The dawn was breaking before, confusedly, achingly, consciousness wavered back to him again—the same dawn which saw a Spanish steamer drop anchor in Tangier's roads and Landon, with a satisfied smile, swing down the ladder into the boat which was to take him ashore.
Aylmer looked up as Despard came into the room. A kit bag lay on the floor half full and Aylmer's man was packing it. Despard raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Going?" he asked quickly. "Where?"
"Tangier," said Aylmer. "To-night, by the Forwood boat."
Despard gave a little whistle.
"And the Commission?" he objected.
"I've had very special luck there," explained Aylmer. "Sir Arthur went down with influenza yesterday morning. So the Commission, instead of meeting this week as proposed, adjourns till the end of November."
He leaned down, gave a searching glance into the bag, and closed it.
"That will do, Sillery," he said to the servant. "I'll call if I want you."
As the man went out Despard dropped down upon the sofa. He sat and looked across at his companion with a glance which blended inquiry and concern.
"I've heard only rumors, so far," he remarked.
Aylmer made a little gesture towards the bookcase, which was still broken but empty.
"I came back unexpectedly last night. I had been discussing a point with the general at dinner and ran across to find a book to prove my contention. I found Landon here, ransacking the bookcase. One volume is gone. He took me unawares and knocked me out. I didn't come to for several hours."
Despard made an inarticulate exclamation of anger.
"And he escaped, out of Gibraltar?"
"By theMiramar, so the police declare. A Spanish tramp, going down the Moroquin coast and stopping first at Tangier."
"He's gone to kill two birds with one stone," said Despard. "And you are pursuing?"
"Naturally," said Aylmer, in a very matter-of-fact voice.
"And your leave home—Scotland—cub hunting?"
"That goes, of course. Possibly, if ten weeks is insufficient, my secretaryship goes. Perhaps, old chap, even my commission."
Despard got up with a startled jerk.
"What's that?" he cried fiercely. "What's that?"
Aylmer's hand made a deprecative motion.
"My duty's plain, isn't it?" he asked.
"No!" retorted Despard. "If these old women of Commissioners have no more sense than to direct you to keep important books in a simple bookcase in your quarters—"
"Oh, the book?" interrupted Aylmer, placidly. "Of course, there's the book."
Despard halted, hesitated, and looked at his friend with curiosity.
"You mean the contents of it? You can't help them getting known?"
Aylmer nodded.
"We must recognize the fact that they are known by whoever buys them, or whoever hired Landon to steal them."
"Then why worry; why pursue, why start on this wild-goose chase?" He pointed to the great bruise on Aylmer's forehead. "It's outrageous, with that on you. It's probably dangerous."
For a moment Aylmer was silent. He stood looking at Despard, and his eyes seemed to express a sort of speculative criticism.
"Landon is my cousin," he said at last, as if he put the keystone to an argumentative arch.
"What of it?"
For the second time Aylmer hesitated before he spoke.
"It seems to me," he said slowly, "that in this part of the world I am responsible for the good name which he is smirching. He has gone to Tangier—not only to save his skin. He has gone to commence a campaign of terrorization against the Van Arlens. Merely as an Aylmer I have to pit my hand against his, merely to clear our name and to do my duty. And there is more than that. Since Landon, for moral purposes, is dead, I consider that morally, and very possibly legally, I am the child's guardian. To keep my trust I have to safeguard the child from his father."
Despard tapped his fingers doubtfully upon the mantelpiece.
"And the Van Arlens?" he questioned.
There were tones in his voice which made Aylmer pause over his portmanteau.
"The Van Arlens? I am, of course, going to them direct."
Despard hesitated.
"You can't work with them," he said at last. "They won't accept your help."
A flicker of emotion, first of pain and then of purpose, gleamed in Aylmer's eyes.
"But they may need it," he answered. He looked at Despard searchingly.
"And why not?" he went on. "What have they against me except my name?"
"You don't know what it has come to mean to them, in eight years," said Despard, quietly.
And then a queer little silence fell between them, an interval which seemed charged with the electricity of emotion. Despard looked at Aylmer. His friend was staring in his direction, but with a meditative, impersonal gaze which seemed to glance through—not at—him. And a smile grew faintly about his lips, though these, indeed, were pressed firmly together.
He straightened his shoulders, he sighed.
"Of course I start handicapped," he allowed. "But I can run a waiting race." And then he gave an involuntary start and a quick, curious glance at his companion. "We aren't competitors?" he asked suddenly.
The crimson surged up under the tan on Despard's forehead. He laughed harshly.
"The race was run and I was beaten, nine years ago," he said. "There will be no other entry, for me." He walked up to Aylmer and laid his hand upon his shoulder.
"God knows, old chap, I wish you luck. But you carry weight, there's no denying that."
Aylmer nodded again.
"To carry weight one wants a stayer," he said. "And I can stay, Despard."
The other nodded.
"Yes," he said quietly. "You can stay. And as far as I know, the course is clear." His voice halted and stumbled queerly. "I ran straight, too, but I was fouled."
And with a grip of Aylmer's hand he went out, to lay the balm of hope against the unhealed wound fate had dealt him, nine long years before.
As twenty-four hours later Aylmer climbed the steps from the water's edge to the pierhead of Tangier, a red fez was doffed from a close-cropped skull and out of a little crowd of hotel touts a Moor saluted with a welcoming smile.
"A pleasant surprise, Sidi," he remarked affably. "There is no hunt abroad to-day."
Aylmer shook his head gravely.
"Not in thy meaning, Daoud," he answered. He moved closer to him. "A Spanish boat—theMiramarcame in at dawn?" he questioned.
The Moor hesitated and then turned to shout to a companion. The man answered with a laconic affirmative.
Daoud nodded.
"Yes, Sidi. She came in. As you see, she has gone again."
"Who landed from her?"
Again Absalaam put queries to the assembled loafers. They answered obscenely but with directness.
"A man came ashore with the captain and did not return with him," said the Moor. "Is this, then, an affair of importance?"
"I will give fifty dollars to him who brings me face to face with that man," said Aylmer, quietly. "Let your fellows know this."
Absalaam frowned ferociously and then laughed, a queer, high-pitched nasal laugh.
"My fellows!" He swept his hand towards the pier loafers witheringly. "Does the Sidi think that I am of this noble company of—of dogs and eaters of dirt?" He laughed again, cheerfully this time. "After all, I have given the Sidi every reason to believe it. But it is not so. My work in Tangier sends me strange companions, but I am not of them. And there is no need that these should debauch themselves with your fifty dollars, Sidi. I will see to this thing!"
Aylmer made a gesture of assent.
"As you will, so that the matter is done with speed. I stay at the Bristol. For the moment I visit the Villa Eulalia."
"You can spare yourself the heat and the mounting of the hill, Sidi. They of the villa set forth on an expedition to the lighthouse this morning."
Aylmer came to a halt, irresolute.
"This is not mere talk; you know it?"
The Moor looked at him with sombre eyes which, however, barely hid a twinkle.
"The lady, the little lord, and their attendants went; this I saw myself. Absalaam ibn Said, their dragoman, is my cousin. I spoke with him."
"The old man?"
Daoud's shrug conveyed the fact that he was sufficiently conversant with the customs of Nazrani to have neglected the movements of one who could surely not claim the attentions which were notoriously the due of his daughter.
"I did not concern myself to notice the old man, Sidi. If your business is with him, doubtless it is God's will that he awaits you."
He waved towards the town with a determined and energetic sweep of the hand.
"I go, to earn your dollars, Sidi. One hour may suffice me; perchance I must waste three or even four. But I shall find him, have no doubt of the matter. Have I your leave to depart?"
As they passed together under the shadow of the Marsa gate, Aylmer nodded and the next moment passed alone into the crowd. A side alley had swallowed Daoud as if by magic.
Aylmer joined the main stream of traffic which breasted up past the Mosque and the little Sôk towards the Gate of the Great Market, and so, past the hovels of the desert vagrants which cluster round the walls, to the Marshan and the European quarter outside the town.
A little apart from the cluster of Legations stood the Villa Eulalia, encircled with its tiny park. This, in its turn, was bounded by a high wall of plaster or dried mud. The entrance led under an archway by a porter's lodge.
A Moor in a spotless bournous appeared and made a grave gesture of obeisance as the visitor stood in the shadow of the porch.
Aylmer presented his card.
The man inspected it and pulled a cord. Some way off, inside the house, came the clang of a bell. Another man emerged, took the card which the porter handed him, and disappeared. All this time Aylmer still stood outside the gate.
Perhaps a certain irritation showed on his face, for the porter made a gesture of deprecation.
"If the Sidi would sit—?" He submitted courteously, indicating his own chair. "I do not know the Sidi," he added, with another tiny shrug, "or else—" His voice died away. He let it be inferred that circumstances, not his own desire, stood between the visitor and instant welcome.
Aylmer smiled.
"Strangers do not have the entrée?" he asked, as he seated himself.
The man bowed a grave affirmative.
"These are my orders, Sidi," he answered. "But if the Sidi comes again he will find that I have a good memory. I do not forget a face."
Aylmer nodded. "I hope to prove it, my friend," he said quietly, and then sat silent, reviewing his surroundings.
There is probably no more beautifully situated dwelling in Africa than this wide one-storied house upon the knoll which dominates the Marshan with Tangier at its feet. Beyond the clustered houses of the town lies the blue of the bay. Beyond that again the gray vagueness of Gibraltar, Cadiz, and the cork woods of Spain. On clear days, high, white, and mystical looms, above all, the snow of the Sierra.
Far to the east stands the ring of mountains which encircles Tetuan, and this, for many months of the year, has its own crown of white. Away to the west is the infinite emptiness of the Atlantic beyond Spartel, while southward, a barrier between the sea and the desert wastes, Sheshouan rears up its mighty crest. To whichever quarter the eye turns there is loveliness—loveliness both of color and of line. And the lucent clearness of the atmosphere emphasizes both. Sometimes the mist floats in and covers the seascape with a cloud of mystery, but it is seldom, save in the short time of the rains, that the landward view is anything but sun-swathed. And the sands which stretch between the river and the town walls seem to suck in his rays and render them back from their yellow richness when his face is obscured.
What nature has done for the distant views artifice has graven upon the immediate surroundings. Pipes laid down to the little River of the Jews, which babbles below the knoll, bring up water to irrigate the lawns which surround the verandahs. Nowhere in Tangier is there such a carpet of living green. The creepers climb the verandah posts and trail unrestrained upon the roof. Great white, red, and yellow flowers swing from pole to pole as the sea breeze freshens; trailing tendrils of vine and clematis nod through the open windows and mingle with the cords of the string curtains. And the plash of water adds to the sense of leisure and repose. A little fountain plays ceaselessly from the summit of a massed pyramid of rocks and rambles down into the grass between clustered ferns. In masses of six and seven the date palms fling shade from trunk to trunk.
Peace was the pervading element, Aylmer told himself, as he looked down the shady alleys and listened to the voice of the fountain, and yet peace, as facts went, was further from this abode than from the clangors of the market-place in the faction-riven town at their feet. This was no house of pleasure; it was a fortress, with the enemy ever at the gate.
The precautions of his own entrance were sign enough, but other things bore witness. A score of gardeners was not necessary to tend the two acres of pleasaunce, elaborately planned and kept though they were. There was no entrance save the one; two others had been solidly walled in. Bars were on the windows; massive bolts upon the inner wooden gate beyond the iron one.
Remembering to whom this debt of anxiety and watchfulness was due, Aylmer set his lips yet more grimly as he waited. Landon should pay to the uttermost, not only for the wrongs which he had heaped year by year upon his wife and her relations, but for the injury he had done to those of his own blood. Aylmer's eyes grew hard; his color rose angrily. He, John Aylmer, a reputable man, sat and waited admission to a house like a common mendicant, because Landon was a scoundrel. And beyond this, was there not more? Had he not had to endure a look of repulse, of loathing, from eyes—for the first time he confessed it, even to himself—which had become to him the very eyes of Fate. By God! Landon should pay bitterly for that!
A step upon the gravel scattered his reflections. He looked up. Mr. Van Arlen was coming towards him, his head bent to that courteous, suavely interested inclination which is a relic of the old school of politeness. No man under sixty has had the time, or the inclination, to practise these old-time graces.
Aylmer rose, and held out his hand. Mr. Van Arlen, with profuse gesticulations, insisted on personally bringing forward a couple of low deck chairs into the shadow of the palms. He waved his visitor to take a seat.
Aylmer bowed, but preferred, he said, to stand. There was a significance in his tone which did not escape, was, indeed, not meant to escape, his companion. The old gentleman gave him a keen and somewhat disquieted look.
"But I cannot sit if you do not," he protested. He gave the back of the chair a seductive little pat. "Let me persuade you," he pleaded anxiously.
"Mr. Van Arlen," said Aylmer, slowly, "I am not received here as a friend. I prefer, therefore, to give my message standing, as a matter of business."
The gray, furrowed face flushed.
"My dear sir!" protested the old man. "My dear sir!"
"You obviously evade my hand; you do not desire to ask me inside your house?" insisted Aylmer, quietly.
The other raised a hand which shook deprecatingly. But Aylmer forestalled his attempt at speech.
"You do these things, or rather you avoid doing them, without any personal cause of complaint against me, but because my name is what it is?"
Van Arlen's hand fell to his side. The pained remonstrative look faded from his eyes. His lips, which had quivered, grew suddenly set and were firmly pressed together. He seemed to increase in stature.
"Is not my reason good?" he cried sharply, as if some relentlessly passionate impulse mastered all restraint.
"No," said Aylmer, quietly, "though I grant your provocation has been ample. Let me tell you this. If there are any men breathing whose loathing of your son-in-law can equal your own, it is those who are tainted with his name. In the name of my kinsmen, a name all reputable till Landon smirched it, I tender you their sympathy and regret."
For a long instant the gray eyes beneath the grayer eyebrows searched Aylmer's face. Doubt, perplexity, and then finally a thrill of obvious relief passed across the waxen face. Aylmer's hand was taken; he was gently propelled towards a chair.
"I have suffered much; can I be forgiven?" said the old man wearily. "Can you make my excuses valid to yourself?"
"They were written, and the shame of our family with them, all too large in the press of two hemispheres," said Aylmer. "God knows I am not here to-day to bring anything more than such little reparation as is within my power."
"Reparation?" Van Arlen's tone was more than surprised; it was startled.
Aylmer nodded.
"I came to give you information of Landon's whereabouts. He is here in Tangier, Mr. Van Arlen. I came to put you on your guard, and at the same time to offer you my assistance."
Quickly, accurately, and in as few words as possible he outlined the events of the previous evening. Silently, but with growing anxiety, Mr. Van Arlen heard him to the end.
He rose, trembling a little, as Aylmer concluded.
"You will excuse me if I leave you to—to give some orders. The one outstanding fact in your story for me is that Landon is here, and that my daughter and the boy are on this expedition. They have their usual attendants, but—but—" He halted, stammering. "He—he may poise his all on one last attempt? He may get together a following which would overpower them?"
Aylmer looked at him debatingly.
"Yes," he allowed. "That is a possibility to be faced though I believe his resources are, or were, meagre. You will take more men and go and meet them?"
The old man made a gesture of apology.
"Yes," he said. "And, if you will pardon my curtness, at once."
"The sooner the better," agreed Aylmer, quietly, "as I hope to be allowed to accompany you?"
Van Arlen gave a little start, one that seemed to imply a doubt or a question. As if he replied to it, Aylmer gave a little nod.
"You must accept me as an ally, my dear sir," he said. "You have seen that I have a pressing need to meet Landon. I should like to do so in your company."
The other still hesitated.
"Why?" he asked.
"Because I would like to make the interview convincing—to you," said Aylmer. "Because I covet your friendship; because I want you and your family to revise their estimate of the name of Aylmer. Because," he paused and deliberated over his words for a moment, "because I want to be received by you at Villa Eulalia, inside."
Again the gray face flushed; again the hand was raised in deprecation. And then the bell in the porch rang furiously, and continued to ring till the porter emerged frowning from his lodge.
Aylmer heard the sound of blows and his own name repeated in fierce interrogation. He recognized the voice. It was Daoud who was shouting and endeavoring to gain entrance in the face of the porter's emphatic protests.
As Aylmer advanced to the bars, the tumult ceased.
"Sidi! Sidi!" cried the Moor. "Your man left by the Larache road three hours back. A company of ne'er-do-wells have taken a sudden impulse to visit Arzeila, or so they said. He joined himself to them, wearing native dress, and was accepted by them without comment. Surely there is something of strangeness and importance in this. I have run, I have sweated, to let you know!"
Van Arlen gave an exclamation of alarm.
"It is as I thought!" he cried. "The Arzeila road? That is a blind. They can make a cut across towards Spartel at any moment." He shouted towards one of the watching attendants; his voice seemed to gain new force as he issued his orders alertly. He faced Aylmer again. "It is a matter of speed," he exclaimed. "I must hasten—at the gallop."
Aylmer gave him a protesting look.
"Not I! We," he corrected.
For a moment the other still hesitated. Then a smile broke into being in his sombrely weary eyes.
"We, then," he agreed. "Even the gentleman who has sadly impaired the distinction of my porter, if you can guarantee him. We may need all the help we can get. Certainly we! God send we may be in time!"
The cavalcade of horsemen swept along a level plain of beach and from there turned aside to gain the broom-covered slope which led towards the cliff top. The white column of the lighthouse, which had been their guide heretofore, disappeared behind the shoulder of the ascent. It was no more than a couple of miles away. The riders spurred their horses up the steep, Aylmer and Van Arlen leading. The edge of their anxieties grew blunter as they neared their goal. They might be in time to meet and safeguard those they sought before they left the shelter of Spartel.
As they topped the rise and looked across the undulating stretch of green which lay before them, Daoud, riding behind Aylmer, gave a triumphant shout.
"La bas, alkumdullah!" he cried fervently. "No harm, thanks to God. The lady is even now coming towards us with her party unharmed."
Their eyes followed the direction of his finger. A great sigh of relief broke from Mr. Van Arlen's lips.
A party came slowly towards them, a couple of furlongs distant. Seven or eight were men mounted on barbs, and armed, in spite of prohibitions, with Remington rifles swung across their laps. In front of them, a couple of mules paced doggedly on, carrying two white-clad figures. At their bridles weredjelab-clothed youths, whose adjurations of their charges were audible even at that distance, so still was the evening air. Two or three dogs chased each other and supposititious partridges from tuft to tuft.
Van Arlen and Aylmer saw that they were seen, but not recognized. The muleteers halted and cried loudly to the guard. The horsemen looked up, whirled up their rifles with their right hands, and spurred to the front.
Daoud's bull voice stormed the cliff echoes.
"Absalaam—Absalaam ibn Said! Son of foolishness! It is I, Daoud, with Sid' Aylmer and thine employer!"
The rifle muzzles were lowered; the horsemen drew aside, and the two white-clad figures led again. A minute later Aylmer reined in his horse, and raised his helmet at Miss Van Arlen's side. Daoud, with a self-satisfied smile, was understood to explain that owing to his unparalleled management the expedition had resulted in an unprecedented success.
The girl's eyes were raised questioningly, first to her father's face, and then doubtfully, almost, indeed, unwillingly, to Aylmer's. She bowed to him coolly, not ungraciously, but with no effect of welcome. He sat silent, watching as she listened to the explanation which the elder man gave in a rapid undertone.
She made no comment till he finished, but at the first mention of Landon's name she unconsciously, as it seemed, edged her horse in a direction which took her away from Aylmer and closer to her small nephew, who sat on his gray donkey, staring at the newcomers with the frank astonishment of childhood. Aylmer noticed the movement. Was it instinctive maternal impulse which drew her to her charge when she heard that danger threatened him? Or was it antipathy for himself—the antipathy which long prejudice had given her for all who bore her brother-in-law's dishonored name? The shadow of doubt clouded his eyes, but his lips grew hard and resolute. Despard, if he had been there, would have recognized the symptoms. It was with that expression that Aylmer had led his guns into action on Colenso's already forgotten day of blood.
But as Mr. Van Arlen's narrative continued, the girl's features relaxed. She turned and for the second time looked at Aylmer, doubtfully, indeed, but with the doubt of one who reconsiders, whose verdict is shaken by appeal.
"Captain Aylmer has been at considerable trouble to warn us," she said.
Aylmer shook his head.
"No," he said quietly. "The warning I brought you was only part of my obvious duty. Surely you see that?"
There was a queer note of feeling below the restraint in his voice. She recognized it and interest grew in her glance. She looked at him keenly.
"After all, you have put yourself out to assist us in what is solely our own hazard," she protested. But there was something in her look which seemed to put the emphasis of her words awry. Was she hinting that he might have minded his own business, or was she pricking his sense of honor purposely, to judge him out of his own mouth.
"I thought of your hazard, truly enough," he answered slowly. "I was thinking, perhaps more earnestly, of my own and my family's reputation. You forget that if you and your father have a heavy reckoning against my cousin, his own kinsmen, whom I represent, consider that theirs is no lighter."
She considered him gravely.
"No," she answered quietly. "No, I did not get that point of view. I did not even believe it a possible one, amongst Aylmers. There I have to ask your forgiveness."
There was the hint of a smile lurking in her eyes, something that hinted that she exaggerated in saying this and knew it. But there was perfect seriousness in his reply.
"That is taken for granted. And my position in this matter is taken for granted, too?"
She looked at him questioningly again and then at her father. The latter smiled.
"Captain Aylmer has his own grudge against this child's father. He offers us his co-operation."
"And I ask for the friendly treatment of an ally," added Aylmer, quietly.
Her look was still doubtful and, unconsciously, perhaps, she frowned.
"Considering what we already owe you—" she began. He interrupted with a gesture.
"You owe me nothing," he said. "If you reckon profit and loss in your dealings with Aylmers, you have a wide balance against you. All I want is your friendly tolerance, while I pay in instalments."
She still seemed to ponder his proposal, to review it with the interest of a curiosity which has been imperfectly fed.
"What is your ultimate goal, then?" she asked.
He hesitated. A queer glint of passion shone in his eyes to sink into shadow again.
"My goal is the trapping of Landon into an English gaol, for espionage and robbery. Or—" He shrugged his shoulders meaningly.
"Or?"
"Or his death," he said, in very distinct, level tones.
"Ah!" The exclamation came from her almost unconsciously. Her face shone with a sudden alertness, her expression warmed, her eyes grew bright.
"You would not hesitate—at that?" she demanded.
Mr. Van Arlen made a little inarticulate murmur of protest; his hand was stretched towards her with appeal.
She disregarded it. Her eyes were fixed piercingly on Aylmer's face.
He met her glance with matter-of-factness.
"I should not hesitate, if need arose," he said.
She drew a long breath. Her features relaxed.
"Thank you," she said gravely. "Now I know where we stand. And then—that is all?"
This time it was his eyes which held hers with insistence, almost with menacing, she told herself.
"No," he said quietly. "That is—not all. But that, for the present, is enough."
For a moment her heart seemed to halt in its beat, the blood rushed to her face, the pulse of anger which leaped through her gave her a queer sense of choking. For she understood. Incredible, monstrous, as his purpose appeared in the light of her loathing of those who bore his name, she had not misread it. His words? They were possibly nebulous. But his eyes? No. No woman could misunderstand that look. Steadfast, patient, determined—the unswerving gaze of the pioneer who sees the unseen goal with the eye of faith, and sees it won.
She wheeled her mule with a fierce drag of the rein; her spur found its flank and forced it forward. She felt morally stunned by this—this insolence; mere words could not meet it. For the moment she felt herself deprived of weapons by the unexpectedness of the attack.
Her movement set the whole party in motion. Her father reined up to her side. She stole a half glance at his face. There was a queer, partly grim, partly puzzled expression on it, but she read, too, a glint of humor? Her exasperation rose. Her father, even? Had he gone over to the enemy; could she no longer reckon that his support would not crumble from resentment into laughter? Oh, this imperturbable Englishman should pay for this! If there was one shaft of gall left in her woman's armory, he should pay! The insolence of the man—the unparalleled insolence!
Behind her she heard his voice, addressed to Absalaam in trivial inquiry. She felt an overwhelming desire to forestall the answer with indignant words of bitter loathing. His impassibility excited her—the serenity with which he passed back, as it were, to little things after launching such a bomb. She gave a shiver of passion, or, perhaps, fear had its place in her emotion. There was something relentless in his attitude, something uncompromising.
Absalaam's answer was forestalled, but not by her. Little John Aylmer's voice rang out, shrill with the joy of discovery.
"The brown man!" he cried rapturously. "The brown man!"
The other John Aylmer looked up. A couple of men had come into sudden view round a corner of the track. A clump of Spanish broom had hidden their approach; they gave an exclamation of alarm as they met the glances of the riders not thirty yards away.
One Aylmer recognized at once. He was the man of the pier, the would-be kidnapper whose purpose he himself had frustrated at the moment of success.
The other man made a movement to cover his face with the hood of hisdjelab, but by some apparent unadroitness let it fall further back. And so revealed his identity.
It was Landon—brought to a sudden halt by surprise.
Through a pregnant instant of silence they confronted one another. Then Aylmer spurred forward with a shout.
"Don't let them escape!" he roared. "A hundred dollars to the man who takes him!"
The two fugitives turned and ran desperately down the path, seeking wildly for an opening in the surrounding jungle. Surprise and terror appeared to have dazed them, for they passed several avenues of escape heedlessly, made half-hearted attempts to turn, and still blundered on between the caging walls of green. Aylmer thundered behind them, drawing nearer with every stride. He leaned forward in the saddle; his arm reached out within a yard of Landon's flying draperies; he spurred fiercely into his horse's flanks.
The two men leaped right and left into the green thicket as divers leap into the blue. And in the same instant something rose out of the earth—something thin, snake-like, starting suddenly into being, as it were, from the concealing smother of the dust into a rigid line knee high. Aylmer's horse stumbled, shot forward, and went down heavily. His rider was flung far beyond him, moved spasmodically once, and then lay still. The squadron of charging horsemen were trapped in their turn. Not one escaped. The goad of Aylmer's bribe had sent every man of them charging in the wake of his leadership. The taut-held rope accounted for them all, or for all save one. Absalaam, a consummate horseman, reined in on the brink of disaster, rearing his stallion high into the air.
The road was an inferno of yelling men and blood-stained horses.
The few Moors who were not stunned and incapacitated by their fall had to endure the perils of half a hundred wildly struggling hoofs. Scarcely six out of the score who had thundered so carelessly after their easy quarry fought a way for themselves out of the mêlée unharmed.
And of those six there was not one who did not come to a sudden halt with uplifted fingers as they gained the open road. A revolver barrel was pointed at each man's breast.
Ten or a dozen men had emerged from the thicket. They used no words; their fingers, significantly pressed upon the triggers, were eloquent enough. Only one spoke—Landon, who strolled slowly and panting a little into the circle which the menace of his underlings had formed.
He halted opposite Claire Van Arlen.
"Eh, sister-in-law!" he chuckled smilingly.
Her face was white, but her hand, which gripped the reins, was steady. And her gaze burnt upon his face in loathing and contempt.
"Rather neat?" said Landon, amiably. "I plume myself. My resources were limited, you see. I may congratulate myself upon having used them to the very best advantage."
Still she was silent and still her eyes flung him their message of hate. He gave a pleasant little laugh. He made a significant jerk of the head in the direction of the chaos behind him.
"And the virtuous cousin," he said. "What a fall is there, is there not? A hundred dollars! He actually appraised my poor liberty so high!"
For a moment the expression in her glance changed as she turned it in the direction of the still struggling horses and their riders. He saw it and laughed again.
"You divide your anxieties," he said. "Let me relieve you of one!"
He stretched out his hand and laid it gently upon his son's shoulder. "Are you coming with your father—to ride the black horse upon the sands?" he asked.
The child looked at him debatingly. His face lit up at the question, and then shadowed again as he turned his glance upon the motionless white figure on the mule beside him.
"Auntie won't have it—and Selim," he deplored.
"Won't they?" said Landon, good-humoredly. "I think they will."
He stared up in the girl's face with insolent satisfaction.
"In fact," he went on, "they've got to. Vulgarly, my boy, they may not like it, so they must lump it."
He made a gesture of command.
"Come, my son!" he said, motioning him to dismount.
A tension broke. She lifted up her riding-whip and struck hard at him, struck with the concentrated strength of passion and despair. He leaped aside, but the end of the lash reached him and left a staring weal of red upon his cheek.
He cursed aloud; he made as if he would spring at her.
A warning cry came from behind him; half a dozen revolver shots rang out upon the evening air.
Absalaam, sitting stark upon his stallion, covered by the revolvers which encircled him, had struck his spurs against his horse's flank. The fire in the animal's blood had responded in a great leap forward. Landon wheeled round to see, towering above him, man and horse, looming gigantic against the glare of the sunset. Instinctively, automatically, he threw up the muzzle of his own revolver, and fired full at the Moor's broad chest.
The other bullets flew wide, but that one, so near was the human target, had no room to miss. Absalaam fell limply, heavily from the saddle, fell at his mistress's feet. The horse tore past a dozen restraining hands into liberty.
There was shouting, confusion, the rattle of other shots. And then the voice of the browndjelabedman thundered out high above the uproar.
"In God's name, Sidi, have haste. Four of them have fled into the thicket! God alone knows what help they may bring their fellows and how soon!"
And Landon, who had been flung to his knees in the dust, rose swiftly, without another word snatched his son from the saddle, and led the way into the jungle.
In five short minutes he had come, conquered, and gone. He had won every trick, every trick! Claire passed her hand across her brow as she stared at the huddle of wounded and—she shuddered in agony as the thought thrilled—perchance the dead! What lay within that ring of broken bodies—what? With white lips and fear-brimmed eyes she slipped from her saddle to see.
It seemed to Aylmer that the world into which he woke was one of stillness, of neutral tints, of intrinsic peace. There was a hint of sunshine diluted by the green hangings in front of the windows, but no more than a hint. There was a faint echo of the sound of falling water floating in with the light, but merely an echo. There was, in fact, but the slightest suggestion of life in his surroundings, and that came from the silently regular rise and fall of the bosom of the sleeping man who sat at his bedside. Aylmer blinked and stared in mild surprise, for the man was Daoud.
He moved restlessly under the sheets. Where was he? Into what unsought refuge had Fate flung him now?
His movement, slight as it was, aroused the Moor. With a little self-reproachful exclamation he stood up and leaned over the bed.
"Oh, Sidi!" he cried, "it rejoices my heart to read the light of understanding in your eyes."
Aylmer blinked again bewilderedly.
"Where am I and what do you here?" he asked.
"You are in Villa Eulalia, Sidi, and where should I be but in attendance on my lord?"
Astonishment lifted Aylmer into a weak attempt to rise. The Moor put a hand upon his shoulder and firmly pressed him back.
"Nay, Sidi," he said respectfully. "The German doctor lord expressly forbade that you should raise your head from the pillow till he had seen you again."
Aylmer began to feel as if his wits as well as his body had been bludgeoned. Circumstances seemed to have leaped freakishly beyond his recollection.
"I was brought here when?" he asked.
"Yesterday, Sidi. Your brain was sorely smitten inside your skull, or so I understood the man of medicines. For fifteen hours you have lain as one feigning death, though breathing. Now you have come into the right of your senses again. This the medicine man also prophesied."
The puzzled frown stayed on Aylmer's brow.
"And you?" he demanded. "And you?"
The Moor answered with a demure shrug of the shoulder.
"Your wounded brain has perchance forgotten, Sidi, that I entered your benign service on the morning of the day which saw you defeated by the treachery of that one whom we sought, you and I. My service has been constant ever since."
He met his victim's increasing frown with complacent assurance as he spoke. Surely everything, he seemed to imply, was in order. And as the situation became clear to Aylmer's growing intelligence, the frown became an exasperated smile.
"You have used my helplessness to impose yourself into this house as my body-servant," said Aylmer. "Oh, Daoud, you are of a deceitfulness beyond my unpractised powers of speech."
"Speech beyond the mere limits of necessity was strongly discountenanced by the German doctor lord," said Daoud, hastily. "Has the Sidi any further desires?"
"None, save for information. Speak thou! Give me the plain tale of all happenings since I fell into that trap upon the road. The man we sought—did he escape?"
The Moor nodded.
"He escaped victoriously, with all his following. He took also the child, the Sidi Jan, who, so they tell me, is the son of his house. They took themselves unmolested into the tangle of the broom, leaving of our company one dead—from the kick of a horse, Sidi—half a dozen senseless, yourself among them, Absalaam grievously wounded in the bosom, though like to recover, and all, save four or five, with bruises, broken limbs, or, at least, frayed and bleeding skin. So they fled, but Ali, of the Walad Said, who had been flung away from the hardness of the open track into the heart of the thicket, had taken no harm and followed them to the caves."
Aylmer gave a start.
"The caves?" he muttered weakly. "The caves?"
"The Sidi knows them well. The caves of Hercules beyond Spartel, where the millstone carvers ply their toil and where the Sidi and other Nazrani ride forth to eat and drink upon occasion when they entertain their friends."
Aylmer nodded. The caves of Hercules are the resort of many a picnic party from Tangier.
"Leaving them there, he hastened back with news. The Sidi Van Arlen, lord of this house, was by then recovered of the stunning which he, too, had suffered, and weak though he was immediately led forth another company to search the caves. And this they did unsuccessfully, Sidi, learning from one of the millstone workers, who had doubted of the integrity of these sons of dirt before they saw him, and who had therefore hidden himself and watched them unseen, that after a rest of three or four hours the men, taking with them the child, had passed down to the shore, had there awaited and been taken off by a boat which delivered them, so he conceived, to a lateen which he could descry in the moonlight about three furlongs out. And in that ship they have gone we know not whither."
Aylmer's fingers clenched and unclenched upon the coverlet. How thoroughly, how absolutely, they had been bested! But the account was rolling up. Ultimate defeat? His mind never even considered it. He merely put another item in the mental ledger from which Landon's account would one day be presented, and paid, in full.
"Let not the Sidi imagine that we have sat inactive while these sons of unchaste mothers triumph. I myself snatched a hasty hour from your bedside to enter the town and set certain ones agog for news. The Sidi Van Arlen hath telegraphed to Spain; every Guardia Civile along the coast has knowledge of how a reward of a thousand pesetas may be gained. By favor of the captain of the French warship all other ships of the French marine within three hundred miles have been warned to challenge unvouched-for boats. How this is done I am unable to say, but so it is. Watch upon the seas is therefore being kept. Now steam is being raised upon the white yacht in the bay, that when news comes it may be followed without delay. Lastly, a special mission has been sent by favor of the Bashaw from town to town along the coast as far as Dar-el-Baida. Thus have we set a wide net. Yet it has holes in it, Sidi, and holes are what these jackals are ever quick to seek."
With a sudden movement, Aylmer sat up. A frown and a gesture of command warded back Daoud's outstretched hand.
"Art thou my servant?" he cried, and the Moor spread out his palms in alert assent.
"Of a surety, Sidi, but the dispenser of medicines—"
"What have I to do with medicines—I, a strong man with no more than a bruised skull? Give me my clothes!"
"But, Sidi—"
"My clothes, or return instantly to the gutter from which my favor yesterday lifted you!"
The Moor gave a fatalistic shrug.
"If Allah has written it that you are to die by the weapon of thine own obstinacy, oh, Sidi, He has written it. This is thy shirt."
With an accustomedness which spoke of previous practice, he presided over his master's toilet. He fetched water, honed a razor, shaved Aylmer with deftness and despatch, produced trousers from a press, handed coat and waistcoat brushed and folded to the last pinnacle of neatness. It was as he laced the boots that he looked up inquiringly and put a question which had been obviously hanging upon his lips since the moment of his master's rising.
"And what, oh, Sidi, are your intentions now?"
"First, to see my host. Afterwards," he made a vague gesture, "afterwards, my friend, I shall act as is directed by your perpetual gossip—Fate!"
"May Allah direct our councils!" aspired Daoud, piously. "Lean upon me, Sidi! There is no need to overtax thy returning strength!"
But Aylmer leaned upon nothing. Slowly, but walking erect, he paced across the wide entrance hall, and then halted, indeterminate.
The hangings across a door opposite him were drawn aside. Claire Van Arlen stood confronting him, her lips parted in amazement.
"You!" she protested breathlessly. "You!"
He answered with a little bow.
"Myself," he said quietly. "I must present my excuses for an ... intrusion which it was not within my power to prevent."
She held up her hand in protest.
"When you were wounded in our service!" she cried. "When you were doing your best for us!"
He shook his head.
"No," he said. "I am working, I shall go on working, for myself. I should like that to be clear."
She half turned away with a little startled motion and the ghost of a frown. Words trembled on her lips and were thrust back. She understood, and would have sought, at any other time, this opportunity to make things clear indeed, but ... the man was wounded ... serving her and hers. No, for the moment the opportunity must go by.
She held up the cord hangings and pointed into the room behind her.
"At any rate you must not stand, and I am extremely culpable to permit your mutiny against your doctor's orders. Why have you got up?"
He strode slowly after her into the shadowed room. He sat down upon the wicker chair which she indicated. His eyes sought hers, keenly and very directly.
"You have no news?" he asked. "Nothing out of Spain, or from the coast?"
Her eyes clouded.
"None, or next to none. The signal station at Spartel saw a lateen working her sweeps in the distance at dawn. There was a glassy calm inshore, but occasional and uncertain breezes out of the shelter of the land. She was making as if for Cadiz, but half an hour later, just as the haze covered her, a strong wind rose from the northwest and it is doubtful if she could have beaten up against it. In which case she probably stood down the coast."
Her voice was apathetic and a little weary. Her glance avoided his.
He gave a little nod as she finished.
"Yes," he said. "He has taken the first trick—Landon. And I have been no help to you but a hindrance. It was I who helped him last night—I, with my impulsiveness. There you have a right ... to suspect me."
She made a quick, restless movement.
"Suspect you!" she cried. "You!"
"Yes," he said slowly. "That day in the town, and on the pier, at the Tent Club meeting, even—was not that in your mind?"
His voice was not reproachful, merely inquiring.
She flushed.
"The first time I suspected every one," she answered. "The second time I discovered, suddenly and unexpectedly, your name."
He nodded.
"And now?" he questioned. "And now?"
"Now?" she repeated. "Have you not given me my proofs?"
"Have I?" His voice was eager. "I can reckon that barrier down then? The taint of the name is cleared away? I start with no handicap of prejudice?"
Again the form of words half bewildered, half exasperated her. Start? Start whither, in what race, to what goal? And were there barriers to be won, too? Between him and—what?
Her instinct gave her the answer as it had done the day before. But she shrank from the acknowledgment, even to herself. The thought was too monstrous. An Aylmer and—and that! The blood rushed to her forehead on the tide of her resentment. And then as suddenly ebbed. After all, was it not the name alone which sent that surging throb of repulsion through her veins? Supposing she had met this man, in ignorance. She started again. Had she not so met him, at first? She cudgelled her brains in reflection. How did she regard him that morning at the Tent Club, before she knew? Had he not seemed a personable, even a gallant and courageous soldier, worthy of a woman's regard? She looked at him suddenly, curiously, with a sort of speculation in her eyes.
And he met the glance quietly, watchfully, and—so she told herself with a recurrent thrill of exasperation—relentlessly as well. It was as if he was forcing her to be won from prejudice to impartiality. As if he willed her into just thinking against herself. A tiny spasm of fear pulsed through her. In a clash of purpose who would win, she or this man?
She made him a gesture which had about it the sense of appeal.
"One cannot dismiss prejudices; one can fight them," she faltered.
"Ah!"
He sighed, not with weariness, but with a sort of patience, with restraint. "I think perhaps women do not accept mere justice as a plea so easily as men," he debated. "So I must not presume on that footing. I have still to win my way from ... dislike?"
"No!" she cried sharply. "No! I can be just to what you have done. What you are—that I have yet to learn, have I not?"
He smiled a little bitterly.
"I am an Aylmer. That is the lesson you have got by heart. I ask you to begin by unlearning."
She caught her breath a little quickly. Then she gave a decided little nod.
"Very well," she answered. "I—I will forget everything but the fact that you saved the boy once and that you—"
"Will do it again," said Aylmer. "That is a bargain?"
Again she hesitated over the form of words. A bargain? What was her side of the contract. If he fulfilled the purpose of which he spoke so confidently, what did it mean, from her point of view? She avoided the issue.
"You will find the child, you will bring him back?" she wondered.
"Of course!" He sat very erect in his chair. He smiled confidently. "In a fight between a rogue and honest men, the honest men win ultimately, and always. The green bay tree of the unrighteous grows with luxuriance but withers in time inevitably. I shall follow him till I win."
"And your career?" she asked incredulously. "Your profession?"
He smiled.
"That will be my career—to defeat Landon. Is it a reputable one for a gentleman?"
She made a motion of protest.
"But—but that is self-sacrifice, one which we couldn't accept. Why should you do this for us?"
He shook his head again.
"No," he said. "I must repeat it, I work for myself. I seek my own interest, and that, in the first place, is to make you just. I see but the one way to do it. I have to convince you that I am in earnest, have I not?"
Again that baffling allusion. In earnest in what? In defeating Landon, in attempting the rescue of the child? Surely he had proved that already. And yet how could she counter a point which she could not help allowing she now understood; how could she do it without the loss of dignity implied in an explanation? But it was grotesque. He had known her a bare week. He had met her on four occasions.
She looked up, met his eyes, and dropped her own. A tiny sense of panic overtook her. He sat there, indomitable. Suppose—suppose he ultimately made his purpose good. She made herself look at him again. He had, at any rate, good looks to recommend him. And courage and the respect of his fellows. But—again a wave of exasperation flowed over her mind. Oh, it was outrageous, unthinkable. An Aylmer—another Aylmer. Unconsciously her lips curved in a half sarcastic smile. Why, the very newspapers of the world would pile headline upon headline over such a fiasco. She stiffened with resentment, with a sense of being played with. Her voice was chill with a note of dignity outraged.
"I think the fact of your proposing to devote time and strength to the pursuit of—of your cousin is a very convincing one, Captain Aylmer," she answered. "The point is that we have no right to accept so much from you."
He smiled joyously.
"I shall always want to be giving, to you. Always, always. Please understand that. My service is to you, and so to myself. Try to think of me in that light, patiently."
And then a sort of desperation seized her. She probed her mind for a form of words which should give him no further loophole to persist in his veiled menaces, for she could call them no less, one that should seize a meaning out of his allusions and crush it with a directness which could not be misunderstood. Her eyes grew hard; she rose to her feet.
A step sounded in the hall, and the hangings were pushed aside. Her father stood before them.
He looked at Aylmer with amazed reproach. His face, already haggard with anxiety, took on new lines of concern.
"My dear sir!" he protested. "My dear sir!"
And Aylmer could not resist a smile. It was the form of protest which he had used at their former meeting to veil—what? Antipathy? And now? The words were full of genuine concern. He read no longer dislike in Mr. Van Arlen's glance. The elder man's eyes had softened as they reached his.
He warded off further reproaches with a question.
"The news?" he cried eagerly. "The news is what?"
"Good, in so far that we can gauge the direction of their flight. They have been seen passing Arzeila; the morning's gale has prevented their attempt to reach any port of Spain."
"And so—?"
"And so we start in pursuit with my yacht, within the hour."
Aylmer stood up.
"We?" he repeated. "We being—?"
Van Arlen looked mildly astonished.
"My daughter and I."
Aylmer held out his hand with a pleading gesture.
"You can't afford to despise my help," he said. "You must take me, too."
Van Arlen looked at Aylmer and then, questioningly, towards his daughter. She met his glance. Here at last was the opportunity to make things plain with a vengeance. They had but politely to decline.
Aylmer's voice forestalled her.
"To be impartial, that was your promise," he said. "We had not got far, but at least as far as that."
In spite of herself she turned and faced him. He met her glance steadily, confidently, expectant.
She gave a queer, half-exasperated little laugh.
"I think Captain Aylmer is a man who is easily refused nothing," she said, and passed quietly out of the room.
"I do not like this!" piped a small and dejected voice. "I came to ride a black horse, not to be bumped in this vessel forgotten of God!"
In English these words would have sounded strangely from the lips of a child of six, but little John Aylmer was fluent in the Arab jargon of his grandfather's native household.
He was sitting disconsolate in the cockpit of the lateenEsmeralda. His company was Señor Emilio Albaceda, mariner and practical exponent of the tenets of an uncompromising Free Trade. From the uncovered hatch came the sound of wind whistling in the cordage and the swish and thud of the combers breaking past. Upon one of the narrow bunks which flanked the tiny cabin lay Landon, fast asleep. A guttering and extremely odoriferous lamp of vegetable oil was the sole illuminant. The prospects of comfort and entertainment in such surroundings were not those likely to appeal to a child accustomed to luxury and constant attention.
"Pazienza!" grunted the skipper, good-humoredly. "Black horses are not found upon the sea, though a friend of mine who prefers the running of contraband to the priesthood for which his parents destined him, read me once verses from a journal—true poetry in praise of a boot polish the name of which does not stay by me—where the waves of the Atlantic were likened unto stallions white-maned. I confess I thought the notion original."
The child stared at him meditatively.
"If horses are not to be found upon the sea and we seek horses, why do not we forsake the sea for the land?" There was a note of anticipation in the query which seemed to find this argument conclusive.
The smuggler grinned.
"Excellently argued, son of much intelligence," he answered. "Land is what we shall seek when this gale breathed from Jehannum permits us to do so in safety. For the moment we drive before it, there being no harbors on this coast within a thousand miles."
The child moved restlessly.
"Where then can we land?" he demanded.
"Where God and His Mother and the Holy Saints permit," said Señor Albaceda, suddenly reverting tolingua francato clothe a piety of sentiment which the Moslem religion ignores. The One Allah's plans, being laid from the foundation of the world, are not susceptible to the influences of human appeal.
Little John made a grimace of hearty discontent and looked doubtfully at the sleeping form of his father. But for the moment distraction came from another quarter.
Two brown legs appeared in the opening of the hatch. As their owner lowered himself into the cabin, he disclosed the features of the man of the browndjelab—he who on Tangier pier had been sponsor for those fiery but phantom steeds which Fate had not allowed to materialize. The child received him with a shrill little shout of welcome.
"Muhammed!" he cried gladly. "Muhammed!"
The Moor placed his lean finger upon the yellow curls in a light caress, but his look was towards the berth where Landon could be seen stirring, aroused by his son's acclamation.
He slipped into a sitting posture in front of the tiny table and leaned upon it, his chin supported by his elbows, a look of expectancy tinged by humor in his eye.
"Well, my friends," he queried amiably, "our news is, what?"
The Moor gave a pessimistic shrug of the shoulder.
"Bad, Sidi," he said tersely. "We continue to drive westwards as before."
Landon shrugged his shoulders.
"We shall not see Cadiz to-morrow nor the day after," he said. "Well, the future is spacious. We have infinite leisure before us in which to beat back."
The captain grunted.
"Leisure we have in abundance, but not food nor yet water. We must put in somewhere before we attempt a feat which will take, at the best, three days and, if Chance so decides, perhaps a fortnight."
Landon's face was clouded with a sudden scowl.
"Food and water! Why have you not these in sufficiency? Your terms are extortionate enough as it is without the makeweight of starvation!"
"My terms," said Señor Albaceda, gruffly, "were all too cheap; what I learned in Tangier after I had come to an agreement with you was proof to me of that. But I am a man of honor; I keep bargains duly made. I contracted to set you ashore in Cadiz harbor—with a favorable wind a one night's work. I did not contract to feed three extra mouths through a voyage of weeks. When the wind moderates, I make for the nearest market, and you will buy your own provisions for our return. That is well understood."
"You mean to land on the African coast, not the European?" cried Landon.
"Where else?" said the skipper, drily. "Do you expect me to carry you on to the Azores?"
Landon looked questioningly at Muhammed. The Moor made a gesture of resignation.
"Mektub, it is written!" he answered fatalistically. "Azemmour, perchance, or Mazagan."
"And opposite each we shall find a French cruiser anchored," growled Landon, "with launches fussing about, and every craft which enters under suspicion of smuggling guns for the Chawia. And ten to one warning about us from Tangier sent down the coast."
"That would be a matter of time," said the Moor. "We have driven faster than horsemen could ride!"
"Horsemen!" Landon smote the table in his irritation. "These ships of war have apparatus by which they can communicate as if a cable linked them. If my father-in-law gets the right side of the commandant of the Tangier guardship—" He broke off with another shrug. "Well, to each day its appointed sorrow. The gale has not blown itself out yet."
"The event is with Allah!" said the Moor, gravely. He thrust his head up through the hatch and shouted to the steersman. A moment later he dropped back into the shelter of the cabin again.
"Your man Ibrahim is of opinion that the wind shows signs of abating. We passed Larache two hours back. The scud hides the shore, but he judges that we are not far from Sallee. If the surf permits, we may get anchorage and make a landing at Azemmour. If not, we must dare Casablanca or continue to Mazagan."
Señor Albaceda grunted pessimistically and climbed lumberingly on deck. Landon threw himself back on the berth again. The Moor looked down at the child with a whimsical expression of pity which changed to a benignant smile as the object of it raised his eyes to his.
"The Sidi Jan has not heard the marvellous tale of the Bashaw of Tripoli and the Afreets of El Mut?" he submitted. "If it is the Sidi's will, his servant will now take the opportunity of relating it to him?"
Little John Aylmer answered with an ecstatic chuckle of delight, and wriggled hurriedly into the encirclement of his friend's arm. Thus supported, he was able to defy the unsettling influence of the waves and give the whole of his attention to the taxing of the Moor's memory or, when this occasionally failed, his very competent imagination. The hours of the afternoon were passed agreeably; the difficulties of making a meal without the ordinary appliances of civilization provided a certain amount of diversion when night fell, and afterwards sleep was paramount. When the child woke he found the boat running slowly upon an even keel, and scrambling on deck was met by the view of a glassy swell surrounding her, but only visible to the extent of the few square yards which were enclosed in a veil of fog.
The skipper was at the wheel, and Ibrahim, the deck hand, and Muhammed were seated side by side in the bows. They did not peer into the fog—a hopeless task. They sat in a listening attitude, exchanging a brief word now and again.
"It is certainly the drumming of a ship's screw," decided the sailor, after a moment's silence. "It is going at half speed, behind us."
"Let us hope that Allah has not predestined us to be cut in twain," said his companion. "But from port, and very regularly, I hear the beat of breakers. The swell is rolling against a cliff."
"A shore, not a cliff," corrected the other. "If my dead reckoning is right within a score of miles, we are opposite a beach of sand."
Muhammed shook his head.
"Nay, listen to that thud. The crest of the comber meets something flat. It does not roll, in slowly dying foam, upon a strand."
Ibrahim shrugged his shoulders.
"In a fog we be all blind men," he said pessimistically. "Let us wait for the fulfilment of Allah's plan."
They glanced questioningly upwards. As is common in these west coast fogs, the blanket of vapor was thin. Now and again a faint hint of blue above their heads seemed to presage a lifting of the mist; occasionally, indeed, the sun was to be seen vaguely as a round yellow ball of light, streaked by the slowly drifting scud. But the gray walls on each side of them remained unbroken. At the same time the beat of the breakers was perceptibly near.
Señor Albaceda lifted his head from the hatch and invited the maledictions of innumerable Holy Men upon the weather. He was understood to confess that he did not undertake to gauge their position within a hundred miles.
"If Allah's mercy would send us an offshore wind!" aspired the pious Ibrahim, and lo! with the word came its sudden fulfilment. The fog was rent by a gust, to disclose, not a couple of cable lengths distant, what appeared to be a smooth and painted crag of gray.
The two Moors addressed fervent appeals to the One God. The Spaniard, impartially apostrophizing the tormented of Purgatory and the celestially blessed to hasten to his assistance, delivered himself of the opinion that Fate had closed her iron hand upon them. Where else could they be than within a mile of the sea bastions of Casablanca?
That, did they observe, was a cruiser—nay, possibly a battleship by whose watch they had been observed without a shadow of a doubt. As the fog closed in again, he descended to the cabin where he could be heard loudly bewailing the situation to his passenger, whom he appeared to hold responsible for this and for a fairly extensive list of other inconveniences. The captain of the lateenEsmeraldahad obviously been warding off the chill influences of the fog by a liberal dose ofaguardiente.
Landon lifted himself quickly to the deck. The mist was perceptibly lighter by now. A beam of sunlight pierced it from above and lit theEsmeralda'sdeck. The gray wall was still unbroken landward, but seaward it thinned, lifted, rolled this way and that, and finally disclosed a shining plain of blue. The central object in this, a couple of miles away, was a white, gleaming yacht.
Landon swore.
"The Morning Star—Van Arlen's boat, by God!" he cried. He made the helmsman a furious gesture. "Into the fog again!" he shouted. "Stick her nose into it, get out of this!"
"To beat out her timbers upon the harbor reef, or be swamped beneath the bows of a warship!" screamed the skipper from the hatch. "Never! Keep her in the light, son of accursed mothers! Do passengers who have been born of leprous parents give orders aboard this vessel, or I, Concepcion Albaceda, to whom the law rightly adjudges powers of life and death?"