The captain made no answer; there was a singing in his ears, and a sudden and terrible thought was working. His hand was on the hilt of his dagger, a spring, a blow, and di Lippo would be gone. And no one would know. But the cavaliere went on, unheeding his silence.
"You are playing false, Moratti. You are playing for your own hand with my hundred crowns. You think your ship has come home. Fool! Did you imagine I would allow this? But I still give you a chance. Either do my business to-night--the way is open--or to-morrow you are laid by the heels as a thief and a bravo. What will your Felicità----"
"Dog--speak her name again, and you die!" Moratti struck him across the face with his open palm, and Michele di Lippo reeled back a pace, his face as white as snow. It was only a pace, however, for he recovered himself at once, and sprung at Moratti like a wild-cat. The two closed. They spoke no word, and nothing could be heard but their laboured breath as they gripped together. Their daggers were in their hands; but each man knew this, and had grasped the wrist of the other. Moratti was more powerful; but his illness had weakened him, and the long lean figure of Michele di Lippo was as strong as a wire rope. Under the quiet moon and the winter stars, they fought, until at last di Lippo was driven to the edge of the parapet, and in the moonlight he saw the meaning in Moratti's set face. With a superhuman effort, he wrenched his hand free, and the next moment his dagger had sunk to the hilt in the captain's side, and Moratti's grasp loosened, but only for an instant. He was mortally wounded, he knew. He was going to die; but it would not be alone. He pressed di Lippo to his breast. He lifted him from his feet, and forced him through an embrasure which yawned behind. Here, on its brink, the two figures swayed for an instant, and then the balcony was empty, and from the deep of the precipice two hundred feet below, there travelled upwards the sullen echo of a dull crash, and all was quiet again.
When the stars were paling, the long howl of a wolf rang out into the stillness. It reached Felicità in Count Ligo's Tower, and filled her with a nameless terror. "Guard him, dear saints," she prayed; "shield him from peril, and hold him safe."
[THE TREASURE OF SHAGUL]
It was past two o'clock, and Aladin, the elephant-driver, had gathered together his usual audience under the shade of the mango tree near the elephant-shed. Aladin was a noted story-teller; he had a long memory, and an exhaustless fund of anecdote. It was ten years since he had come from Nepaul with Moula Piari, the big she-elephant, and for ten years he had delighted the inhabitants of the canal-settlement at Dadupur with his tales. It was his practice to tell one story daily, never more than one; and his time for this relaxation was an hour or so after the midday meal, when he would sit on a pile of sal logs, under the mango tree, and his small audience, collecting round him in a semi-circle, would wait patiently until the oracle spoke. No one ever attempted to ask him to begin. Once Bullen, the water-carrier, the son of Bishen, after waiting in impatient expectation through ten long minutes of solemn silence, had suggested that it was time for Aladin to commence. At this the old man rose in wrath, and asking the water-carrier if he was his slave, smote him over the ear, and stalked off to the elephant-shed. For three days there was no story-telling, and Bullen, the son of Bishen, had a hard time of it with his fellows. Finally matters were adjusted; both Aladin and Bullen were persuaded by Gunga Din, the tall Burkundaz guard, to forget the past, and affairs went on in the old way. That was three years ago, but the lesson had not been forgotten. So although it happened on this April afternoon, that all the elephant-driver's old cronies were there,--Gunga Dino the Burkundaz, Dulaloo the white-haired Sikh messenger who had been orderly to Napier of Magdala, Piroo Ditta the telegraph-clerk, and Gobind Ram the canal-accountant, with a half-score others--yet not one of them ventured to disturb the silence of Aladin, as he sat, gravely stroking his beard, on the ant-eaten sal logs which had mouldered there for so many years. They were the remains of a wrecked raft that had come down in a July flood, and having been rescued from the water, were stacked under the mango tree for the owner to claim. No owner ever came, but they had served as food for the white ants, and as a bench for Aladin, for many a year. The afternoon was delicious; a soft breeze was blowing, and the leaves of the trees tinkled overhead. Above the muffled roar of the canal, pouring through the open sluices, came the clear bell-like notes of a blackbird, who piped joyously to himself from a snag that stood up, jagged and sharp, out of the clear waters of the Some. To the north the Khyarda and Kalessar Duns extended in long lines of yellow, brown, and grey, and above them rose the airy outlines of the lower Himalayas, while higher still, in the absolute blue of the sky, towered the white peaks of the eternal snows. Beeroo, the Sansi, saw the group under the mango tree as he crossed the canal-bridge, and hastened towards it. Beeroo was a member of a criminal tribe, a tribe of nomads who lived by hunting and stealing, who are to be found in every Indian fair as acrobats, jugglers, and fortune-tellers, or tramping painfully through the peninsula with a tame bear or performing monkeys. In short the Sansis are very similar to gipsies, if they are not, indeed, the parent stock from which our own "Egyptians" spring. Beeroo came up to the sitters, but as he was of low caste, or rather of no caste, he took up his position a little apart, leaning on a long knotted bamboo staff, his coal-black eyes glancing keenly around him. "It is Beeroo," said Dulaloo the Sikh, and with this greeting lapsed into silence. Aladin ceased stroking his henna-stained beard, and looked at the new-comer. "Ai, Beeroo! What news?"
"There is a tiger at Hathni Khoond, and I have marked him down. Is the Sahib here?"
"The Sahib sleeps now," replied Aladin; "it is the time for his noontide rest. He will awaken at four o'clock."
"I will see His Honour then," replied Beeroo, "and there will be a hunt to-morrow."