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This was not the hour and the other shots, the volley, we both expected did not come. Instead, came the second mate's voice bellowing orders, "Connolly the wheel! Hard alee! Weather main brace!" Then, clearer, as he shouted through the cabin skylights, "Captain on deck, quick!" It was the hail for which I had waited so long and anxiously. But the news that came with it was strange and startling.
Like a team of mallards in double column, plunging and lifting buoyant breasts to right and left alternately, the British fleet bore down upon the swan-like crescent of the foe. These were doing their best to fly, but failing of that luck, put helm alee, and shivered in the wind, and made fine speeches, proving that they must win the day.
He reached the ruins, the faithful lad leading him; but just at the moment I was mounting on his back a party of horsemen were seen issuing from the camp. Alee threw himself upon my horse, while I gave Bu Saef the rein. Fleet as the wind he flew over the plain. A shriek reached my ears; my slave had received his death-blow. A shot followed; neither Alee nor my black horse did I ever see more.
In the moment of profound silence which follows upon the hands going to their stations I heard on the poop his raised voice: "Hard alee!" and the distant shout of the order repeated on the maindeck. The sails, in that light breeze, made but a faint fluttering noise. It ceased.
Ben Aboo's terror was now appalling to look upon. His face was that of a snared beast. With bloodshot eyes, hollow cheeks, and short thick breath, he ran from dark alley to dark alley, trying every house where he thought he might find a friend. "Alee, don't you know me?" "Mohammed, it is I, Ben Aboo." "See, El Arby, here's money, money; it's yours, only save me, save me!"
Helm's alee! Steady so. Let draw! Easy! easy! There she fills!" And after a few more rapid orders the handy little craft was dashing away, with the wind abaft the beam, and her head about two points north of east. "Uncommon quick in stays!" cried Polwhele, who had taken to the helm, and now stood there. "Wonder what Britishers will think of that?"
Oh, they are so bright, so steady, and so silent, in that great, lonely place, where no noise is heard! no sounds of people or of birds or animals, excepting the sleepy groaning of a camel, or the low song that little Alee is singing to his sister as they lie upon their backs on the sand, and watch the slow, grand movement of the stars that are always journeying towards the west.
Foker called out from the masthead "A whale alee!" All looks turned to the direction indicated. A small spout was perceived coming up out of the sea about a mile from the brig. "There she spouts!" cried Simpson, who knew what that meant. "She has disappeared!" answered the doctor. "Oh, we could find her again easily enough if necessary!" said Simpson, with an accent of regret.
He turned his blazing eyes upon me. "To-morrow, ere noon," he said, "the slipper will again be in the Museum from which the man of evil stole it. So it is written; obscure are the ways. We met last night, you and I, but at that time much was dark to me that now is light. The holy 'Alee spoke to me in a vision, saying: 'There are two keys to the case in which it will be locked.
Thus did I inspect the old city of Futtehpore Secreh under the guidance of Busreet Alee, a garrulous old man, and a perfect specimen of a cicerone, with whom I at once plunged into the most extensive ruins I had seen in India: cloisters, colonnades, domes, walls, kiosks, and turrets, heaped together in the utmost confusion, a mass of red sandstone, except when some white marble denoted a more sacred or interesting spot as it glistened in the beams of the rising sun.
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