him on the divan.
Water was brought that they might wash. That done, the slaves placed before them a savoury stew of meat and eggs with olives, limes, and spices.
Asad broke bread with a reverently pronounced “Bismillah!” and dipped his fingers into the earthenware bowl, leading the way for Sakr-el-Bahr and Marzak, and as they ate he invited the corsair himself to recite the tale of his adventure.
When he had done so, and again Asad had praised him in high and loving terms, Marzak set him a question.
“Was it to obtain just these two English slaves that thou didst undertake this perilous voyage to that distant land?”
“That was but a part of my design,” was the calm reply. “I went to rove the seas in the Prophet’s service, as the result of my voyage gives proof.”
“Thou didst not know that this Dutch argosy would cross thy path,” said Marzak, in the very words his mother had prompted him.
“Did I not?” quoth Sakr-el-Bahr, and he smiled confidently, so confidently that Asad scarce needed to hear the words that so cunningly gave the lie to the innuendo. “Had I no trust in Allah the All-wise, the All-knowing?
“Well answered, by the Koran!” Asad approved him heartily, the more heartily since it rebutted insinuations which he desired above all to hear rebutted.
But Marzak did not yet own himself defeated. He had been soundly schooled by his guileful Sicilian mother.
“Yet there is something in all this I do not understand,” he murmured, with false gentleness.
“All things are possible to Allah!” said Sakr-el-Bahr, in tones of incredulity, as if he suggested—not without a suspicion of irony—that it was incredible there should be anything in all the world that could elude the penetration of Marzak.
The youth bowed to him in acknowledgment. “Tell me, O mighty Sakr-el-Bahr,” he begged, “how it came to pass that having reached those distant shores thou wert content to take thence but two poor slaves, since with thy followers and the favour of the All-seeing thou might easily have taken fifty times that number.” And he looked ingenuously into the corsair’s swarthy, rugged face, whilst Asad frowned thoughtfully, for the thought was one that had occurred to him already.
It became necessary that Sakr-el-Bahr should lie to clear himself. Here no high-sounding phrase of Faith would answer. And explanation was unavoidable, and he was conscious that he could not afford one that did not go a little lame.
“Why, as to that,” said he, “these prisoners were wrested from the first house upon which we came, and their capture occasioned some alarm. Moreover, it was night-time when we landed, and I dared not adventure the lives of my followers by taking them further from the ship and attacking a village which might have risen to cut off our good retreat.”
The frown remained stamped upon the brow of Asad, as Marzak slyly observed.
“Yet Othmani,” said he, “urged thee to fall upon a slumbering village all unconscious of thy presence, and thou didst refuse.”
Asad looked up sharply at that, and Sakr-el-Bahr realized with a tightening about the heart something of the undercurrents at work against him and all the pains that had been taken to glean information that might be used to his undoing.
“Is it so?” demanded Asad, looking from his son to his lieutenant with that lowering look that rendered his face evil and cruel.
Sakr-el-Bahr took a high tone. He met Asad’s glance with an eye of challenge.
“And if it were so my lord?” he demanded.
“I asked thee is it so?”
“Ay, but knowing thy wisdom I disbelieved my ears,” said Sakr-el-Bahr. “Shall it signify what Othmani may have said? Do I take my orders or am I to be guided by Othmani? If so, best set Othmani in my place, give him the command and the responsibility for the lives of the Faithful who fight beside him.” He ended with an indignant snort.
“Thou art over-quick to anger,” Asad reproved him, scowling still
“And by the Head of Allah, who will deny my right to it? Am I to conduct such an enterprise as this from which I am returned laden with spoils that might well be the fruits of a year’s raiding, to be questioned by a beardless stripling as to why I was not guided by Othmani?”
He heaved himself up and stood towering there in the intensity of a passion that was entirely simulated. He must bluster here, and crush down suspicion with whorling periods and broad, fierce gesture.
“To what should Othmani have guided me?” he demanded scornfully. “Could he have guided me to more than I have this day laid at thy feet? What I have done speaks eloquently with its own voice. What he would have had me do might well have ended in disaster. Had it so ended, would the blame of it have fallen upon Othmani? Nay, by Allah! but upon me. And upon me rests then the credit, and let none dare question it without better cause.”
Now these were daring words to address to the tyrant Asad, and still more daring was the tone, the light hard eyes aflash and the sweeping gestures of contempt with which they were delivered. But of his ascendancy over the Basha there was no doubt. And here now was proof of it.
Asad almost cowered before his fury. The scowl faded from his face to be replaced by an expression of dismay.
“Nay, nay, Sakr-el-Bahr, this tone!” he cried.
Sakr-el-Bahr, having slammed the door of conciliation in the face of the Basha, now opened it again. He became instantly submissive.
“Forgive it,” he said. “Blame the devotion of thy servant to thee and to the Faith he serves with little reck to life. In this very expedition was I wounded nigh unto death. The livid scar of it is a dumb witness to my zeal. Where are thy scars, Marzak?”
Marzak quailed before the sudden blaze of that question, and Sakr-el-Bahr laughed softly in contempt.
“Sit,” Asad bade him. “I have been less than just.”
“Thou art the very fount and spring of justice, O my lord, as this thine admission proves,” protested the corsair. He sat down again, folding his legs under him. “I will confess to you that being come so near to England in that cruise of mine I determined to land and seize one who some years ago did injure me, and between whom and me there was a score to settle. I exceeded my intentions in that I carried off two prisoners instead of one. These prisoners,” he ran on, judging that the moment of reaction in Asad’s mind was entirely favourable to the preferment of the request he had to make, “are not in the bagnio with the others. They are still confined aboard the carack I seized.”
“And why is this?” quoth Asad, but without suspicion now.
“Because, my lord, I have a boon to ask in some reward for the service I have rendered.”
“Ask it, my son.”
“Give me leave to keep these captives for myself.”
Asad considered him, frowning again slightly. Despite himself, despite his affection for Sakr-el-Bahr, and his desire to soothe him now that rankling poison of Fenzileh’s infusing was at work again in his mind.
