AYLMER IS EXPLICIT
It seemed to Aylmer that the world into which he woke was one of stillness, of neutral tints, of intrinsic peace. There was a hint of sunshine diluted by the green hangings in front of the windows, but no more than a hint. There was a faint echo of the sound of falling water floating in with the light, but merely an echo. There was, in fact, but the slightest suggestion of life in his surroundings, and that came from the silently regular rise and fall of the bosom of the sleeping man who sat at his bedside. Aylmer blinked and stared in mild surprise, for the man was Daoud.
He moved restlessly under the sheets. Where was he? Into what unsought refuge had Fate flung him now?
His movement, slight as it was, aroused the Moor. With a little self-reproachful exclamation he stood up and leaned over the bed.
"Oh, Sidi!" he cried, "it rejoices my heart to read the light of understanding in your eyes."
Aylmer blinked again bewilderedly.
"Where am I and what do you here?" he asked.
"You are in Villa Eulalia, Sidi, and where should I be but in attendance on my lord?"
Astonishment lifted Aylmer into a weak attempt to rise. The Moor put a hand upon his shoulder and firmly pressed him back.
"Nay, Sidi," he said respectfully. "The German doctor lord expressly forbade that you should raise your head from the pillow till he had seen you again."
Aylmer began to feel as if his wits as well as his body had been bludgeoned. Circumstances seemed to have leaped freakishly beyond his recollection.
"I was brought here when?" he asked.
"Yesterday, Sidi. Your brain was sorely smitten inside your skull, or so I understood the man of medicines. For fifteen hours you have lain as one feigning death, though breathing. Now you have come into the right of your senses again. This the medicine man also prophesied."
The puzzled frown stayed on Aylmer's brow.
"And you?" he demanded. "And you?"
The Moor answered with a demure shrug of the shoulder.
"Your wounded brain has perchance forgotten, Sidi, that I entered your benign service on the morning of the day which saw you defeated by the treachery of that one whom we sought, you and I. My service has been constant ever since."
He met his victim's increasing frown with complacent assurance as he spoke. Surely everything, he seemed to imply, was in order. And as the situation became clear to Aylmer's growing intelligence, the frown became an exasperated smile.
"You have used my helplessness to impose yourself into this house as my body-servant," said Aylmer. "Oh, Daoud, you are of a deceitfulness beyond my unpractised powers of speech."
"Speech beyond the mere limits of necessity was strongly discountenanced by the German doctor lord," said Daoud, hastily. "Has the Sidi any further desires?"
"None, save for information. Speak thou! Give me the plain tale of all happenings since I fell into that trap upon the road. The man we sought—did he escape?"
The Moor nodded.
"He escaped victoriously, with all his following. He took also the child, the Sidi Jan, who, so they tell me, is the son of his house. They took themselves unmolested into the tangle of the broom, leaving of our company one dead—from the kick of a horse, Sidi—half a dozen senseless, yourself among them, Absalaam grievously wounded in the bosom, though like to recover, and all, save four or five, with bruises, broken limbs, or, at least, frayed and bleeding skin. So they fled, but Ali, of the Walad Said, who had been flung away from the hardness of the open track into the heart of the thicket, had taken no harm and followed them to the caves."
Aylmer gave a start.
"The caves?" he muttered weakly. "The caves?"
"The Sidi knows them well. The caves of Hercules beyond Spartel, where the millstone carvers ply their toil and where the Sidi and other Nazrani ride forth to eat and drink upon occasion when they entertain their friends."
Aylmer nodded. The caves of Hercules are the resort of many a picnic party from Tangier.
"Leaving them there, he hastened back with news. The Sidi Van Arlen, lord of this house, was by then recovered of the stunning which he, too, had suffered, and weak though he was immediately led forth another company to search the caves. And this they did unsuccessfully, Sidi, learning from one of the millstone workers, who had doubted of the integrity of these sons of dirt before they saw him, and who had therefore hidden himself and watched them unseen, that after a rest of three or four hours the men, taking with them the child, had passed down to the shore, had there awaited and been taken off by a boat which delivered them, so he conceived, to a lateen which he could descry in the moonlight about three furlongs out. And in that ship they have gone we know not whither."
Aylmer's fingers clenched and unclenched upon the coverlet. How thoroughly, how absolutely, they had been bested! But the account was rolling up. Ultimate defeat? His mind never even considered it. He merely put another item in the mental ledger from which Landon's account would one day be presented, and paid, in full.
"Let not the Sidi imagine that we have sat inactive while these sons of unchaste mothers triumph. I myself snatched a hasty hour from your bedside to enter the town and set certain ones agog for news. The Sidi Van Arlen hath telegraphed to Spain; every Guardia Civile along the coast has knowledge of how a reward of a thousand pesetas may be gained. By favor of the captain of the French warship all other ships of the French marine within three hundred miles have been warned to challenge unvouched-for boats. How this is done I am unable to say, but so it is. Watch upon the seas is therefore being kept. Now steam is being raised upon the white yacht in the bay, that when news comes it may be followed without delay. Lastly, a special mission has been sent by favor of the Bashaw from town to town along the coast as far as Dar-el-Baida. Thus have we set a wide net. Yet it has holes in it, Sidi, and holes are what these jackals are ever quick to seek."
With a sudden movement, Aylmer sat up. A frown and a gesture of command warded back Daoud's outstretched hand.
"Art thou my servant?" he cried, and the Moor spread out his palms in alert assent.
"Of a surety, Sidi, but the dispenser of medicines—"
"What have I to do with medicines—I, a strong man with no more than a bruised skull? Give me my clothes!"
"But, Sidi—"
"My clothes, or return instantly to the gutter from which my favor yesterday lifted you!"
The Moor gave a fatalistic shrug.
"If Allah has written it that you are to die by the weapon of thine own obstinacy, oh, Sidi, He has written it. This is thy shirt."
With an accustomedness which spoke of previous practice, he presided over his master's toilet. He fetched water, honed a razor, shaved Aylmer with deftness and despatch, produced trousers from a press, handed coat and waistcoat brushed and folded to the last pinnacle of neatness. It was as he laced the boots that he looked up inquiringly and put a question which had been obviously hanging upon his lips since the moment of his master's rising.
"And what, oh, Sidi, are your intentions now?"
"First, to see my host. Afterwards," he made a vague gesture, "afterwards, my friend, I shall act as is directed by your perpetual gossip—Fate!"
"May Allah direct our councils!" aspired Daoud, piously. "Lean upon me, Sidi! There is no need to overtax thy returning strength!"
But Aylmer leaned upon nothing. Slowly, but walking erect, he paced across the wide entrance hall, and then halted, indeterminate.
The hangings across a door opposite him were drawn aside. Claire Van Arlen stood confronting him, her lips parted in amazement.
"You!" she protested breathlessly. "You!"
He answered with a little bow.
"Myself," he said quietly. "I must present my excuses for an ... intrusion which it was not within my power to prevent."
She held up her hand in protest.
"When you were wounded in our service!" she cried. "When you were doing your best for us!"
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "I am working, I shall go on working, for myself. I should like that to be clear."
She half turned away with a little startled motion and the ghost of a frown. Words trembled on her lips and were thrust back. She understood, and would have sought, at any other time, this opportunity to make things clear indeed, but ... the man was wounded ... serving her and hers. No, for the moment the opportunity must go by.
She held up the cord hangings and pointed into the room behind her.
"At any rate you must not stand, and I am extremely culpable to permit your mutiny against your doctor's orders. Why have you got up?"
He strode slowly after her into the shadowed room. He sat down upon the wicker chair which she indicated. His eyes sought hers, keenly and very directly.
"You have no news?" he asked. "Nothing out of Spain, or from the coast?"
Her eyes clouded.
"None, or next to none. The signal station at Spartel saw a lateen working her sweeps in the distance at dawn. There was a glassy calm inshore, but occasional and uncertain breezes out of the shelter of the land. She was making as if for Cadiz, but half an hour later, just as the haze covered her, a strong wind rose from the northwest and it is doubtful if she could have beaten up against it. In which case she probably stood down the coast."
Her voice was apathetic and a little weary. Her glance avoided his.
He gave a little nod as she finished.
"Yes," he said. "He has taken the first trick—Landon. And I have been no help to you but a hindrance. It was I who helped him last night—I, with my impulsiveness. There you have a right ... to suspect me."
She made a quick, restless movement.
"Suspect you!" she cried. "You!"
"Yes," he said slowly. "That day in the town, and on the pier, at the Tent Club meeting, even—was not that in your mind?"
His voice was not reproachful, merely inquiring.
She flushed.
"The first time I suspected every one," she answered. "The second time I discovered, suddenly and unexpectedly, your name."
He nodded.
"And now?" he questioned. "And now?"
"Now?" she repeated. "Have you not given me my proofs?"
"Have I?" His voice was eager. "I can reckon that barrier down then? The taint of the name is cleared away? I start with no handicap of prejudice?"
Again the form of words half bewildered, half exasperated her. Start? Start whither, in what race, to what goal? And were there barriers to be won, too? Between him and—what?
Her instinct gave her the answer as it had done the day before. But she shrank from the acknowledgment, even to herself. The thought was too monstrous. An Aylmer and—and that! The blood rushed to her forehead on the tide of her resentment. And then as suddenly ebbed. After all, was it not the name alone which sent that surging throb of repulsion through her veins? Supposing she had met this man, in ignorance. She started again. Had she not so met him, at first? She cudgelled her brains in reflection. How did she regard him that morning at the Tent Club, before she knew? Had he not seemed a personable, even a gallant and courageous soldier, worthy of a woman's regard? She looked at him suddenly, curiously, with a sort of speculation in her eyes.
And he met the glance quietly, watchfully, and—so she told herself with a recurrent thrill of exasperation—relentlessly as well. It was as if he was forcing her to be won from prejudice to impartiality. As if he willed her into just thinking against herself. A tiny spasm of fear pulsed through her. In a clash of purpose who would win, she or this man?
She made him a gesture which had about it the sense of appeal.
"One cannot dismiss prejudices; one can fight them," she faltered.
"Ah!"
He sighed, not with weariness, but with a sort of patience, with restraint. "I think perhaps women do not accept mere justice as a plea so easily as men," he debated. "So I must not presume on that footing. I have still to win my way from ... dislike?"
"No!" she cried sharply. "No! I can be just to what you have done. What you are—that I have yet to learn, have I not?"
He smiled a little bitterly.
"I am an Aylmer. That is the lesson you have got by heart. I ask you to begin by unlearning."
She caught her breath a little quickly. Then she gave a decided little nod.
"Very well," she answered. "I—I will forget everything but the fact that you saved the boy once and that you—"
"Will do it again," said Aylmer. "That is a bargain?"
Again she hesitated over the form of words. A bargain? What was her side of the contract. If he fulfilled the purpose of which he spoke so confidently, what did it mean, from her point of view? She avoided the issue.
"You will find the child, you will bring him back?" she wondered.
"Of course!" He sat very erect in his chair. He smiled confidently. "In a fight between a rogue and honest men, the honest men win ultimately, and always. The green bay tree of the unrighteous grows with luxuriance but withers in time inevitably. I shall follow him till I win."
"And your career?" she asked incredulously. "Your profession?"
He smiled.
"That will be my career—to defeat Landon. Is it a reputable one for a gentleman?"
She made a motion of protest.
"But—but that is self-sacrifice, one which we couldn't accept. Why should you do this for us?"
He shook his head again.
"No," he said. "I must repeat it, I work for myself. I seek my own interest, and that, in the first place, is to make you just. I see but the one way to do it. I have to convince you that I am in earnest, have I not?"
Again that baffling allusion. In earnest in what? In defeating Landon, in attempting the rescue of the child? Surely he had proved that already. And yet how could she counter a point which she could not help allowing she now understood; how could she do it without the loss of dignity implied in an explanation? But it was grotesque. He had known her a bare week. He had met her on four occasions.
She looked up, met his eyes, and dropped her own. A tiny sense of panic overtook her. He sat there, indomitable. Suppose—suppose he ultimately made his purpose good. She made herself look at him again. He had, at any rate, good looks to recommend him. And courage and the respect of his fellows. But—again a wave of exasperation flowed over her mind. Oh, it was outrageous, unthinkable. An Aylmer—another Aylmer. Unconsciously her lips curved in a half sarcastic smile. Why, the very newspapers of the world would pile headline upon headline over such a fiasco. She stiffened with resentment, with a sense of being played with. Her voice was chill with a note of dignity outraged.
"I think the fact of your proposing to devote time and strength to the pursuit of—of your cousin is a very convincing one, Captain Aylmer," she answered. "The point is that we have no right to accept so much from you."
He smiled joyously.
"I shall always want to be giving, to you. Always, always. Please understand that. My service is to you, and so to myself. Try to think of me in that light, patiently."
And then a sort of desperation seized her. She probed her mind for a form of words which should give him no further loophole to persist in his veiled menaces, for she could call them no less, one that should seize a meaning out of his allusions and crush it with a directness which could not be misunderstood. Her eyes grew hard; she rose to her feet.
A step sounded in the hall, and the hangings were pushed aside. Her father stood before them.
He looked at Aylmer with amazed reproach. His face, already haggard with anxiety, took on new lines of concern.
"My dear sir!" he protested. "My dear sir!"
And Aylmer could not resist a smile. It was the form of protest which he had used at their former meeting to veil—what? Antipathy? And now? The words were full of genuine concern. He read no longer dislike in Mr. Van Arlen's glance. The elder man's eyes had softened as they reached his.
He warded off further reproaches with a question.
"The news?" he cried eagerly. "The news is what?"
"Good, in so far that we can gauge the direction of their flight. They have been seen passing Arzeila; the morning's gale has prevented their attempt to reach any port of Spain."
"And so—?"
"And so we start in pursuit with my yacht, within the hour."
Aylmer stood up.
"We?" he repeated. "We being—?"
Van Arlen looked mildly astonished.
"My daughter and I."
Aylmer held out his hand with a pleading gesture.
"You can't afford to despise my help," he said. "You must take me, too."
Van Arlen looked at Aylmer and then, questioningly, towards his daughter. She met his glance. Here at last was the opportunity to make things plain with a vengeance. They had but politely to decline.
Aylmer's voice forestalled her.
"To be impartial, that was your promise," he said. "We had not got far, but at least as far as that."
In spite of herself she turned and faced him. He met her glance steadily, confidently, expectant.
She gave a queer, half-exasperated little laugh.
"I think Captain Aylmer is a man who is easily refused nothing," she said, and passed quietly out of the room.
CHAPTER X
BY FAVOR OF THE FOG
"I do not like this!" piped a small and dejected voice. "I came to ride a black horse, not to be bumped in this vessel forgotten of God!"
In English these words would have sounded strangely from the lips of a child of six, but little John Aylmer was fluent in the Arab jargon of his grandfather's native household.
He was sitting disconsolate in the cockpit of the lateen Esmeralda. His company was Señor Emilio Albaceda, mariner and practical exponent of the tenets of an uncompromising Free Trade. From the uncovered hatch came the sound of wind whistling in the cordage and the swish and thud of the combers breaking past. Upon one of the narrow bunks which flanked the tiny cabin lay Landon, fast asleep. A guttering and extremely odoriferous lamp of vegetable oil was the sole illuminant. The prospects of comfort and entertainment in such surroundings were not those likely to appeal to a child accustomed to luxury and constant attention.
"Pazienza!" grunted the skipper, good-humoredly. "Black horses are not found upon the sea, though a friend of mine who prefers the running of contraband to the priesthood for which his parents destined him, read me once verses from a journal—true poetry in praise of a boot polish the name of which does not stay by me—where the waves of the Atlantic were likened unto stallions white-maned. I confess I thought the notion original."
The child stared at him meditatively.
"If horses are not to be found upon the sea and we seek horses, why do not we forsake the sea for the land?" There was a note of anticipation in the query which seemed to find this argument conclusive.
The smuggler grinned.
"Excellently argued, son of much intelligence," he answered. "Land is what we shall seek when this gale breathed from Jehannum permits us to do so in safety. For the moment we drive before it, there being no harbors on this coast within a thousand miles."
The child moved restlessly.
"Where then can we land?" he demanded.
"Where God and His Mother and the Holy Saints permit," said Señor Albaceda, suddenly reverting to lingua franca to clothe a piety of sentiment which the Moslem religion ignores. The One Allah's plans, being laid from the foundation of the world, are not susceptible to the influences of human appeal.
Little John made a grimace of hearty discontent and looked doubtfully at the sleeping form of his father. But for the moment distraction came from another quarter.
Two brown legs appeared in the opening of the hatch. As their owner lowered himself into the cabin, he disclosed the features of the man of the brown djelab—he who on Tangier pier had been sponsor for those fiery but phantom steeds which Fate had not allowed to materialize. The child received him with a shrill little shout of welcome.
"Muhammed!" he cried gladly. "Muhammed!"
The Moor placed his lean finger upon the yellow curls in a light caress, but his look was towards the berth where Landon could be seen stirring, aroused by his son's acclamation.
He slipped into a sitting posture in front of the tiny table and leaned upon it, his chin supported by his elbows, a look of expectancy tinged by humor in his eye.
"Well, my friends," he queried amiably, "our news is, what?"
The Moor gave a pessimistic shrug of the shoulder.
"Bad, Sidi," he said tersely. "We continue to drive westwards as before."
Landon shrugged his shoulders.
"We shall not see Cadiz to-morrow nor the day after," he said. "Well, the future is spacious. We have infinite leisure before us in which to beat back."
The captain grunted.
"Leisure we have in abundance, but not food nor yet water. We must put in somewhere before we attempt a feat which will take, at the best, three days and, if Chance so decides, perhaps a fortnight."
Landon's face was clouded with a sudden scowl.
"Food and water! Why have you not these in sufficiency? Your terms are extortionate enough as it is without the makeweight of starvation!"
"My terms," said Señor Albaceda, gruffly, "were all too cheap; what I learned in Tangier after I had come to an agreement with you was proof to me of that. But I am a man of honor; I keep bargains duly made. I contracted to set you ashore in Cadiz harbor—with a favorable wind a one night's work. I did not contract to feed three extra mouths through a voyage of weeks. When the wind moderates, I make for the nearest market, and you will buy your own provisions for our return. That is well understood."
"You mean to land on the African coast, not the European?" cried Landon.
"Where else?" said the skipper, drily. "Do you expect me to carry you on to the Azores?"
Landon looked questioningly at Muhammed. The Moor made a gesture of resignation.
"Mektub, it is written!" he answered fatalistically. "Azemmour, perchance, or Mazagan."
"And opposite each we shall find a French cruiser anchored," growled Landon, "with launches fussing about, and every craft which enters under suspicion of smuggling guns for the Chawia. And ten to one warning about us from Tangier sent down the coast."
"That would be a matter of time," said the Moor. "We have driven faster than horsemen could ride!"
"Horsemen!" Landon smote the table in his irritation. "These ships of war have apparatus by which they can communicate as if a cable linked them. If my father-in-law gets the right side of the commandant of the Tangier guardship—" He broke off with another shrug. "Well, to each day its appointed sorrow. The gale has not blown itself out yet."
"The event is with Allah!" said the Moor, gravely. He thrust his head up through the hatch and shouted to the steersman. A moment later he dropped back into the shelter of the cabin again.
"Your man Ibrahim is of opinion that the wind shows signs of abating. We passed Larache two hours back. The scud hides the shore, but he judges that we are not far from Sallee. If the surf permits, we may get anchorage and make a landing at Azemmour. If not, we must dare Casablanca or continue to Mazagan."
Señor Albaceda grunted pessimistically and climbed lumberingly on deck. Landon threw himself back on the berth again. The Moor looked down at the child with a whimsical expression of pity which changed to a benignant smile as the object of it raised his eyes to his.
"The Sidi Jan has not heard the marvellous tale of the Bashaw of Tripoli and the Afreets of El Mut?" he submitted. "If it is the Sidi's will, his servant will now take the opportunity of relating it to him?"
Little John Aylmer answered with an ecstatic chuckle of delight, and wriggled hurriedly into the encirclement of his friend's arm. Thus supported, he was able to defy the unsettling influence of the waves and give the whole of his attention to the taxing of the Moor's memory or, when this occasionally failed, his very competent imagination. The hours of the afternoon were passed agreeably; the difficulties of making a meal without the ordinary appliances of civilization provided a certain amount of diversion when night fell, and afterwards sleep was paramount. When the child woke he found the boat running slowly upon an even keel, and scrambling on deck was met by the view of a glassy swell surrounding her, but only visible to the extent of the few square yards which were enclosed in a veil of fog.
The skipper was at the wheel, and Ibrahim, the deck hand, and Muhammed were seated side by side in the bows. They did not peer into the fog—a hopeless task. They sat in a listening attitude, exchanging a brief word now and again.
"It is certainly the drumming of a ship's screw," decided the sailor, after a moment's silence. "It is going at half speed, behind us."
"Let us hope that Allah has not predestined us to be cut in twain," said his companion. "But from port, and very regularly, I hear the beat of breakers. The swell is rolling against a cliff."
"A shore, not a cliff," corrected the other. "If my dead reckoning is right within a score of miles, we are opposite a beach of sand."
Muhammed shook his head.
"Nay, listen to that thud. The crest of the comber meets something flat. It does not roll, in slowly dying foam, upon a strand."
Ibrahim shrugged his shoulders.
"In a fog we be all blind men," he said pessimistically. "Let us wait for the fulfilment of Allah's plan."
They glanced questioningly upwards. As is common in these west coast fogs, the blanket of vapor was thin. Now and again a faint hint of blue above their heads seemed to presage a lifting of the mist; occasionally, indeed, the sun was to be seen vaguely as a round yellow ball of light, streaked by the slowly drifting scud. But the gray walls on each side of them remained unbroken. At the same time the beat of the breakers was perceptibly near.
Señor Albaceda lifted his head from the hatch and invited the maledictions of innumerable Holy Men upon the weather. He was understood to confess that he did not undertake to gauge their position within a hundred miles.
"If Allah's mercy would send us an offshore wind!" aspired the pious Ibrahim, and lo! with the word came its sudden fulfilment. The fog was rent by a gust, to disclose, not a couple of cable lengths distant, what appeared to be a smooth and painted crag of gray.
The two Moors addressed fervent appeals to the One God. The Spaniard, impartially apostrophizing the tormented of Purgatory and the celestially blessed to hasten to his assistance, delivered himself of the opinion that Fate had closed her iron hand upon them. Where else could they be than within a mile of the sea bastions of Casablanca?
That, did they observe, was a cruiser—nay, possibly a battleship by whose watch they had been observed without a shadow of a doubt. As the fog closed in again, he descended to the cabin where he could be heard loudly bewailing the situation to his passenger, whom he appeared to hold responsible for this and for a fairly extensive list of other inconveniences. The captain of the lateen Esmeralda had obviously been warding off the chill influences of the fog by a liberal dose of aguardiente.
Landon lifted himself quickly to the deck. The mist was perceptibly lighter by now. A beam of sunlight pierced it from above and lit the Esmeralda's deck. The gray wall was still unbroken landward, but seaward it thinned, lifted, rolled this way and that, and finally disclosed a shining plain of blue. The central object in this, a couple of miles away, was a white, gleaming yacht.
Landon swore.
"The Morning Star—Van Arlen's boat, by God!" he cried. He made the helmsman a furious gesture. "Into the fog again!" he shouted. "Stick her nose into it, get out of this!"
"To beat out her timbers upon the harbor reef, or be swamped beneath the bows of a warship!" screamed the skipper from the hatch. "Never! Keep her in the light, son of accursed mothers! Do passengers who have been born of leprous parents give orders aboard this vessel, or I, Concepcion Albaceda, to whom the law rightly adjudges powers of life and death?"
He came lurching heavily aft, waving a case bottle by the neck to give emphasis to his commands. The bewildered Ibrahim stared at him owlishly.
The next moment he gave a cry of alarm. Landon had tripped the captain's unsteady feet, and, aided by Muhammed, had taken him forward and flung him into the cockpit. They closed the hatch, secured it, and came aft again. Imperiously Landon repeated his order.
The unfortunate sailor still hesitated. His compatriot took him firmly by the nape of the neck.
"Into the fog, child of indescribable unfaithfulness," he commanded, "or become immediately bait for sharks! Choose!"
The bewildered Ibrahim brought round the tiller with a jerk. Like a rabbit seeking its burrow, the lateen dived fogwards.
As the gray wall surged up to them again, they turned and stared seaward. Landon cursed loudly. The yacht was turning, too, straight towards them. At a word from his master, Muhammed got out the great sweeps and invited Ibrahim imperiously to join him in working them. Landon took the helm.
Two minutes later there was a crashing sound forward and the bowsprit splintered with a shock which made the little vessel shiver throughout its length. A muffled wail of wrath and despair followed from the depths of the cockpit.
The wall of gray was towering above them. Over the bulwarks of the R. F. Cruiser Diomède a lieutenant looked down and anathematized them with a versatility only acquired by a true son of the sea. Landon bowed, smiled, and in perfect French, asked the liberty of being permitted to come aboard.
The lieutenant, surprised beyond measure to hear the accents of the Faubourg from the decks of such an unpromising craft, hastened to forget the collision between the Esmeralda's bowsprit and the Diomède's paint, and directed his petitioner to find the companion ladder. A minute's groping in the fog, and Landon stood upon the cruiser's deck.
He bowed elaborately. The lieutenant returned the bow and motioned him towards the quarter-deck. The captain came forward to receive him, smiling amiably.
"I must be perfectly frank with you, Monsieur le Commandant," said Landon, returning the smile. "I come to beg assistance. My yacht is in harbor here, as you are possibly aware. No? The fog has hidden us; we came in last night. With my little son, I went ashore early this morning to leave a card on General d'Amade, to whom I have an introduction. I missed my own boat at the landing-place and was foolish enough to be persuaded to embark with these imbeciles below, of whom one is drunk and the other witless. I have already had an hour of monotonous adventure in the gloom; I am a little tired of being very reasonably cursed by master mariners whose vessels we have been ambitious enough to ram. It struck me that perchance you would be sending a boat ashore within the course of an hour or so, and might permit me to wait on deck and be a passenger in it. If so, my gratitude would be beyond words. It is not only for myself. My little son is delicate; I do not wish to expose him longer than is necessary to the chill of these vile vapors."
Commandant Rattier smiled again, expressed his pleasure in being able to offer assistance to any Englishman—he himself was united to that nation by ties of blood. He would order away his launch immediately. In the meantime une limonade Ecossaise would combat the effect of chill and mist. Monsieur would descend to the cabin, would accept some small refreshment?
Monsieur overflowed with thanks. He would dismiss the villains who had led him into such a coil, and then hold himself at M. le Commandant's service.
He leaned over and gave his orders. Muhammed turned to Ibrahim.
"Remove yourself and your master, oh, son of dirt, from these surroundings with the utmost speed, or I have the promise of the captain of this warship that he will send you in chains ashore to answer for your crime in wilfully colliding with his vessel. Your bowsprit? What have I to do with the results of your own vile seamanship? Have haste or Allah alone knows what will betide from the mouth of one of these guns."
He gathered the child up into his arms and stalked with dignity up the companion.
Ten minutes later a launch fussed away from the side of the Diomède. The commandant waved his handkerchief gaily in farewell to his small guest, who, from the encirclement of his father's arm, waved as gaily back. Half a hundred matelots grinned affably at him as they paused in their toil at cabin lights and brass-work. Landon saluted punctiliously and Muhammed's brown eyes expressed a grave approval of his entertainment. The launch's prow was thrust into the gloom.
Another gust sang lazily from the shore and the desert and shivered the fog. The patches of blue joined, grew wider, opened a triumphal arch for the descending sunbeams' entrance. A little more than a mile away the walls of the sea bastions shone white. The launch's speed increased.
Before they reached the quayside the last wisp of vapor had disappeared. Land and sea were swathed in sun. Landon gave a little cackle of amusement and pointed behind him.
"My yacht!" he cried gaily. "My over-anxious master has weighed anchor in pursuit of me. Word must have reached him of my having allowed myself to be persuaded into that vile lateen."
The sub-lieutenant in charge swerved the tiller.
"Let me take you straight to her," he said. "Let me signal her!"
Landon appeared to consider.
"Thanks, a thousand times," he said, "but a small matter of victualling which I promised my steward to deal with has just recurred to my mind. I will see to it and then signal for my own boat. After all, too, I might see a little of the town, now we have the sunshine to illuminate it. A couple of hours ago it was London in November, with a few additional smells!"
The lieutenant laughed and turned the prow towards the shore again. He cast another look over his shoulder.
"Is it possible that your master has information of, or suspects, that very lateen? It appears to me that he is chasing it!"
Landon faced seaward and observed the yacht keenly.
He laughed with great enjoyment.
"He is a character, that skipper of mine," he said. "He is as likely as not to sink the unfortunate boat if he does not find me on board or get a reasonable account of me. I shall have to smooth matters down with a dollar or two."
A minute later the launch slowed up against the little quay. The three passengers stepped ashore, Landon full of compliments and thanks. Still waving adieu, he, Muhammed, and the child paced contentedly off into the town. The lieutenant turned seaward again.
A slightly bewildered frown clouded his face as he approached the Diomède. The yacht had anchored with the lateen alongside her, and a boat was pulling from her towards the warship. The lieutenant considered that for yachtsmen he had never seen a boat's crew pull faster.