“I do. Go on. I’ll tell you something when you have finished.”
“Well, the skipper fired at me. He was the worst of bad characters. They said he’d secured a big fortune after a few years, and that it was locked up in Consols in England. All I know, however, is that he was the most cold-blooded, heartless blackguard that I’ve ever met. Of course Chinese don’t count for much, but I’d be afraid to estimate how many he’d sent to kingdom come during our exciting cruises in Chinese waters. But that’s neither here nor there. We quarrelled, he and I. Having missed me, he at once decided on another plan of getting rid of me. We were just then hugging a long, broken, and unexplored coast line, therefore he stopped the vessel and ordered the crew to lower a boat and put me ashore, knowing too well the fate of a single unarmed man among the barbarous Moors. It was a fiendish revenge to maroon me, but I was helpless. That was the last time I saw Bennett—nearly ten years ago now.”
The man Usher paused for a few moments, the effort of such a long narrative having been too much for him.
“Well,” he continued, “I was put ashore without food or water on a sandy, desolate spot. The surf was so strong that we narrowly escaped being upset, but getting to land at last I discovered the mouth of a river, and pushed my way beside it for a good many miles. The river, I afterwards found, was called the Tensift, and I had landed in South Morocco. I need not describe all the adventures that happened to me, save that I was seized a week after landing and carried as a slave to Morocco city, where I was sold to a powerful sheik, who probably considered that it increased his social status to possess an English slave. I was taken across the deserts and over the Atlas to a place called Aksabi, and for several years was kindly treated although held in bondage. After some time, however, my master was ordered by the Sultan to raise an army against the Riff tribes on the Mediterranean coast, and I was, of course, enrolled as a man who knew something of war. Our expedition travelled first to Fez, where we were reviewed by the Sultan himself, and then we penetrated into the fertile mountain country held by the revolutionary Riffs. But disaster after disaster befell us in that unknown country, falling into ambushes almost every day, until with others I was taken prisoner, and passed from hand to hand until I became slave to one of the powerful Riff chiefs. All my companions had been massacred in cold blood, but being a European my life had been spared, probably because my captors expected they might hold me for ransom. As slave of a tyrannical barbarian, mine was a dog’s life. On any day or at any hour I knew not whether my capricious master might not order me to be put to the torture, bastinadoed, or shot, while the work in the broiling sun under a harsh negro taskmaster was so hard that it sapped my manhood. The Sheik Taiba, whose slave I was, defied the Sultan and lived in a mountain stronghold a few miles from the blue Mediterranean. Day after day I could see the open sea stretching away beyond. Ah! how I longed to be free to return to England. On one or two occasions I had been sent with other slaves (all negroes) to obtain stones from the seashore. On one occasion, at the mouth of the small river that flowed down the valley to the sea opposite the island of Alhucemas, there had been pointed out to me by one of my hapless companions, a decrepit old negro, the submerged hull of a ship lying about a quarter of a mile up from the sea, and only just covered by the clear, swift-flowing stream. It lay like this,” and taking a pencil and paper he drew a plan of its position.
“It was the Seahorse!” I said, quickly.
“Yes. It had been there for ages, a ship the like of which I had never before seen, but by standing upon the projecting rock above I could look down upon it. Many times I visited it, for the mystery of it attracted me. Among both Moors and negroes there was a strange legend that evil spirits were contained within, hence it was held in superstitious awe. When it rose to the surface there would, it was believed, emerge from it a terrible pestilence that would sweep the whole of the Riff tribes from the face of the earth. I, however, had no such fear. Many times I dived off the rock and examined the black old hull, finding that the projecting stern had become wedged beneath the overhanging ledge, and that this apparently kept it in its place. Through the windows I could see that the water had not entered, hence it occurred to me that some buoyancy might be left in it. For two whole years I held this theory, and it was strengthened by the fact that instead of lying heavily on the sandy bottom, the bows were raised a foot or two. I could see that it was a very ancient vessel, which in some remote period had drifted over the bar into the estuary, and had stranded there when the river was low. Then when the winter snows of the Atlas had melted, the flood had risen rapidly, the projecting rock had held down the stern of the old craft, and the waters had closed over her. The one thought that possessed me was that if that overhanging rock could be removed the hull might float again. With this object I waited in patience. From the traders at Tetuan the Riffs frequently purchased explosives which they used in their periodical fights against the forces of the Kaid Maclean and the Sultan. Hence, about two years afterwards, I found in the possession of the Sheik Taiba some strange-looking substance which, although the Moors were unaware of its potency, I knew to be dynamite. I managed to secure some of it, and a week later placed it in the great rift in the rock and in the middle of the night blew it up. The quantity I used must have been much more than necessary, for the rock was split, and the ledge, blown right off, fell into the water ten yards away from the vessel, while to my great delight the craft came up to the surface, the strangest-looking object I had ever seen afloat. I swam to it, and having broken out one of its windows crept into the cabin, the current carrying me slowly out to sea.
“The explosion had alarmed the Riffs, who poured down to the spot in hundreds, only to see the strange craft which they held in such dread actually floating down the stream. The sight of it filled them with terror, and they fled, attributing the explosion to a supernatural cause. My object, of course, was to escape from slavery, and in order not to attract the attention of my enemies, the Riffs, should they board me, I threw off my slave’s clothing, and finding in the cabin a pair of old Elizabethan breeches and a doublet, I donned them. The door communicating with the other part of the ship was secured so firmly that very soon I realized my position.
“Days passed, how many I cannot tell. I only knew that want of food and water—of which I had none—told upon me, as well as the punishment that had been inflicted upon me a month before my escape. For a trifling offence the Sheik Taiba had ordered my tongue to be cut out, a cruel mutilation common among the Moors. This had not actually been done, but so severely was my tongue injured by my inhuman captors that I was now unable to articulate a single word. What more can I tell you? Alone on that strange craft, hunger and thirst consumed me, my mind wandered, I grew worse, and eventually went stark mad and oblivious to everything. All I recollect is that I was placed in charge of Ben Harding, the man who acted as Bennett’s second mate on the Goldfinch—a broken-down gentleman who knew little about the sea, and whose previous career included a long term of imprisonment at Brisbane for being implicated in the murder of a mail-driver. But you said that you know Black Bennett,” he added, with anger flashing in his eyes. “He marooned me because he feared that I should tell the truth of poor Jansen’s murder when we got to Liverpool. Where is he to be found?”
CHAPTER XXXI
THE HOUSE AT KILBURN
Robert Usher returned with me to Chelsea and again took up his abode in Keppel Street.