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.
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 win 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 ratlines 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
