Part 18 (2/2)

”No doubt,” said Sakr-el-Bahr, scarce heeding his to look upon Penarrow

”Why, then, my lord, shall I take fifty True-Believers and make a raid upon them? It were an easy task, all unsuspicious as they must be of our presence”

Sakr-el-Bahr cas ”Othmani,” said he, ”art a fool, the very father of fools, else wouldst thou have come to know by now that those who once were of , are sacred to me Here we take no slave but these we have

On, then, in the name of Allah!”

But Othe across these unknown seas into this far heathen land to be rewarded by no more than just these two captives? Is that a raid worthy of Sakr-el-Bahr?”

”Leave Sakr-el-Bahr to judge,” was the curt answer

”But reflect, e How shall our Basha, the glorious Asad-ed-Din, welcome thy return with such poor spoils as these? What questions will he set thee, and what account shalt thou render hi imperilled the lives of all these True-Believers upon the seas for so little profit?”

”He shall ask me what he pleases, and I shall anshat I please and as Allah prompts me On, I say!”

And on they went, Sakr-el-Bahr conscious now of little but the war not, so tumultuous were his eained the beach; they reached the shi+p whose very presence had continued unsuspected The breeze was fresh and they stood away at once

By sunrise there was no n of them than there had been at sunset, there was no more clue to the way they had taken than to the way they had coht upon that Cornish coast, and but for the e, but for the absence of Rosa must have been accounted no more than a dream of those feho had witnessed it

Aboard the carack, Sakr-el-Bahr bestowed Rosa the precaution to lock the door that led to the stern-gallery Lionel he ordered to be dropped into a dark hole under the hatchway, there to lie and meditate upon the retribution that had overtaken him until such time as his brother should have determined upon his fate--for this was a ade was still undecided

Hiht of s, which plays soh it is probable that it played but a slight one in his thoughts, was begotten of the words Othmani had used What, indeed, would be Asad's welcoof the lives of two hundred True-Believers than just those two captives whom he intended, moreover, to retain for himself? What capital would not be iers and by Asad's Sicilian ho hated him with all the bitterness of a hatred that had its roots in the fertile soil of jealousy?

Thisand desperate enterprise which Destiny sent his way in the shape of a tall-ave chase, for all that he was full conscious that the battle he invited was one of which his corsairs had no experience, and one upon which they must have hesitated to venture with another leader than himself But the star of Sakr-el-Bahr was a star that never led to aught but victory, and their belief in him, the very javelin of Allah, overca the, unfareat detail by h But it differs in no great particular frohts, and it is none of h to say that it was stern and fierce, entailing great loss to both co the quality of his rapple He prevailed of course as he must ever pre-vail by the very force of his personality and the ht of his example He was the first to leap aboard the Dutchreat sci his name and that of Allah in a breath

Such was ever his fury in an engagement that it infected and inspired his followers It did so now, and the shrewd Dutchmen came to perceive that this heathen horde was as a body to which he supplied the brain and soul They attacked hi him down, convinced almost by instinct that were he felled the victory would easily be theirs And in the end they succeeded A Dutch pike broke some links of his mail and dealt him a flesh wound which went unheeded by him in his fury; a Dutch rapier found the breach thus h it to stretch hi as full as did they that if he succumbed then all was lost Armed noith a short axe which he had found under his hand when he went down, he hacked a way to the bulwarks, set his back against the tihastly of face, spattered with the blood of his wound he urged on his men until the victory was theirs--and this was fortunately soon And then, as if he had been sustained by no more than the very force of his will, he sank down in a heap aainst the vessel's bulwarks

Grief-stricken his corsairs bore him back aboard the carack Were he to die then was their victory a barren one indeed They laid him on a couch prepared for hi was least discoeon carievous one, but not so grievous as to close the gates of hope

This pronounceave the corsairs all the assurance they required It could not be that the Gardener could already pluck so fragrant a fruit froarden The Pitiful lory of Islam

Yet they were come to the straits of Gibraltar before his fever abated and he recovered complete consciousness, to learn of the final issue of that hazardous fight into which he had led those children of the Prophet

The Dutch in their wake, with Ali and so ever in the wake of the carack which continued to be navigated by the Nasrani dog, Jasper Leigh When Sakr-el-Bahr learnt the value of the capture, when he was informed that in addition to a hundred able-bodied men under the hatches, to be sold as slaves in the sok-el-Abeed, there was a cargo of gold and silver, pearls, aeous silken fabrics, rich beyond anything that had ever been seen upon the seas at any one time, he felt that the blood he had shed had not been wasted

Let hiiers with these two shi+ps both captured in the naosy so richly fraught, a floating treasure-house, and he need have little fear of what his eneainst hi his two English captives, to be infore of them, and that he had continued the treatment meted out to theht aboard

He was satisfied, and fell into a gentle healing sleep, whilst, on the decks above, his followers rendered thanks to Allah the Pitying the Pitiful, the Master of the Day of Judg