“It is. What then?”
“D’ye not see? That ship will be the Silver Heron.”
He looked at her. “ ’S life!” said he, “I reck little whether it be the silver heron or the golden grasshopper. What odds?”
“It is Sir John’s ship—Sir John Killigrew’s,” she explained. “She was all but ready to sail when … when you came to Arwenack. He was for the Indies. Instead—don’t you see?—out of love for me he will have come after me upon a forlorn hope of overtaking you ere you could make Barbary.”
“God’s light!” said Sakr-el-Bahr, and fell to musing. Then he raised his head and laughed. “Faith, he’s some days late for that!”
But the jest evoked no response from her. She continued to stare at him with those eager yet timid eyes.
“And yet,” he continued, “he comes opportunely enough. If the breeze that has fetched him is faint, yet surely it blows from Heaven.”
“Were it … ?” she paused, faltering a moment. Then, “Were it possible to communicate with him?” she asked, yet with hesitation.
“Possible—ay,” he answered. “Though we must needs devise the means, and that will prove none so easy.”
“And you would do it?” she inquired, an undercurrent of wonder in her question, some recollection of it in her face.
“Why, readily,” he answered, “since no other way presents itself. No doubt ’twill cost some lives,” he added, “but then. …” And he shrugged to complete the sentence.
“Ah, no, no! Not at that price!” she protested. And how was he to know that all the price she was thinking of was his own life, which she conceived would be forfeited if the assistance of the Silver Heron were invoked?
Before he could return her any answer his attention was diverted. A sullen threatening note had crept into the babble of the crew, and suddenly one or two voices were raised to demand insistently that Asad should put to sea at once and remove his vessel from a neighbourhood become so dangerous. Now, the fault of this was Marzak’s. His was the voice that first had uttered that timid suggestion, and the infection of his panic had spread instantly through the corsair ranks.
Asad, drawn to the full of his gaunt height, turned upon them the eyes that had quelled greater clamours, and raised the voice which in its day had hurled a hundred men straight into the jaws of death without a protest.
“Silence!” he commanded. “I am your lord and need no counsellors save Allah. When I consider the time come, I will give the word to row, but not before. Back to your quarters, then, and peace!”
He disdained to argue with them, to show them what sound reasons there were for remaining in this secret cove and against putting forth into the open. Enough for them that such should be his will. Not for them to question his wisdom and his decisions.
But Asad-ed-Din had lain overlong in Algiers whilst his fleets under Sakr-el-Bahr and Biskaine had scoured the inland sea. The men were no longer accustomed to the goad of his voice, their confidence in his judgment was not built upon the sound basis of past experience. Never yet had he led into battle the men of this crew and brought them forth again in triumph and enriched by spoil.
So now they set their own judgment against his. To them it seemed a recklessness—as, indeed, Marzak had suggested—to linger here, and his mere announcement of his purpose was far from sufficient to dispel their doubts.
The murmurs swelled, not to be overborne by his fierce presence and scowling brow, and suddenly one of the renegades—secretly prompted by the wily Vigitello—raised a shout for the captain whom they knew and trusted.
“Sakr-el-Bahr! Sakr-el-Bahr! Thou’lt not leave us penned in this cove to perish like rats!”
It was as a spark to a train of powder. A score of voices instantly took up the cry; hands were flung out towards Sakr-el-Bahr, where he stood above them and in full view of all, leaning impassive and stern upon the poop rail, whilst his agile mind weighed the opportunity thus thrust upon him, and considered what profit was to be extracted from it.
Asad fell back a pace in his profound mortification. His face was livid, his eyes blared furiously, his hand flew to the jewelled hilt of his scimitar, yet forbore from drawing the blade. Instead he let loose upon Marzak the venom kindled in his soul by this evidence of how shrunken was his authority.
“Thou fool!” he snarled. “Look on thy craven’s work. See what a devil thou hast raised with thy woman’s counsels. Thou to command a galley! Thou to become a fighter upon the seas! I would that Allah had stricken me dead ere I begat me such a son as thou!”
Marzak recoiled before the fury of words that he feared might be followed by yet worse. He dared make no answer, offer no excuse; in that moment he scarcely dared breathe.
Meanwhile Rosamund in her eagerness had advanced until she stood at Sakr-el-Bahr’s elbow.
“God is helping us!” she said in a voice of fervent gratitude. “This is your opportunity. The men will obey you.”
He looked at her, and smiled faintly upon her eagerness. “Ay, mistress, they will obey me,” he said. But in the few moments that were sped he had taken his resolve. Whilst undoubtedly Asad was right, and the wise course was to lie close in this sheltering cove where the odds of their going unperceived were very heavily in their favour, yet the men’s judgment was not altogether at fault. If they were to put to sea, they might by steering an easterly course pass similarly unperceived, and even should the splash of their oars reach the galleon beyond the headland, yet by the time she had weighed anchor and started in pursuit they would be well away straining every ounce of muscle at the oars, whilst the breeze—a heavy factor in his considerations—was become so feeble that they could laugh at pursuit by a vessel that depended
