"Poor lady!" she thought, almost in tears herself. "I would not have her know I heard for anything. What can make her so unhappy? She seems to have no friends, no country. I do not believe it is pride, either, nor any feeling of rank and exclusiveness that keeps her so shut in, else why should she be so pleasant to me? It is some great misery, I'm sure. God help, and pity her!"
CHAPTER VIII.
NIGHTMARE AND GOSSIP.
I think it must have been half nightmare, or perhaps too much frozen pudding at dinner, after the long warm tramp up Gibraltar's steep sides; at any rate it all happened just as I tell you. Hope retired somewhat earlier than the rest, leaving Faith in the saloon, where the passengers were enjoying an impromptu concert given by a Romany man and his two daughters, who had come on board at Gibraltar to exhibit their skill with mandolin, tambourine, voice, and guitar.
It grew a bit monotonous and shrill, after the novelty wore off, and as Hope had become interested in a book some one had lent her, which told about the old pirates of Algiers and their traffic in Christian slaves, she stole away to her stateroom, slipped into a loose gown, and turning on the electric light at her bedhead, settled down for an enjoyable evening.
It proved to be a blood-curdling narrative, filled with the accounts of helpless crews butchered by pirates and their passengers, men, women, and children carried off in chains, to be sold as slaves in the wicked old Algerian city. Yet, though so thrilling, she was very tired, and in time it was difficult to keep her place and realize just what it was all about. Half mechanically, at last, she turned off the light and lay back on her pillow where, in less time than it takes to tell it, she was sound asleep. Still, however, the pirates of her book mingled with her dreams, which were so horrible she struggled into wakefulness—to find herself drenched with perspiration while shivering with horror. Anxious for companionship to counteract the effect of these evil visions, she reached out an arm to the other little bed and whispered, "Faith!"
With a shock she discovered that the bed was smooth and empty; it had not been occupied. At the same instant she became aware of whispering voices just without the porthole above her bed, and a sentence or two proved they were not English-speaking voices, either, but those of orientals, of whom, as you know, there were many on shipboard. At first she could not understand a word, they spoke so low and rapidly, but presently she heard with clearness the sentence,
"But ee mus' be kill eef she do care! It can no be help, now."
Then more whispers, and then again, distinctly, one urging the other to attend to the matter at once, the quicker the better, "foh eet gotta be," and a word or two about the "Capitan Sahib," which she could not catch.
But, in her abnormal, excited state, she had heard enough. Trembling from the tragedies of sleep, she thought she had fallen into the greater ones of reality. These men were going to kill somebody—and "she" was to feel dreadfully about it. It must be that the "Capitan Sahib" was to fall a victim to their mutinous designs!