers.”
“You are prepared for anything?” he asked her.
“Have I not said that I will go down with you this night? Ah, don’t waste time in words!”
“Be it so, then,” he replied gravely, and moved away a step, then checked. “You had best come with me,” he said.
Obediently she complied and followed him, and some there were who stared as these two passed down the gangway, yet none attempted to hinder her movements. Enough and to spare was there already to engage the thoughts of all aboard that vessel.
He thrust a way for her, past the boatswain’s mates who stood over the slaves ferociously plying tongues and whips, and so brought her to the waist. Here he took up the lantern which had been muffled, and as its light once more streamed forth, Asad shouted an order for its extinction. But Sakr-el-Bahr took no least heed of that command. He stepped to the mainmast, about which the powder kegs had been stacked. One of these had been broached against its being needed by the gunners on the poop. The unfastened lid rested loosely atop of it. That lid Sakr-el-Bahr knocked over; then he pulled one of the horn sides out of the lantern, and held the now half-naked flame immediately above the powder.
A cry of alarm went up from some who had watched him. But above that cry rang his sharp command:
“Cease rowing!”
The tomtom fell instantly silent, but the slaves took yet another stroke.
“Cease rowin
g!” he commanded again. “Asad!” he called. “Bid them pause, or I’ll blow you all straight into the arms of Shaitan.” And he lowered the lantern until it rested on the very rim of the powder keg.
At once the rowing ceased. Slaves, corsairs, officers, and Asad himself stood paralyzed, all at gaze upon that grim figure illumined by the lantern, threatening them with doom. It may have crossed the minds of some to throw themselves forthwith upon him; but to arrest them was the dread lest any movement towards him should precipitate the explosion that must blow them all into the next world.
At last Asad addressed him, his voice half-choked with rage.
“May Allah strike thee dead! Art thou djinn-possessed?”
Marzak, standing at his father’s side, set a quarrel to the bow which he had snatched up. “Why do you all stand and stare?” he cried. “Cut him down, one of you!” And even as he spoke he raised his bow. But his father checked him, perceiving what must be the inevitable result.
“If any man takes a step towards me, the lantern goes straight into the gunpowder,” said Sakr-el-Bahr serenely. “And if you shoot me as you intend, Mar-zak, or if any other shoots, the same will happen of itself. Be warned unless you thirst for the Paradise of the Prophet.”
“Sakr-el-Bahr!” cried Asad, and from its erstwhile anger his voice had now changed to a note of intercession. He stretched out his arms appealingly to the captain whose doom he had already pronounced in his heart and mind. “Sakr-el-Bahr, I conjure thee by the bread and salt we have eaten together, return to thy senses, my son.”
“I am in my sense,” was the answer, “and being so I have no mind for the fate reserved me in Algiers — by the memory of that same bread and salt. I have no mind to go back with thee to be hanged or sent to toil at an oar again.”
“And if I swear to thee that naught of this shall come to pass?”
“Thou’lt be forsworn. I would not trust thee now, Asad. For thou art proven a fool, and in all my life I never found good in a fool and never trusted one — save once, and he betrayed me. Yesterday I pleaded with thee, showing thee the wise course, and affording thee thine opportunity. At a slight sacrifice thou mightest have had me and hanged me at thy leisure. ’Twas my own life I offered thee, and for all that thou knewest it, yet thou knewest not that I knew.” He laughed. “See now what manner of fool art thou? Thy greed hath wrought thy ruin. Thy hands were opened to grasp more than they could hold. See now the consequence. It comes yonder in that slowly but surely approaching galleon.”
Collected Works of Rafael Sabatini Page 306
