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She had 500 men on board, a large sum of money, and, among other treasures, a box of jewel-hilted swords, which Philip was sending over to the English Catholic peers. But it was growing dark. Sea and sky looked ugly. The Duke was flurried, and signalled to go on and leave Don Pedro to his fate. Alonzo de Leyva and Oquendo rushed on board the San Martin to protest. It was no use.
Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship's decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them; and though, while the valiant butchers over the deck-table are thus cannibally carving each other's live meat with carving-knives all gilded and tasselled, the sharks, also, with their jewel-hilted mouths, are quarrelsomely carving away under the table at the dead meat; and though, were you to turn the whole affair upside down, it would still be pretty much the same thing, that is to say, a shocking sharkish business enough for all parties; and though sharks also are the invariable outriders of all slave ships crossing the Atlantic, systematically trotting alongside, to be handy in case a parcel is to be carried anywhere, or a dead slave to be decently buried; and though one or two other like instances might be set down, touching the set terms, places, and occasions, when sharks do most socially congregate, and most hilariously feast; yet is there no conceivable time or occasion when you will find them in such countless numbers, and in gayer or more jovial spirits, than around a dead sperm whale, moored by night to a whaleship at sea.
Glover flew up and down the room, enjoying the dance to the full. What cared he for the heat. What mattered to him that he trod on the toes of innumerable rajahs and nabobs, who would gladly have stuck their jewel-hilted daggers into him, or given him an embrace with a tiger's claw; an instrument worthy of Asiatic invention.
"The desert," she whispered. "The pyramids the bazaar life adventure. How wonderful!" There came a long, long pause, and then she added, as she turned towards a coloured picture of the Sphinx upon the wall, "And who cares if the nail is a tin-tack or a screw?" As it happened, it was destined to be the jewel-hilted, double-edged, unsheathed dagger of love.
He was clothed with the full, rich, swaggering adornment of a Rajput; the splendid deep torso enclosed in a shirt-of-mail, its steel mesh so fine that it rippled like silver cloth; a red velvet vestment, negligently open, showed in the folds of a silk sash a jewel-hilted knife; a tulwar hung from his left shoulder.
Oh! the game of make-believe they played, those two with the jewel-hilted, razor-edged dagger of love between them. There fell a silence. And then the fortune-teller spoke in his own tongue, and too absorbed were they in the game of make-believe to notice that he made use of neither sand nor stars nor the lines upon her hands, which were clasped above her heart, as he read her future in her eyes.
"It shall never be told me that I was beaten," said Roberval impetuously, as he snatched a jewel-hilted dagger from his girdle. "Hold your hand," said La Pommeraye, sternly, as he saw the frenzied man direct the weapon towards his own breast. "Put up that toy, and be a man. You have been fairly beaten, as has every one who has crossed swords with me.
There were several cases which the man handed quickly to the girl, but the other things were chiefly articles of clothing, with two or three jewel-hilted daggers, a short sword, and a brace of long-barrelled, beautifully mounted pistols. He had been apparently not desirous to allow the English officers to see the contents of his chest.
In Duffel's absence, she had, on several occasions, searched the rooms of the cave in which she was confined, to see if there was no secret passage which communicated with the outer world. Her search had proved unavailing; but instead of the outlet she was seeking, she found a small, jewel-hilted dagger in a rich and costly case.
Ulf found much spoil in those two vessels, golden cups, beautiful silken robes, and jewel-hilted weapons, after the slightly difficult task of taking them was over; and plenty of provisions also, with which warily he turned square round on his heel and sailed back again for twice three weeks until he was in familiar waters once more, well content with what he had.
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