"My shot brought down one of the bandits, and the other rushed towards me. He had brought down his victim, and he wanted to get rid of me so that he could go through his pockets. I fired at him, and he dropped the long knife with which he was going to stick me on the pavement. There it is over the window;" and the captain pointed to it. "He was wounded; and then he ran away, for he did not like to play with a revolver. Before I could get to him, the other assassin got on his feet and followed him, though he moved with no little labor and pain; but my business was not with him, and I let him go.
"The man who had been attacked was trying to get on his feet, and when I came up to him I found it was General Noury. He had been stabbed in the shoulder, and he was bleeding very freely. With my assistance he walked to my boat, and my men placed him in the stern-sheets. I found that he was bleeding badly, and I was no surgeon. The Hotel Vittorio was on the other side of the street, and some one there could tell me in English where to find a doctor.
"Two gentlemen at the door were smoking. They were talking in English, and I told them what I wanted. They were both Americans, and one of them was a doctor. He volunteered to go with me. He said the patient had a bad wound. He went back to the hotel for his case of instruments, and then went on board of the Viking with his patient. It would make your dinner very late if I should give you all the details of the general's case. Dr. Henderson stopped the flow of blood, and attended to his patient for three weeks on board of the steam-yacht.
"When he was in condition to be moved to the Fatty, he did not wish to go. My wife had nursed him as she would have nursed her own brother, and as she had her uncle in Cuba. When he was convalescent he treated her with the most profound respect. Mazagan came on board to see him, and told me he had just come from Athens. But the general was plainly disgusted with him, and wanted to get rid of him. He gave him the command of the Fatty, and ordered him to wait for him at Gibraltar.
"Dr. Henderson was travelling for pleasure, and he liked it so well that he wanted more of it; but he had spent all his money, and had no more at home. He came on board of the Viking, and lived there. His friend had left, and he was alone. He had been a very skilful practitioner in New York City, but his thirst for travel would not permit him to wait long enough to save sufficient money from his abundant income.
"Of his own free will and accord General Noury told me that he was leading a miserable life in spite of the wealth that he possessed, the honors that crowned him in Morocco, and the leisure that was always at his command when the army was not in the field. As he summed it up himself, his vices had got the better of him. He could not respect himself. I could see that there was something left of him. I went to work on him. I am not an evangelist myself, and I did not take him on that tack.
"I have no doubt that I had saved his life; and no man was ever more grateful for the service I had rendered him. My wife was such a houri as he had never seen in a harem. We both talked with him about the beauty of a good and useful life. In a word, we redeemed him. My wife is a sincere Christian, and she did more of it than I did. He was absolutely penitent over his sins, his dissipation, the wrongs towards others he had committed, though he was still a Mohammedan; but a great deal of the prophet's creed would pass for Christianity. We both saw that it would be useless to attack his religion; for he was a Moslem to the marrow of his bones.
"More than anything else he was penitent over his relations with you and your party. The general was certainly infatuated over the beauty of Miss Blanche; but it was as an artist runs mad over a picture. He solemnly assured me he never had an unworthy thought in regard to her. He looked upon her as a beautiful child, whose image haunted him day and night. If you had permitted him to see her, that was all he wanted. No such thought had ever entered his head as that of putting her in his harem, even if he had succeeded through his agents in capturing her; though he was urged forward to this by the insults you heaped upon him.
"I mean that you spoke the truth to him, nothing more, as I did. He desires to beg your forgiveness, and he would cross the Atlantic for the purpose of doing so. We stayed at Messina three weeks, and at the end of that time General Noury was quite well again. He gave Dr. Henderson a hundred thousand francs, and wanted me to take five times that amount; but I positively refused to take a cent from him. To shorten up the story, we became fast friends, including my wife. He had sent the Fatty off, and I invited him to remain on board of the Viking. He was in a hurry to get to Gibraltar; and I soon found that he had a reason for going there.
"He told me that the Fatty was old and slow, and more than a year before he had ordered the finest steam-yacht that could be built; and the Blanche was the result of the order. He named her after the highest ideal he had ever been able to obtain of human loveliness; but he had written this letter from Madeira, before he had had any trouble with you. Ruth and I were ready to go to England by this time, and we conveyed the general to Gibraltar. He had received a letter from his English agent informing him that the Blanche was finished.