The Pursuit Part 42

"Well?" he said laconically.

Aylmer was silent. His glance traveled over Landon's head to examine the war vessel as it pa.s.sed.

The captain grunted something in an undertone. Landon laughed, and held up the first and fourth fingers of his right hand horn-wise.

"The good Luigi advises me to avert the evil eye," he explained. "Does that glance of yours threaten us, my affectionate cousin, does it?"

Aylmer sat back upon the boom and looked at the other squarely. The child scrambled from his shoulder and went back along the deck to stand at Muhammed's knee. But the Moor, after a quick, welcoming smile, showed no further recognition of his presence. His glance, the glances, indeed, of all on board, centered in the meeting of the two who eyed each other across the slant of Signor Luigi's tiller.

Aylmer made a motion of his head towards Miller.

"You sent this man to bargain with me?" he said.

"No," said Landon. "I sent him to tell you my terms."

He laughed; he looked Aylmer insolently in the face and laughed again.

"The thick-headedness of you is what amuses me," he said. "The cra.s.s incapability of understanding your own case. Order, respectability, good feeling, as you call it--these have been propping you all your life. You don't understand--how should you?--what it is to be in the hands of a man who gives not a jot for any one of them." He snapped his fingers.

"Not that!" he added. "For honor, standing, the esteem of my fellows I give nothing--nothing!"

"And yet chaffer to obtain them," said Aylmer, drily.

"I don't chaffer; I take," said Landon. "I am requiring them as mere stage properties necessary to the carrying out of my other purposes.

Intrinsically they have no value for me."

"Unfortunately for you, you have neither the weapons to win them nor the means to buy them," said Aylmer.

"Haven't I?" said Landon, slowly. "Haven't I?" He rose from his seat and came a pace or two nearer. "Listen to me, you--you blazing fool!" he snarled. "I have you here to break, as I will. See that you don't goad me into doing it, for the mere pleasure of seeing you squirm. You give me your promise to accept me, push me forward, vouch for me, in the rotten mob you call society, or, by G.o.d, you'll be sorry before I've done with you!"

Aylmer still stared relentlessly into the other's eyes.

"You haven't a thing that'll touch me--not a single thing!" he said. "My life? Do you think that has a value for me above the hope of clearing you from a decent family's path--into the gutter!"

Landon went white with pa.s.sion. His fingers worked.

"By the Lord!" he said, and his eyes shot menacing lightnings towards Miller, not towards his cousin; "by the Lord, am I to keep my hands off him--after that?"

There was a sort of appeal in the question. There was malignance, there was red anger, but there was entreaty, the cry of a slave to a master.

Claire recognized it; so did Aylmer, with amazement.

They both looked at the gray man.

Miller's gesture was all humility, all dejection.

"Don't exasperate him, Captain Aylmer," he pleaded. "He has weapons; he has, indeed!"

Landon laughed malevolently.

"By G.o.d, I have!" he cried. "Your thick body and your ox's nerves? You can pit them against me, if you like! What about your finer feelings, as I suppose you'd call them? What about your honor? And--what about--_hers_?"

He shot the question out fiercely, insistently, pointing at Claire.

A sudden dryness coated Aylmer's lips.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. He rose, too, towering over Landon from the full height of his stature and that, indeed, seemed to have added inches to itself since the other spoke.

But Landon, drunk with venom, did not flinch.

"Look at her!" he cried, still pointing. "Look at her! And if you defy me, you shall have something more to look at before long! I'll deal with her; I'll let these men have their will of her; I'll drag her through filth enough--I'll--"

His voice broke hideously into a shriek of pain. Aylmer had flung off the lashings on his wrists and continued the movement, as it were, into one direct, smashing blow on Landon's mouth!

And Landon fell as a log falls, stark, inert, his head meeting the tiller end in his fall with frightful emphasis. He rolled into the scuppers at the captain's feet, b.l.o.o.d.y, disfigured, unconscious as the deck itself.

There was a rush from the two deck hands. Muhammed came flying aft.

Aylmer dodged, landed his fist on the Moor's temple, evaded the hands stretched out for him, and sprang for the rigging. Within the s.p.a.ce of seconds he was standing upon the great cross spar of the lateen, leaning against the mast, and waving his arms in semaph.o.r.e-wise towards the gray stern of the torpedo boat as she slid away against the disc of the setting sun.

The captain yelled aloud with fury.

"He is signalling to them!" he screamed. "G.o.d's Mother! If they see him we're undone!"

A sudden light gleamed in Claire's eyes, a light of hope, of relief and--bright above them all--admiration. This was a man. Her woman's blood quickened to the knowledge that his man's strength had been used brutally, splendidly, for her. She cried aloud her encouragement. She waved her hand.

"Make them see you, make them!" she called. She beat her open hand upon the taffrail in her pa.s.sion.

The gunboat slowed. Half a dozen signal flags rushed up to her peak. The white foam of her wake disappeared slowly with the stopping of her engines. Captain Luigi cried out again; he addressed invectives to things terrestrial and to celestial things apostrophes at a set value in candles, using both forms of eloquence impartially to goad his hesitating deck hands to pull Aylmer from his eyrie at the risk of their lives. The mariners shook their heads.

And then, at the captain's ear, harshly, snippingly, between his teeth, Miller spoke.

"Let go the halliards!" he hissed. "Let go the halliards!"

And Claire Van Arlen heard.

She cried out to Aylmer warningly, shrill in her despair. He did not hear or, perhaps, in the intentness of his task, did not heed. She cried out again.

Too late!

The two men flung themselves upon the ropes which held the great lateen yard in place, slacked them, payed them out suddenly a couple of yards.

Aylmer tottered, rocked forward, and then maintained his hand hold upon the mast. But this time the men reversed the operation. With a tremendous effort they jerked the ropes. The spar leaped upwards!

And Aylmer shot into the air and landed stunningly upon the planking at Claire Van Arlen's feet.

CHAPTER XXI

FATE STAYS HER HAND