“Ah!” he cried, “Eenglish! One dam big fella! I haf wait you dis hour an’ fear you no come.”
Instantly, though it meant the loss of a good anchor and length of rope, the cable was slipped, a sail or two shaken out, and yards were squared. The ship got some way on her and began to move. In the ghostly light the Sparta looked like a great bird asleep on the dim waste of waters. Soon her outlines faded and were lost in the gloom. As the sails filled and more canvas was spread the Sancta Trinidad showed her mettle and spurned the lively waves from her well tapered bows. The hills merged into the low-lying clouds, the lights ashore became smaller and smaller until they vanished altogether, the ship was well out to sea, and the two youths were saved, they hoped, from the devildoms of Spain.
They went to seek the captain, who greeted them again in the most friendly manner.
“No tank me,” he said, smiling until his teeth gleamed. “You tank Fra Pietro. Him good man. Him come my house an’ nurse my son when him sick wid plague. Por Dios! I do anytink for Fra Pietro!”
CHAPTER VI
“For her own person,
It beggared all description.”
Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra.”
The road from Delhi, as it neared Agra, wound through a suburb of walled gardens. Between occasional gaps in the crumbling masonry, or when the lofty gates happened to be left open, the passer-by caught glimpses of green lawns bordered with flowers and shaded by leafy mango-trees. Diving into a ravine scarred with dry water-courses, the road passed a Hindu shrine and a Mahomedan tomb. On the opposing crest it cut a cluster of hovels in twain; thence it ran by the side of a long, low caravansary, and finally vanished, like a stream suddenly emboweled in the earth, within the dark portals of the Delhi Gate of the chief Mogul city.
Two Europeans, mounted on sturdy cobs of the famed Waziri breed, drew rein at the entrance to the caravansary. One of them held up an authoritative hand to the sumpter train which followed.