it falls asleep.
V
As Ivan Sablianka went up the shaft-ladder, Kral was not there to aid him, because Kral lay dead beside dead Arap Ali under the blood-stained stream. But this time hate spurred him on, and he swarmed up the precarious path as recklessly as if he clambered a ship’s ratlines. Bits of crumbling stone gave way beneath his grasp and rattled down the cliff in tiny avalanches, but somehow he cheated death each time, and heaved relentlessly upward. He was not far behind Osman Pasha when the corsair came out on the cliff and set off through the stunted firs. Ivan came after him, his long legs carrying his giant frame across the ground at a surprizing rate, and presently Osman, turning and seeing he had but one foe to deal with, faced round with a curse.
A fierce grin bristled the corsair’s curly black beard. Here was a huge frame on which he could carve his savage disgust at the muddling of his plans. Only a few months before he had been the most feared sea-lord in the world, with the broad blue Mediterranean at his feet. Now he was shorn of all following and power, except that gripped in his strong right hand, and locked in his skull. He was too much of the true adventurer to waste time in bemoaning his fall, but the chance of hewing down this pestiferous Cossack gave him a grim satisfaction.
Easier thought than done. For all his slow wits and his bulk, Ivan was quick as a huge cat on his feet. Steel clanged on steel, the long straight blade of the Zaporogian beat down on the Algerian scimitar. The corsair was almost as tall as the Cossack, though not so heavily built. His scimitar was straighter and heavier than most Moslem blades, and he showed a remarkable aptitude for the point as well as the edge. Thrice only Ivan’s tattered mail saved him from the corsair’s vicious thrusts. These he alternated with whistling cuts which nicked bits of metal from Ivan’s harness and soon had him bleeding from half a dozen flesh wounds. It was Osman’s purpose to keep the giant on the defensive, where his superior strength would not aid him as it would in attack. His shaven, sun- burnt head bobbed before the corsair’s eyes, the tawny scalp-lock flowing in the wind, and Osman hacked and hewed at it until the sweat ran into his eyes and his breath came short. But somehow Ivan always managed to parry or avoid his most dangerous strokes. Osman’s scimitar slithered off the straight blade, or clashed on the flaring hand-guard.
There was no sound except the clangor of steel, the gasp of hard-driven breath, and the thud and shuffle of the fighters’ feet. The sheer power of the Cossack began to tell. From a whirlwind offensive, Osman found himself gradually forced back on the defense, using all his strength and skill to parry the Cossack’s terrible sweeping blows. With a gasping cry he staked all on a desperate onslaught and leaped like a tiger, scimitar glittering above his head. He was aware of an icy pang under his heart, and convulsively clutching with his naked hand the blade that had impaled him, he slashed with his last ounce of strength at his slayer’s head. Ivan caught the stroke on his upflung left arm; the keen edge bit through mail-links and flesh to the bone. The scimitar dropped from Osman’s nerveless hand, and he slid off the impaling blade to the blood-soaked earth. And from his pallid lips burst words in a strange tongue, “God ha’ mercy on me – I’ll see Devon no more!”
Ivan started violently, blenching, and then with a cry dropped to his knees beside him, forgetful of his own blood-spurting wound. Gripping his foe he shook him fiercely, crying in the same tongue, “What did ye say? What did ye say?”
The glazing eyes rolled up at him, and Ivan tore the helmet from the wounded man’s head. And he cried out as if Osman had stabbed him.
“God’s mercy!
“A long yarn and scant time to tell it,” muttered the renegade. “Nay, John,” as the big man began tearing strips from his garments to staunch the blood he had just let so willingly, “nay, I’m done for. Let me bide. I was with Drake when he struck for Lisbon and lost so many good ships and stout lads. I was one the Spaniards took. They bound me to a galley’s oar. Something broke in me as I toiled there beneath the lash. I forgot England, aye, and God too.
“A Barbary rover took the galley and the
“Drink and the women, lad,” answered Ivan Sablianka, who had been John Hawksby of Devon. “I couldn’t bide in Devon because o’ feuds and fights wi’ divers people. I wandered eastward until I lost the memory and feeling o’ England. Sink my bones, I’ve been as great a heathen as you, Roger. But do ye mind the great old days when we pounded the Dons on the Main?”
“Remember?” the dying man’s eyes blazed and he lurched up on his elbow, blood gushing from his mouth. “God, to sail again with Drake and Grenville! To laugh with them as we laughed when we ripped Philip’s Armada to shreds! – Let go the weather braces! – that’s Sidonia’s flagship! – man the pumps, bullies, I’ll not strike while there’s a plank beneath my feet! – give ’em a broadside – the starboard guns – hangers and pistolets, there – ”
He sank back, the babble of delirium dying on his lips. Ivan, kneeling beside the dead man, was lost in memory until a clink of steel on stone brought him round instinctively, sword ready. Togrukh stood near him in the gathering twilight.
“I see you’ve run down the dog. The lads have gone back into the tunnel. There’s only nine of ’em left to run, besides ourselves. The gorge is full of Turks. We’ll have to make our way across the cliffs to where we left the horses. What are you about?”
Ivan had spread the corsair’s mantle over the dead pirate.
“I’m going to lay stones over him, so the vultures can’t pick his bones,” he answered stolidly.
“But his head!” expostulated the other. “His head to show the sir brothers!”
The giant faced about in the dusk so grimly that Togrukh involuntarily stepped back.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Aye, right enough.”
“And you’ll bear witness to the sir brothers that I killed him, won’t you?”
“Yes, but – ”
“Then let it rest there,” grunted Ivan, bending his powerful back as he began to lift the stones and heap them in place.
As the moon glided from behind a mass of fleecy clouds, etching the shadows of the woods in a silvery glow, the man sprang into a dark clump of bushes, like a hunted thing that fears the disclosing light. As a clink of shod hoofs came plainly to him, he drew further back into his covert, scarcely daring to breathe. In the silence a nightbird called sleepily, and he heard, in the distance, the lazy lap of waters against the shore. The moon slid again behind a drifting cloud, just as the horseman emerged from the trees on the other side of the small glade. The man, hugging his covert, cursed silently. He could make out only a vague moving mass; could hear only the clink stirrups and the creak of leather. Then the moon came out again, and with a deep gasp of relief, the hider sprang from among the bushes.
