As I ascended the side, a strange-looking personage, clad in a light-blue uniform jacket minus tails, a pair of checked Tweed trousers, and wearing a cavalry helmet of unique form, appeared to welcome us. He was armed with a large sabre, and though his upper lip had been put on the war establishment, and wore a grisly moustache—and though the costume he had so hastily donned was partly the uniform of the South Pedlington Yeomanry, of which he was Lieutenant-Colonel, I had no difficulty in recognising the sleek round visage and well-curved paunch of old Sir Horace Everingham, all breathless and blown, and decidedly more 'out of sorts' than ever I had seen him, when toiling up my Highland hills at home.
'Never was aid more opportune, my dear sir,' said he; 'from whence have you come with your soldiers—from the clouds? Awful business this—but I expected it—I shall complain to our ambassador—those d——d ungrateful Greeks! I shall address the House on the subject—I will expose it in the "Times" newspaper—I will, sir, by Heaven!'
Close by the baronet stood his fidus Achates, the pale and affrighted Mr. Jeames Toodles, whom he had barbarously forced to remain on deck, and who, having no idea of how to handle any lethal weapon, had spread before him an immense gig umbrella, which loomed in his front like the shield of Achilles, and which he had successfully held between him and 'the dark Suliotes,' whom he believed to be nothing else than veritable Bashi Bozooks, of whom he had seen some appalling sketches in the 'Illustrated London News.'
Several of the fugitives, from among the dark foliage on shore, were now firing with their muskets and pistols, and had wounded some of us. We pulled vigorously towards the beach, and opened a random fire of musketry upon those lurkers in the jungle; but now there came a shrill cry from the deck of the yacht. I looked back, and for a moment saw the light dress of a lady flutter in the moonlight—and then there was a heavy splash in the water alongside, as she was flung overboard.
It was Fanny Clavering, who, impelled by an irresistible curiosity, had peeped on deck, and had at that instant been seized and tossed over the gunwale by the pirate who was concealed in the quarter-boat.
This pirate was Zahroun, the galiondgi, the wretch whom I had left in the Bagnio, but who had escaped from thence, heaven alone knows how (unless aided by Clavering's ring), to share in the horrors of this night attack, which he had so carefully and daringly projected.
In another moment we saw this brawny villain standing on the beach, with the light form of Fanny in his arms (but I knew not that the girl was Fanny then); and a sickly terror that she might be Laura palsied every thought and energy. At arms' length he held her up triumphantly above him, and uttered a cry of derision and defiance:
'Allah ho Ackbar!'—a cry, half-laugh, half-yell—as he opposed her light and drooping figure to the levelled muskets which we dared not discharge. I sprang into the water, with my claymore in one hand, and a loaded revolver, with a single barrel but having six chambers, in the other. Yet I could not fire a single shot for the same reason that withheld the truer aims of Belton and our soldiers, lest the ball might miss the vulture and hit the dove. Callum Dhu followed me close, with his rifle cocked; but as we advanced from the water, up the sandy and pebbled beach, Zahroun ran hurriedly inland, and while we pursued, once, twice—ay thrice, the dark wood was streaked with light, as pistols were fired from the jungle at us, but happily missed.
Now on a little plateau of rock, in the full blaze of the moonlight, the brawny and bandy-legged figure of Zahroun appeared against the sky in dark and strong outline. He grasped his captive by her hair with his left hand; she was on her knees beside him, and with his right arm held aloft, he flourished a long keen Turkish handjiar, which flashed with a blue gleam, for it is a weapon deadly as the creese of a Malay.
'Now, now, foster-brother!' cried I, to Callum Dhu, in Gaelic, 'by God's love and your mother's bones, fire true!'