“Command it?” echoed Sakr-el-Bahr. “’Twas proposed to thee?” And he laughed lightly as if to dismiss that suggestion.
That laugh was a tactical error. It spurred Asad. He advanced slowly along the vessel’s waist-deck to the mainmast—for she was rigged with main and foremasts. There he halted again to look into the face of Sakr-el-Bahr who stepped along beside him.
“Why didst thou laugh?” he questioned shortly.
“Why? At the folly of such a proposal,” said Sakr-el-Bahr in haste, too much in haste to seek a diplomatic answer.
Darker grew the Basha’s frown. “Folly?” quoth he. “Wherein lies the folly?”
Sakr-el-Bahr made haste to cover his mistake. “In the suggestion that such poor quarry as waits us should be worthy thine endeavour, should warrant the Lion of the Faith to unsheathe his mighty claws. Thou,” he continued with ringing scorn, “thou the inspirer of a hundred glorious fights in which whole fleets have been engaged, to take the seas upon so trivial an errand—one galeasse to swoop upon a single galley of Spain! It were unworthy thy great name, beneath the dignity of thy valour!” and by a gesture he contemptuously dismissed the subject.
But Asad continued to ponder him with cold eyes, his face inscrutable. “Why, here’s a change since yesterday!” he said.
“A change, my lord?”
“But yesterday in the market-place thyself didst urge me to join this expedition and to command it,” Asad reminded him, speaking with deliberate emphasis. “Thyself invoked the memory of the days that are gone, when, scimitar in hand, we charged side by side aboard the infidel, and thou didst beseech me to engage again beside thee. And now....” He spread his hands, anger gathered in his eyes. “Whence this change?” he demanded sternly.
Sakr-el-Bahr hesitated, caught in his own toils. He looked away from Asad a moment; he had a glimpse of the handsome flushed face of Marzak at his father’s elbow, of Biskaine, Tsamanni, and the others all staring at him in amazement, and even of some grimy sunburned faces from the rowers’ bench on his left that were looking on with dull curiosity.