The Sea-Hawk Part 24

"As I was thine of old!" he answered with crafty wistfulness. "Wilt thou not put to sea with us to-morrow, O Asad? There is none like thee in all Islam, and what a joy were it not to stand beside thee on the prow as of old when we grapple with the Spaniard."

Asad considered him. "Dost thou, too, urge this?" quoth he.

"Have others urged it?" The man's sharp wits, rendered still sharper by his sufferings, were cutting deeply and swiftly into this matter. "They did well, but none could have urged it more fervently than I, for none knows so well as I the joy of battle against the infidel under thy command and the glory of prevailing in thy sight. Come, then, my lord, upon this enterprise, and be thyself thine own son's preceptor since 'tis the highest honour thou canst bestow upon him."

Thoughtfully Asad stroked his long white beard, his eagle eyes growing narrow. "Thou temptest me, by Allah!"

"Let me do more...."

"Nay, more thou canst not. I am old and worn, and I am needed here.

Shall an old lion hunt a young gazelle? Peace, peace! The sun has set upon my fighting day. Let the brood of fighters I have raised up keep that which my arm conquered and maintain my name and the glory of the Faith upon the seas." He leaned upon Sakr-el-Bahr's shoulder and sighed, his eyes wistfully dreamy. "It were a fond adventure in good truth. But no...I am resolved. Go thou and take Marzak with thee, and bring him safely home again."

"I should not return myself else," was the answer. "But my trust is in the All-knowing."

Upon that he departed, dissembling his profound vexation both at the voyage and the company, and went to bid Othmani make ready his great galea.s.se, equipping it with carronades, three hundred slaves to row it, and three hundred fighting men.

Asad-el-Din returned to that darkened room in the Kasbah overlooking the courtyard, where Fenzileh and Marzak still lingered. He went to tell them that in compliance with the desires of both Marzak should go forth to prove himself upon this expedition.

But where he had left impatience he found thinly veiled wrath

"O sun that warms me," Fenzileh greeted him, and from long experience he knew that the more endearing were her epithets the more vicious was her mood, "do then my counsels weigh as naught with thee, are they but as the dust upon thy shoes?"

"Less," said Asad, provoked out of his habitual indulgence of her licences of speech.

"That is the truth, indeed!" she cried, bowing her head, whilst behind her the handsome face of her son was overcast.

"It is," Asad agreed. "At dawn, Marzak, thou settest forth upon the galea.s.se of Sakr-el-Bahr to take the seas under his tutelage and to emulate the skill and valour that have rendered him the stoutest bulwark of Islam, the very javelin of Allah."

But Marzak felt that in this matter his mother was to be supported, whilst his detestation of this adventurer who threatened to usurp the place that should rightly be his own spurred him to mad lengths of daring.

"When I take the seas with that dog-descended Nasrani," he answered hoa.r.s.ely, "he shall be where rightly he belongs--at the rowers' bench."

"How?" It was a bellow of rage. Upon the word Asad swung to confront his son, and his face, suddenly inflamed, was so cruel and evil in its expression that it terrified that intriguing pair. "By the beard of the Prophet! what words are these to me?" He advanced upon Marzak until Fenzileh in sudden terror stepped between and faced him, like a lioness springing to defend her cub. But the Basha, enraged now by this want of submission in his son, enraged both against that son and the mother who he knew had prompted him, caught her in his sinewy old hands, and flung her furiously aside, so that she stumbled and fell in a panting heap amid the cushions of her divan.

"The curse of Allah upon thee!" he screamed, and Marzak recoiled before him. "Has this presumptuous h.e.l.lcat who bore thee taught thee to stand before my face, to tell me what thou wilt and wilt not do? By the Koran!

too long have I endured her evil foreign ways, and now it seems she has taught thee how to tread them after her and how to beard thy very father! To-morrow thou'lt take the sea with Sakr-el-Bahr, I have said it. Another word and thou'lt go aboard his galea.s.se even as thou saidst should be the case with him--at the rowers' bench, to learn submission under the slave master's whip."

Terrified, Marzak stood numb and silent, scarcely daring to draw breath.

Never in all his life had he seen his father in a rage so royal. Yet it seemed to inspire no fear in Fenzileh, that congenital shrew whose tongue not even the threat of rods or hooks could silence.

"I shall pray Allah to restore sight to thy soul, O father of Marzak,"

she panted, "to teach thee to discriminate between those that love thee and the self-seekers that abuse thy trust."

"How!" he roared at her. "Art not yet done?"

"Nor ever shall be until I am lain dumb in death for having counselled thee out of my great love, O light of these poor eyes of mine."

"Maintain this tone," he said, with concentrated anger, "and that will soon befall."

"I care not so that the sleek mask be plucked from the face of that dog-descended Sakr-el-Bahr. May Allah break his bones! What of those slaves of his--those two from England, O Asad? I am told that one is a woman, tall and of that white beauty which is the gift of Eblis to these Northerners. What is his purpose with her--that he would not show her in the suk as the law prescribes, but comes slinking here to beg thee set aside the law for him? Ha! I talk in vain. I have shown thee graver things to prove his vile disloyalty, and yet thou'lt fawn upon him whilst thy fangs are bared to thine own son."

He advanced upon her, stooped, caught her by the wrist, and heaved her up.

His face showed grey under its deep tan. His aspect terrified her at last and made an end of her reckless forward courage.

He raised his voice to call.

"Ya anta! Ayoub!"

She gasped, livid in her turn with sudden terror. "My lord, my lord!"

she whimpered. "Stream of my life, be not angry! What wilt thou do?"

He smiled evilly. "Do?" he growled. "What I should have done ten years ago and more. We'll have the rods to thee." And again he called, more insistently--"Ayoub!"

"My lord, my lord!" she gasped in shuddering horror now that at last she found him set upon the thing to which so often she had dared him. "Pity!

Pity!" She grovelled and embraced his knees. "In the name of the Pitying the Pitiful be merciful upon the excesses to which my love for thee may have driven this poor tongue of mine. O my sweet lord! O father of Marzak!"

Her distress, her beauty, and perhaps, more than either, her unusual humility and submission may have moved him. For even as at that moment Ayoub--the sleek and portly eunuch, who was her wazeer and chamberlain--loomed in the inner doorway, salaaming, he vanished again upon the instant, dismissed by a peremptory wave of the Basha's hand.

Asad looked down upon her, sneering. "That att.i.tude becomes thee best,"

he said. "Continue it in future." Contemptuously he shook himself free of her grasp, turned and stalked majestically out, wearing his anger like a royal mantle, and leaving behind him two terror-shaken beings, who felt as if they had looked over the very edge of death.

There was a long silence between them. Then at long length Fenzileh rose and crossed to the meshra-biyah--the latticed window-box. She opened it and took from one of its shelves an earthenware jar, placed there so as to receive the slightest breeze. From it she poured water into a little cup and drank greedily. That she could perform this menial service for herself when a mere clapping of hands would have brought slaves to minister to her need betrayed something of her disordered state of mind.

She slammed the inner lattice and turned to Marzak. "And now?" quoth she.

"Now?" said the lad.

"Ay, what now? What are we to do? Are we to lie crushed under his rage until we are ruined indeed? He is bewitched. That jackal has enchanted him, so that he must deem well done all that is done by him. Allah guide us here, Marzak, or thou'lt be trampled into dust by Sakr-el-Bahr."

Marzak hung his head; slowly he moved to the divan and flung himself down upon its pillows; there he lay p.r.o.ne, his hands cupping his chin, his heels in the air.

"What can I do?" he asked at last.

"That is what I most desire to know. Something must be done, and soon.

May his bones rot! If he lives thou art destroyed."

"Ay," said Marzak, with sudden vigour and significance. "If he lives!"

And he sat up. "Whilst we plan and plot, and our plans and plots come to naught save to provoke the anger of my father, we might be better employed in taking the shorter way."

She stood in the middle of the chamber, pondering him with gloomy eyes "I too have thought of that," said she. "I could hire me men to do the thing for a handful of gold. But the risk of it...."

"Where would be the risk once he is dead?"

"He might pull us down with him, and then what would our profit be in his death? Thy father would avenge him terribly."

"If it were craftily done we should not be discovered."