A Master of Fortune Part 26

The second mate pulled his face into seriousness. "I don't suppose he got into trouble intentionally, sir."

"Probably not, but that doesn't alter the fact that he has managed it somehow. I don't engage my mates for amus.e.m.e.nts of that kind, Mr. Grain.

I've got them here to work, and help me do my duty by the owners. If they take up low cla.s.s trades like artisting, they must be prepared to stand the consequences. You'll remember the orders I've given you? If I'm wanted, you'll say I'll probably be back by tea."

Captain Kettle went off then in a sh.o.r.e-boat, past a small fleet of pearling dhows, which rolled at their anchors, and after a long pull--for the sea was shallow, and the anchorage lay five miles out--stepped on to the back of a burly Arab, and was carried the last mile dry-shod. Parallel to him were lines of men carrying out cargo to the lighters which would tranship it to the _Parakeet_, and Kettle looked upon these with a fine complacency.

His tramping for cargo had been phenomenally successful. He was filling his holds at astonishingly heavy freights. And not only would this bring him credit with his owners, which meant promotion in due course to a larger ship, but in the mean time, as he drew his 2-1/2 per cent, on the profits, it represented a very comfortable matter of solid cash for that much-needing person himself. He hugged himself with pleasure when he thought of this new found prosperity. It represented so many things which he would be able to do for his wife and family, which through so many years narrow circ.u.mstances had made impossible.

The burly Arab on whose hips he rode pick-a-back stepped out of the water at last, and Kettle jumped down from his perch, and picked his way daintily among the litter of the foresh.o.r.e toward the white houses of the town which lay beyond.

It was the first time he had set foot there. So great was his luck at the time, that he had not been forced to go ash.o.r.e in the usual way drumming up cargo. The shippers had come off begging him to become their carrier, and he had muleted them in heavy freights accordingly. So he stepped into the town with many of the feelings of a conqueror, and demanded to be led to the office of a man with whom he had done profitable business that very morning.

Of course, "office" in the Western meaning of the term there was none.

The worthy Rad el Moussa transacted affairs on the floor of his general sitting-room, and stored his merchandise in the bed-chambers, or wherever it would be out of reach of pilfering fingers. But he received the little sailor with fine protestations of regard, and (after some giggles and shuffling as the women withdrew) inducted him to the dark interior of his house, and set before him delicious coffee and some doubtful sweetmeats.

Kettle knew enough about Oriental etiquette not to introduce the matter on which he had come at the outset of the conversation. He pa.s.sed and received the necessary compliments first, endured a discussion of local trade prospects, and then by an easy gradation led up to the powers of the local Kady. He did not speak Arabic himself, and Rad el Moussa had no English. But they had both served a life apprenticeship to sea trading, and the curse of the Tower of Babel had very little power over them. In the memories of each there were garnered sc.r.a.ps from a score of spoken languages, and when these failed, they could always draw on the unlimited vocabulary of the gestures and the eyes. And for points that were really abstruse, or which required definite understanding, there always remained the charcoal stick and the explanatory drawing on the face of a whitewashed wall.

When the conversation had lasted some half an hour by the clock, and a slave brought in a second relay of sweetmeats and thick coffee, the sailor mentioned, as it were incidentally, that one of his officers had got into trouble in the town. "It's quite a small thing," he said lightly, "but I want him back as soon as possible, because there's work for him to do on the steamer. See what I mean?"

Rad el Moussa nodded gravely. "Savvy plenty," said he.

Now Kettle knew that the machinery of the law in these small Arabian coast towns was concentrated in the person of the Kady, who, for practical purposes, must be made to move by that lubricant known as palm oil; and so he produced some coins from his pocket and lifted his eyebrows inquiringly.

Rad el Moussa nodded again, and made careful inspection of the coins, turning them one by one with his long brown fingers, and biting those he fancied most as a test of their quality. Finally, he selected a gold twenty-franc piece and two sovereigns, balanced and c.h.i.n.ked them carefully in his hand, and then slipped them into some private receptacle in his wearing apparel.

"I say," remarked Kettle, "that's not for you personally, old tintacks.

That's for the Kady."

Rad pointed majestically to his own breast. "El Kady," he said.

"Oh, you are his Worship, are you?" said Kettle. "Why didn't you say so before? I don't think it was quite straight of you, tintacks, but perhaps that's your gentle Arab way. But I say, Whiskers, don't you try being too foxy with me, or you'll get hurt. I'm not the most patient man in the world with inferior nations. Come, now, where's the mate?"

Rad spread his hands helplessly.

"See, here, it's no use your trying that game. You know that I want Murray, my mate."

"Savvy plenty."

"Then hand him out, and let me get away back on board."

"No got," said Rad el Moussa; "no can."

"Now look here, Mister," said Captain Kettle, "I've paid you honestly for justice, and if I don't have it, I'll start in pulling down your old town straight away. Give up the mate, Rad, and let me get back peacefully to my steamboat, or, by James! I'll let loose a wild earthquake here. If you want battle, murder, and sudden death, Mr. Rad el Moussa, just you play monkey tricks with me, and you'll get 'em cheap. Kady, are you? Then, by James! you start in without further talk, and give me the justice that I've bought and paid for."

Though this tirade was in an alien tongue, Rad el Moussa caught the drift from Captain Kettle's accompanying gesticulations, which supplied a running translation as he went on. Rad saw that his visitor meant business, and signed that he would go out and fetch the imprisoned mate forthwith.

"No, you don't," said Kettle promptly. "If your Worship once left here, I might have trouble in finding you again. I know how easy it is to hide in a-warren like this town of yours. Send one of your hands with a message."

Now, to convey this sentence more clearly, Kettle had put his fingers on the Arab's clothing, when out fell a bag of pearls, which came unfastened. The pearls rolled like peas about the floor, and the Arab, with gritting teeth, whipped out a knife. Promptly Kettle drew also, and covered him with a revolver.

"See here," he said, "I'm not a thief, though perhaps you think I pulled out that jewelry purse on purpose. It was an accident, Rad, so I'll forgive your hastiness. But your Worship mustn't pull out cutlery on me.

I'll not stand that from any man living. That's right, put it up. Back goes the pistol into its pocket, and now we're friends again. Pick up the pearls yourself, and then you'll be certain I haven't grabbed any, and then send one of your men to fetch my mate and do as I want. You're wasting a great deal of my time, Rad el Moussa, over a very simple job."

The Arab gathered the pearls again into the pouch and put it back to its place among his clothes. His face had grown savage and lowering, but it was clear that this little spitfire of a sailor, with his handy pistol, daunted him. Kettle, who read these signs, was not insensible to the compliment they implied, but at the same time he grew, if anything, additionally cautious. He watched his man with a cat-like caution, and when Rad called a slave and gave him orders in fluent Arabic, he made him translate his commands forthwith.

Rad el Moussa protested that he had ordered nothing more than the carrying out of his visitor's wishes. But it seemed to Kettle that he protested just a trifle too vehemently, and his suspicions deepened.

He tapped his pistol in its resting-place, and nodded his head meaningly. "You've friends in this town," he said, "and I dare say you'll have a goodish bit of power in your small way. I've neither, and I don't deny that if you bring up all your local army to interfere, I may have a toughish fight of it; but whatever happens to me in the long run, you may take it as straight from yours truly that you'll go to your own funeral if trouble starts. So put that in your hookah and smoke it, tintacks, and give me the other tube."

Captain Kettle was used to the dilatory ways of the East, and he was prepared to wait, though never doubting that Murray would be surrendered to him in due time, and he would get his own way in the end. So he picked up one of the snaky tubes of the great pipe, and put the amber mouthpiece between his lips; and there for an hour the pair of them squatted on the divan, with the hookah gurgling and reeking between them. From time to time a slave-girl came and replenished the pipe with tobacco or fire as was required. But these were the only interruptions, and between whiles they smoked on in ma.s.sive silence.

At the end of that hour, the man-slave who had been sent out with the message re-entered the room and delivered his tidings. Rad el Moussa in his turn pa.s.sed it on. Murray was even then waiting in the justice chamber, so he said, at the further side of the house, and could be taken away at once. Kettle rose to his feet, and the Arab stood before him with bowed head and folded arms.

Captain Kettle began to feel shame for having pressed this man too hardly. It seemed that he had intended to act honestly all along, and the suspiciousness of his behavior doubtless arose from some difficulty of custom or language. So the sailor took the Rad's limp hand in his own and shook it cordially, and at the same time made a handsome apology for his own share of the misunderstanding.

"Your Worship must excuse me," he said, "but I'm always apt to be a bit suspicious about lawyers. What dealings I've had with them have nearly always turned out for me unfortunately. And now, if you don't mind, we'll go into your court-house, and you can hand me over my mate, and I'll take him back to the ship. Enough time's been wasted already by both of us."

The Arab, still bowed and submissive, signed toward the doorway, and Kettle marched briskly out along the narrow dark pa.s.sage beyond, with Rad's sandals shuffling in escort close at his rear. The house seemed a large one, and rambling. Three times Rad's respectful fingers on his visitor's sleeve signed to him a change of route. The corridors, too, as is the custom in Arabia, where coolness is the first consideration, were dimly lit; and with the caution which had grown to be his second nature, Kettle instinctively kept all his senses on the alert for inconvenient surprises. He had no desire that Rad el Moussa should forget his submissiveness and stab him suddenly from behind, neither did he especially wish to be noosed or knifed from round any of the dusky sudden corners.

In fact he was as much on the _qui vive_ as he ever had been in all his long, wild, adventurous life, and yet Rad el Moussa, who meant treachery all along, took him captive by the most vulgar of timeworn stratagems.

Of a sudden the boarding of the floor sank beneath Kettle's feet. He turned, and with a desperate effort tried to throw himself backward whence he had come. But the boarding behind reared up and hit him a violent blow on the hands and head, and he fell into a pit below.

For an instant he saw through the gloom the face of Rad el Moussa turned suddenly virulent, spitting at him in hate, and then the swing-floor slammed up into place again, and all view of anything but inky blackness was completely shut away.

Now the fall, besides being disconcerting, was tolerably deep; and but for the fact that the final blow from the flooring had shot him against the opposite side of the pit, and so broken his descent at the expense of his elbows and heels, he might very well have landed awkwardly, and broken a limb or his back in the process. But Captain Owen Kettle was not the man to waste time over useless lamentation or rubbing of bruises. He was on fire with fury at the way he had been tricked, and thirsting to get loose and be revenged. He had his pistol still in its proper pocket, and undamaged, and if the wily Rad had shown himself anywhere within range just then, it is a certain thing that he would have been shot dead to square the account.

But Kettle was, as I have said, wedged in with darkness, and for the present, revenge must wait until he could see the man he wanted to shoot at. He scrambled to his feet, and fumbled in his pocket for a match. He found one, struck it on the sole of his trim white shoe, and reconnoitred quickly.

The place he was in was round and bottle shaped, measuring some ten feet across its floor, and tapering to a small square, where the trap gave it entrance above. It was a prison clearly, and there was evidence that it had been recently used. It was clear also that the only official way of releasing a prisoner was to get him up by a ladder or rope through the small opening to which the sides converged overhead. Moreover, to all common seeming, the place was simply unbreakable, at least to any creature who had not either wings or the power of crawling up the under-side of a slant like a fly.

But all these things flashed through Kettle's brain in far less time than it takes to read them here. He had only two matches in his possession, and he wished to make all possible use of the first, so as to keep the second for emergencies; and so he made his survey with the best of his intelligence and speed.

The walls of this bottle-shaped prison were of bricks built without visible mortar, and held together (it seemed probable) by the weight of earth pressing outside them; but just before the match burned his fingers and dropped to the floor, where it promptly expired, his eye fell upon an opening in the masonry. It was a mere slit, barely three inches wide, running vertically up and down for some six courses of the brick, and it was about chin-high above the ground.

He marked this when the light went out, and promptly went to it and explored it with his arm. The slit widened at the other side, and there was evidently a chamber beyond. He clapped his hands against the lip of the slit, and set his feet against the wall, and pulled with the utmost of his strength. If once he could widen the opening sufficiently to clamber through, possibilities lay beyond. But from the weight of wall pressing down above, he could not budge a single brick by so much as a hairs-breadth, and so he had to give up this idea, and, stewing with rage, set about further reconnoitring.

The darkness put his eyes out of action, but he had still left his hands and feet, and he went round with these, exploring carefully.

Presently his search was rewarded. Opposite the opening he had discovered before, was another slit in the overhanging wall of this bottle-shaped prison, and this also he attacked in the hope of wrenching free some of the bricks. He strained and panted, till it seemed as though the tendons of his body must break, but the wall remained whole and the slit unpa.s.sable; and then he gave way, almost childishly, to his pa.s.sion of rage, and shouted insults and threats at Rad el Moussa in the vain hope that some one would hear and carry them. And some one did hear, though not the persons he expected.

A voice, m.u.f.fled and foggy, as though it came from a long distance, said in surprise: "Why, Captain, have they got you here, too?"

Under cover of the darkness, Kettle blushed for shame at his outcry.

"That you, Murray? I didn't know you were here. How did you guess it was me?"

The distant voice chuckled foggily. "I've heard you giving your blessing to the hands on board, sir, once or twice, and I recognized some of the words. What have they collared you for? You don't photograph. Have you been messing round with some girl?"

"Curse your impudence; just you remember your position and mine. I'll have respect from my officers, even if I am in a bit of a fix."