The Pursuit Part 32

Two men sat in the shadow cast by a stranded boat and watched half a dozen Moors and Spaniards who bent their shoulders and swelled out their muscles to haul at a couple of ropes. The ropes slanted down to and were lost in the rush of the breakers. Those who dragged at them panted, the perspiration raining off their faces. The men who sat and watched seemed to find a whet to the enjoyment of their siesta in reviewing so much energy. One of them sighed--a contented little sigh, drew a cigarette from the breast of his _djelab_, lit it, and began to smoke with stolid satisfaction.

A child who was sitting between the two rose suddenly and ran down the sand. The men at the ropes had come to a halt. They stood gasping, wiping their faces. Impulsively the child laid his little hands upon the rope and stood in an att.i.tude of tension, ready to use his tiny strength when operations were resumed. The men welcomed him with a glance of good-humored toleration.

The cigarette smoker laughed.

"The restlessness of youth, Sidi. Repose? They have no knowledge of the meaning of the word, these children. Now I? The last three weeks have brimmed with such toil that I could sit here and contentedly drowse a week, a month, nay, a whole year, if Allah willed."

The other nodded and stretched his limbs. The movement expressed the lethargy which is earned by fatigue.

"To-night we shall eat real food," he murmured. "We shall sleep in beds of sorts. We can even be amused, if we find the _cafes chantants_ which attract these poor devils of Andalusian conscripts amusing. It's all a matter of contrasts--life. After the experiences we have endured among our friends the M'Geel, this doghole appears alluring. This!"

He waved his hand with a significant gesture towards the town, in which the mean houses appear to hustle the citadel and the citadel the houses, without either the one or the other gaining advantage.

The smoker blew out a cloud and spat towards the flagstaff which dominates the sea bastion.

"May Allah relegate it and its inhabitants shortly to the Abyss!" he aspired devoutly. "Is it permitted to ask how long, Sidi, you purpose using its hospitalities?"

"It is always permitted to ask, my friend. The answer is another matter.

Bluntly, till the Gibraltar boat arrives."

The other lifted his shoulders into a tiny shrug.

"For the Sidi Jan this is a place not to be recommended. There is a smell, do you notice, especially at night--murk which rises from the fort ditch. And the vermin! His little skin is pitted with them!"

Landon moved irritably. He looked at his son. The men at the ropes were hauling again by now, and the small back was bent and the little arms tautened with efforts to emulate them. The first few meshes of a laden net appeared above the surface of the breakers.

Little John gave a squeal of delight, promptly deserted the toilers, and capered joyously down the beach. Scales began to shine silvern in the sun as the tangle of the nets rose slowly, but higher and yet higher.

His voice rose in shrill outcry; he clapped his hands.

As the great bag of the net was hauled little by little up the shelving beach, he flung himself into the hurtle round the wriggling catch. The mackerel were there in their hundreds--in their thousands. He tripped and fell into the center of the heap of fishes, wriggling as they wriggled, and to little more purpose.

Muhammed rose, paced slowly forward, and plucked him into safety. But the child met his good offices with scorn.

"I wish to help; I wish to gather them up!" he cried petulantly. "I am going to be a fisherman. I shall take the yacht to the fishing grounds and catch millions--millions!"

"There must be a catching of a yacht first," said Muhammed, amiably.

"Where wilt thou obtain it, little lord?"

Little John Aylmer turned puzzled eyes up to his questioner. Then he wheeled and pointed eastward towards the anchorage below the headland.

"It is there!" he explained. "Did he," he pointed towards his father, who still lay comfortably reclined in the shadow of the boat, "not send for it?"

Muhammed's eyes followed the direction of the child's hand. He stared, gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stared again, incredulously. The next moment he was back at his employer's side, twitching excitedly at the folds of his bournous.

"Sidi--Sidi!" he exclaimed. "While we drowse we are betrayed. Look!

Look!"

Landon scrambled to his feet and saw what the timbers of the shadowing boat had hidden before. A white vessel, drifting slowly in from the headland abreast the market quay. As he watched, a white spout of foam and the rattle of the hawse-pipes told that the anchor had been dropped.

She rounded to, the American flag waving lazily from her stern, the burgee of the New York Yacht Club from her peak. They could not read her name across two miles of water, but they did not need to. It was _The Morning Star_.

Landon went white beneath his tan. He swore.

"We have been here three days--three days, by G.o.d! Not a soul in the place knows me or knows that I am not what I profess to be--a Moor from El Dibh. And yet--this! It can't be a coincidence. They know--somehow!"

He looked at Muhammed in sudden fierce suspicion.

"That infernal Jew of yours has sold us!" he cried.

The Moor made a tolerant gesture, the sort of motion a nurse offers a wilful child.

"Sidi! You do not understand. A Jew to sell me! Not this side of the Mediterranean. It means death! Yakoob knows it; it is knowledge that he has sucked in with his mother's milk, chewed with his daily bread, seen written in letters of blood in a score of towns between this and Mequinez. No, Yakoob Ihudi is not in this business. Some other is the instrument of--fate!"

He stooped, lifted little John carefully in his arms, and nodded towards the town gate.

"We must use haste, Sidi," he said calmly, avoiding the protests the child was making with his closed fists. "Show wisdom, little lord. Why do you not wish to return to the town, wherein are special delights for the eye in the booths of the market-place?"

Landon hesitated. Then he joined the Moor, running. And the other was covering the ground with huge strides which forced his companion to continue the run to keep pace with him. He panted out a question.

"My plan, Sidi?" returned the Moor. "It lies in the hands of Allah. Here when inquiry begins to be made, we are the mark of a hundred eyes. In Yakoob's hovel a means of escape may be found."

The two reached the dusty road which leads from the drill ground, followed it into the shadows of the town gate, mounted the steep on which the citadel stands, and gained a row of squalid wooden hovels which fringed the rampart above the fort ditch. Into one of these they disappeared.

A man looked up as they entered, a dark-skinned, low-browed Israelite, who greeted them with an obsequiously furtive air. He sat cross-legged upon a turned-up chest and plied his needle upon an exceedingly ragged pair of trousers. A heap of other garments lay at his elbow. His trade was evidently that of mending tailor.

"This deposit for contraband of which you spoke last night?" asked Muhammed, without preamble. "Where is it?"

The look of furtive expectancy in the tailor's eyes became active alarm.

"What do you fear?" he asked shrilly. "A search? There are fifteen thousand cartridges awaiting transport."

"The search will not be for those, but for these," said the Moor, pointing to Landon and his son. "And there is as great a ruin attached to the finding of the one as the other. You must prevent that."

The Jew rose quickly and barred the door. With alert movements he gathered up the smoking ashes from the hearth and emptied them into a shallow pan. He covered his hand with a cloth, seized the pothook which hung from the entrance of the chimney, and moved it laboriously aside.

As he did so the hearthstone moved slowly downwards as if on a hinge. A flight of steps led into the darkness.

Muhammed indicated the opening with a shrug.

"The best we can do, Sidi," he deprecated. "Till matters adjust themselves you must keep company with Yakoob's contraband."

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Air?" he questioned laconically. "It is supplied--how?"

Muhammed pa.s.sed on the question. The Jew pointed to the bosom of his bournous, which rose and fell in the draught which rose from below.

"There are innumerable crevices which open through the wall of the fort ditch," he said. "For this reason the Sidi must not use a light--at night."

Landon shrugged his shoulders pessimistically, and took his son by the hand. "Come, my boy," he said. "We are going to play that childhood's favorite and most successful comedy--the Robbers in the Cave. You and I are to be the leaders of the gang."