“Come up,” he said. And when the fellow stood before him on the poop—“I have told you already that here is no Sir Oliver. I am Oliver-Reis or Sakr-el-Bahr, as you please, one of the Faithful of the Prophet’s House. And now what is your will?”
“Have I not served you faithfully and well?” quoth Captain Leigh.
“Who has denied it?”
“None. But neither has any acknowledged it. When you lay wounded below it had been an easy thing for me to ha’ played the traitor. I might ha’ sailed these ships into the mouth of Tagus. I might so by God!”
“You’ld have been carved in pieces on the spot,” said Sakr-el-Bahr.
“I might have hugged the land and run the risk of capture and then claimed my liberation from captivity.”
“And found yourself back on the galleys of his Catholic Majesty. But there! I grant that you have dealt loyally by me. You have kept your part of the bond. I shall keep mine, never doubt it.”
“I do not. But your part of the bond was to send me home again.”
“Well?”
“The hell of it is that I know not where to find a home, I know not where home may be after all these years. If ye send me forth, I shall become a wanderer of no account.”