bush. It was immediately made the target of two shots in quick succession.
'Two pistols. No more balls, I think…' the stranger said softly, almost gaily. 'Not move… Assassin come to see me dead…'
Realizing what he meant, Marianne flattened herself as best she could among the undergrowth, while her companion drew a long, curved knife silently from his belt and crouched, ready to spring. He did not have long to wait. In a little while, cautious footsteps crunched on the sand and a dark shape came gliding through the trees. It came forward a little way, then stopped, then, evidently reassured by the silence, came on again. Marianne had barely time to glimpse a thickset, remarkably energetic-looking figure moving with knife in hand, then, with a bound like a wild beast, the stranger was upon him. They rolled together on the ground, locked together in a desperate struggle.
The shots, meanwhile, had aroused the household and Marianne saw light approaching through the trees and the inhabitants of the Alamano estate turned out with lanterns and, no doubt, guns. They were led by the senator himself in his night-shirt and cotton nightcap with a pom-pom on the top, a pistol in each hand. After him came a dozen or so servants, variously armed. The first person they saw was Marianne, standing in the middle of the path.
'Princess!' the senator exclaimed. 'Is it you, here, at this hour? What is happening?'
For answer, she stood aside and let him see the two men still grappling one another furiously on the ground, uttering ferocious animal grunts. The senator gave one anguished howl and, stuffing his pistols into Marianne's hands, dashed forward to separate them. His servants rushed to help and in a few seconds the two adversaries had been parted by main force. But while the man with the turban was treated with the utmost solicitude, the other was instantly bound and flung on the ground with a roughness that made it quite clear he, at least, could look for no sympathy from the senator.
The Venetian was hastily assisting the stranger to resume his flowing robe and turban.
'You are not hurt, lord? You are quite sure you are not hurt?' he asked several times over.
'Not in the least, I thank you. But my life I owe to this young lady. She throw me down, just in time.'
'Young lady? Oh, the Princess, you mean? Lord!' This time the wretched senator was seen to be invoking his maker. 'Lord, what a business! What a business!'
'Perhaps if you were to introduce us?' Marianne suggested. 'It might make things a little clear. To me, at any rate.'
Still suffering somewhat from shock, the senator launched into a series of introductions and explanations which rapidly became hopelessly involved. All the same, Marianne was able to gather that she had just prevented a highly unfortunate diplomatic incident and succeeded in saving the life of a noble refugee. The man in the turban was now revealed as a youth of about twenty, who without his pointed beard and long black moustache would probably have looked a good deal younger. He was Chahin Bey, the son of one of the Pasha of Yannina's latest victims, Mustapha, Pasha of Delvino. After Ali's janissaries had taken their city and murdered their father, Chahin and his younger brother had sought refuge in Corfu where they were given a hospitable welcome by the governor. They were living in a pleasant house higher up the valley, overlooking the sea, where they were in sight of the watch at the fort. In addition, two soldiers were constantly on guard at their door, but even so, it was scarcely possible to prevent the young princes from walking abroad whenever they wished.
The attacker, apparently one of Ali's agents, was one of the fierce Albanians from the Chimera Mountains whose arid peaks could be seen across the northern channel. So much was dear from the red scarf he wore round his head. The remainder of his costume was made up of baggy trousers with a short skirt of heavy linen, silver- buttoned waistcoat and a pair of espadrilles. From the wide red belt that cinched his waist in tighter than any stays, the senator's servants took an astonishing selection of weapons. The man was a walking arsenal. Once bound, however, it proved impossible to get another word out of him. He was tied to a tree and remained there in brooding silence, guarded by a number of armed servants, while Alamano sent a messenger hurrying to the fort.
On learning the real identity of the woman whom he had taken for some pretty local girl out for a spree, Chahin Bey displayed just the right amount of confusion consonant with good manners. The sight of Marianne's face, revealed in the light of the lanterns, afforded him a degree of pleasure that was evidently enough to overcome all merely social considerations. Seeing his gaze fixed brilliantly on herself all the way up to the house, Marianne realized that she had awoken in him sentiments no whit less primitive than those which she had aroused in the unknown man in the water. The thought gave her no satisfaction whatever. She had had enough of the primitive for one night.
'I hope the story will not get about,' she confided to Maddalena, who had emerged from her chamber, clad in an abundantly frilled dressing-gown, to provide the heroes of the occasion with sustaining drinks on their return.
'It was quite by accident that I was able to thwart the attacker, you know. I had gone down to the beach to bathe. It was so dreadfully hot! And then, as I was coming back, I bumped into the Bey and had the good fortune to knock him down just at the very moment the assassin fired. It is really nothing to make a fuss about.'
'But that is what Chahin Bey is certainly doing. Listen to him. He is already comparing you to the houris of paradise! Besides declaring that you have the courage of a lioness. You are in a fair way to becoming a heroine to him, Princess.'
'Well, I've no objection to that, so long as he keeps his feelings to himself. And if the senator will say nothing about my part in the affair.'
'But why? You have done a very fine thing which does great honour to France. General Donzelot—'
'Need never know,' Marianne wailed. 'I am really a very retiring person. I don't in the least care to be talked about. It is so embarrassing.'
What was particularly embarrassing, just then, was the knowledge that if Jason heard of what had taken place that night on the beach, he was likely to draw very different conclusions from the real truth. His nature was too jealous to allow him to overlook the smallest thing. But how was she to explain to her hostess that she was madly in love with her ship's captain and his opinion mattered more to her than anything?
Maddalena's brown eyes, which had been observing Marianne's slowly reddening cheeks, were alight with laughter as she murmured:
'It all depends on how the story is told. We'll do our best to restrain Chahin Bey's enthusiasm. Otherwise, the governor might conclude that you – er – collided with our young friend while endeavouring to dissuade him from seeing himself as Ulysses meeting Nausicaa. And you wouldn't wish the governor to think…'
'Not the governor or anyone else! The truth is, I feel a trifle foolish and even my friends—'
'There is nothing particularly foolish in wishing to bathe when the weather is as hot as this. But then, I have heard that Americans are exceedingly strait-laced, and even prudish.'
'Americans? Why Americans? I am certainly travelling in a vessel of that nation but I don't see…'
Maddalena slid her arm quietly through Marianne's and walked with her to the staircase that led to her room.
'My dear Princess,' she said softly, selecting a lighted candle from among those placed on a side table, 'let me tell you two things. One is that I am a woman and the second that, although I do not know you very well, I like you a great deal. I shall do all I can to shield you from the slightest inconvenience. If I spoke of Americans, it was because my husband told me of your captain's alarm when you were unwell at the harbour, and also what an excessively charming man he is! Don't worry. We'll try and ensure that he knows nothing. I will speak to my husband.'
As it turned out, Chahin Bey's enthusiasm was not of a kind to be stemmed. Alamano was silent about the part played by Marianne when handing the would-be assassin over to the island's police force, but as soon as it was light a procession of the Bey's servants entered the senator's garden bearing gifts for the 'precious flower from the land of the infidel caliph' and settled themselves outside the front door, waiting with the inexhaustible patience of the east until they could deliver their messages.
These, in addition to the presents, consisted of a letter couched in the most flowery Greek vernacular in which Chahin Bey declared that since 'the splendour of the princess of the sea-coloured eyes has put to flight the black-winged angel Azrael', he was her knight for all the days allotted to him by Allah on this sinful earth and meant to devote to her and to his oppressed people, groaning under the heel of the infamous Ali, the remainder of a life which, but for her, would already be no more than a memory too brief for glory.
'What does he mean?' Marianne asked uneasily, when the senator had concluded his somewhat halting but
