The Essential Rafael Sabatini Collection. Rafael Sabatini
his beetling brows, then summoned him. He came at once, and stood respectfully before his prince.
Asad considered him a moment solemnly, whilst a furtive malicious smile played over the beautiful countenance of his son.
"Think not, Sakr-el-Bahr," he said at length, "that I bear thee resentment for what befell last night or that that happening is the sole cause of my present determination. I had a duty--a long-neglected duty--to Marzak, which at last I have undertaken to perform." He seemed to excuse himself almost, and Marzak misliked both words and tone. Why, he wondered, must this fierce old man, who had made his name a terror throughout Christendom, be ever so soft and yielding where that stalwart and arrogant infidel was concerned?
Sakr-el-Bahr bowed solemnly. "My lord," he said, "it is not for me to question thy resolves or the thoughts that may have led to them. It suffices me to know thy wishes; they are my law."
"Are they so?" said Asad tartly. "Thy deeds will scarce bear out thy protestations." He sighed. "Sorely was I wounded yesternight when thy marriage thwarted me and placed that Frankish maid beyond my reach. Yet I respect this marriage of thine, as all Muslims must--for all that in itself it was unlawful. But there!" he ended with a shrug. "We sail together once again to crush the Spaniard. Let no ill-will on either side o'er-cloud the splendour of our task."
"Ameen to that, my lord," said Sakr-el-Bahr devoutly. "I almost feared...."
"No more!" the Basha interrupted him. "Thou wert never a man to fear anything, which is why I have loved thee as a son."
But it suited Marzak not at all that the matter should be thus dismissed, that it should conclude upon a note of weakening from his father, upon what indeed amounted to a speech of reconciliation. Before Sakr-el-Bahr could make answer he had cut in to set him a question laden with wicked intent.
"How will thy bride beguile the season of thine absence, O Sakr-el-Bahr?"
"I have lived too little with women to be able to give thee an answer," said the corsair.
Marzak winced before a reply that seemed to reflect upon himself. But he returned to the attack.
"I compassionate thee that art the slave of duty, driven so soon to abandon the delight of her soft arms. Where hast thou bestowed her, O captain?"
"Where should a Muslim bestow his wife but according to the biddings of the Prophet--in the house?"
Marzak sneered. "Verily, I marvel at thy fortitude in quitting her so soon!"
But Asad caught the sneer, and stared at his son. "What cause is there to marvel in that a true Muslim should sacrifice his inclinations to the service of the Faith?" His tone was a rebuke; but it left Marzak undismayed. The youth sprawled gracefully upon his cushions, one leg tucked under him.
"Place no excess of faith in appearances, O my father!" he said.
"No more!" growled the Basha. "Peace to thy tongue, Marzak, and may Allah the All-knowing smile upon our expedition, lending strength to our arms to smite the infidel to whom the fragrance of the garden is forbidden."
To this again Sakr-el-Bahr replied "Ameen," but an uneasiness abode in his heart summoned thither by the questions Marzak had set him. Were they idle words calculated to do no more than plague him, and to keep fresh in Asad's mind the memory of Rosamund, or were they based upon some actual knowledge?
His fears were to be quickened soon on that same score. He was leaning that afternoon upon the rail, idly observing the doling out of the rations to the slaves, when Marzak came to join him.
For some moments he stood silently beside Sakr-el-Bahr watching Vigitello and his men as they passed from bench to bench serving out biscuits and dried dates to the rowers--but sparingly, for oars move sluggishly when stomachs are too well nourished--and giving each to drink a cup of vinegar and water in which floated a few drops of added oil.
Then he pointed to a large palmetto bale that stood on the waist-deck near the mainmast about which the powder barrels were stacked.
"That pannier," he said, "seems to me oddly in the way yonder. Were it not better to bestow it in the hold, where it will cease to be an encumbrance in case of action?"
Sakr-el-Bahr experienced a slight tightening at the heart. He knew that Marzak had heard him command that bale to be borne into the poop-cabin, and that anon he had ordered it to be fetched thence when Asad had announced his intention of sailing with him. He realized that this in itself might be a suspicious circumstance; or, rather, knowing what the bale contained, he was too ready to fear suspicion. Nevertheless he turned to Marzak with a smile of some disdain.
"I understood, Marzak, that thou art sailing with us as apprentice."
"What then?" quoth Marzak.
"Why merely that it might become thee better to be content to observe and learn. Thou'lt soon be telling me how grapnels should be slung, and how an action should be fought." Then he pointed ahead to what seemed to be no more than a low cloud-bank towards which they were rapidly skimming before that friendly wind. "Yonder," he said, "are the Balearics. We are making good speed."
Although he said it without any object other than that of turning the conversation, yet the fact itself was sufficiently remarkable to be worth a comment. Whether rowed by her two hundred and fifty slaves, or sailed under her enormous spread of canvas, there was no swifter vessel upon the Mediterranean than the galeasse of Sakr-el-Bahr. Onward she leapt now with bellying tateens, her well-greased keel slipping through the wind-whipped water at a rate which perhaps could not have been bettered by any ship that sailed.
"If this wind holds we shall be under the Point of Aguila before sunset, which will be something to boast of hereafter," he promised.
Marzak, however, seemed but indifferently interested; his eyes continued awhile to stray towards that palmetto bale by the mainmast. At length, without another word to Sakr-el-Bahr, he made his way abaft, and flung himself down under the awning, beside his father. Asad sat there in a moody abstraction, already regretting that he should have lent an ear to Fenzileh to the extent of coming upon this voyage, and assured by now that at least there was no cause to mistrust Sakr-el-Bahr. Marsak came to revive that drooping mistrust. But the moment was ill-chosen, and at the first words he uttered on the subject, he was growled into silence by his sire.
"Thou dost but voice thine own malice," Asad rebuked him. "And I am proven a fool in that I have permitted the malice of others to urge me in this matter. No more, I say."
Thereupon Marzak fell silent and sulking, his eyes ever following Sakr-el-Bahr, who had descended the three steps from the poop to the gangway and was pacing slowly down between the rowers' benches.
The corsair was supremely ill at ease, as a man must be who has something to conceal, and who begins to fear that he may have been betrayed. Yet who was there could have betrayed him? But three men aboard that vessel knew his secret--Ali, his lieutenant, Jasper, and the Italian Vigitello. And Sakr-el-Bahr would have staked all his possessions that neither Ali nor Vigitello would have betrayed him, whilst he was fairly confident that in his own interests Jasper also must have kept faith. Yet Marzak's allusion to that palmetto bale had filled him with an uneasiness that sent him now in quest of his Italian boatswain whom he trusted above all others.
"Vigitello," said he, "is it possible that I have been betrayed to the Basha?"
Vigitello looked up sharply at the question, then smiled with confidence. They were standing alone by the bulwarks on the waist-deck.
"Touching what we carry yonder?" quoth he, his glance shifting to the bale. "Impossible. If Asad had knowledge he would have betrayed it before we left Algiers, or else he would never have sailed without a stouter bodyguard of his own.
"What need of bodyguard for him?" returned Sakr-el-Bahr. "If it should come to grips between us--as well it