Sir John, perceiving him by the mainmast with Rosamund at his side, and leaping at the most inevitable conclusion that he meant to threaten her life, perhaps to destroy her if they continued their advance, flung himself before his men, to check them.
Thus almost as suddenly as it had been joined the combat paused.
“What have you to say, you renegade dog?” Sir John demanded.
“This, Sir John, that unless you order your men back aboard your ship, and make oath to desist from this encounter, I’ll take you straight down to hell with us at once. I’ll heave this lantern into the powder here, and we sink and you come down with us held by your own grappling hooks. Obey me and you shall have all that you have come to seek aboard this vessel. Mistress Rosamund shall be delivered up to you.”
Sir John glowered upon him a moment from the poop, considering. Then—
“Though not prepared to make terms with you,” he announced, “yet I will accept the conditions you impose, but only provided that I have all indeed that I am come to seek. There is aboard this galley an infamous renegade hound whom I am bound by my knightly oath to take and hang. He, too, must be delivered up to me. His name was Oliver Tressilian.”
Instantly, unhesitatingly, came the answer—
“Him, too, will I surrender to you upon your sworn oath that you will then depart and do here no further hurt.”
Rosamund caught her breath, and clutched Sakr-el-Bahr’s arm, the arm that held the lantern.
“Have a care, mistress,” he bade her sharply, “or you will destroy us all.”
“Better that!” she answered him.
And then Sir John pledged him his word that upon his own surrender and that of Rosamund he would withdraw nor offer hurt to any there.
Sakr-el-Bahr turned to his waiting corsairs, and briefly told them what the terms he had made.
He called upon Asad to pledge his word that these terms would be respected, and no blood shed on his behalf, and Asad answered him, voicing the anger of all against him for his betrayal.
“Since he wants thee that he may hang thee, he may have thee and so spare us the trouble, for ’tis no less than thy treachery deserves from us.”
“Thus, then, I surrender,” he announced to Sir John, and flung the lantern overboard.
One voice only was raised in his defence, and that voice was Rosamund’s. But even that voice failed, conquered by weary nature. This last blow following upon all that lately she had endured bereft her of all strength. Half swooning she collapsed against Sakr-el-Bahr even as Sir John and a handful of his followers leapt down to deliver her and make fast their prisoner.
The corsairs stood looking on in silence; the loyalty to their great captain, which would have made them spend their last drop of blood in his defence, was quenched by his own act of treachery which had brought the English ship upon them. Yet when they saw him pinioned and hoisted to the deck of the Silver Heron, there was a sudden momentary reaction in their ranks. Scimitars were waved aloft, and cries of menace burst forth. If he had betrayed them, yet he had so contrived that they should not suffer by that betrayal. And that was worthy of the Sakr-el-Bahr they knew and loved; so worthy that their love and loyalty leapt full-armed again upon the instant.
But the voice of Asad called upon them to bear in mind what in their name he had promised, and since the voice of Asad alone might not have sufficed to quell that sudden spark of revolt, there came down to them the voice of Sakr-el-Bahr himself issuing his last command.
“Remember and respect the terms I have made for you! Mektub! May Allah guard and prosper you!”
A wail was his reply, and with that wail ringing in his ears to assure him that he did not pass unloved, he was hurried below to prepare him for his end.
The ropes of the grapnels were cut, and slowly the galleon passed away into the night, leaving the galley to replace what slaves had been maimed in the encounter and to head back for Algiers, abandoning the expedition against the argosy of Spain.
Under the awning upon the poop Asad now sat like a man who has awakened from an evil dream. He covered his head and wept for one who had been as a son to him, and whom through his madness he had lost. He cursed all women, and he cursed destiny; but the bitterest curse of all was for himself.
In the pale dawn they flung the dead overboard and washed the decks, nor did they notice that a man was missing in token that the English captain, or else his followers, had not kept strictly to the letter of the bond.
They returned in mourning to Algiers—mourning not for the Spanish argosy which had been allowed to go her ways unmolested, but for the stoutest captain that ever bared his scimitar in the service of Islam. The story of how he came to be delivered up was never clearly told; none dared clearly tell it, for none who had participated in the deed but took shame in it thereafter, however clear it might be that Sakr-el-Bahr had brought it all upon himself. But, at least, it was understood that he had not fallen in battle, and hence it was assumed that he was still alive. Upon that presumption there was built up a sort of legend that he would one day come back; and redeemed captives returning a half-century later related how in Algiers to that day the coming of Sakr-el-Bahr was still confidently expected and looked for by all true Muslimeen.
XXIII
The Heathen Creed
Sakr-el-Bahr was shut up in a black hole in the forecastle of the Silver Heron to await the dawn and to
