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Outward bound as she was it was not to be expected that any treasures would be discovered in her hold. They found great store of armaments and powder and a little money; but naught else that was worthy of the corsairs' attention. Sakr-el-Bahr briefly issued his surprising orders. "Thou'lt set the captives aboard one of the galleys, Biskaine, and thyself convey them to Algiers, there to be sold.
"There art thou wrong, indeed, O mother of error. Sakr-el-Bahr is what Allah hath made him. He is what Allah wills. He shall become what Allah wills. Hast yet to learn that Allah has bound the fate of each man about his neck?"
"He has vanished." "'Tis too dark to see," said Vigitello. And then Asad turned from the vessel's side. "Well, well shot or drowned, he's gone," he said, and there the matter ended. Sakr-el-Bahr replaced the cross-bow in the rack, and came slowly up to the poop. In the gloom he found himself confronted by Rosamund's white face between the two dusky countenances of his Nubians.
The slave turned aside, swept away a litter of ferns and produced an amphora of porous red clay; he removed the palm-leaves from the mouth of it and poured water into a cup. Sakr-el-Bahr drank slowly, his eyes never leaving the vessel, whose every ratline was clearly defined by now in the pellucid air. They could see men moving on her decks, and the watchman stationed in the foremast fighting-top.
"It is done," Marzak had cried exultantly. "The dog hath withstood him and so destroyed himself. There will be an end to Sakr-el-Bahr this night." And he had added: "The praise to Allah!" But from Fenzileh came no response to his prayer of thanksgiving. True, Sakr-el-Bahr must be destroyed, and by a sword that she herself had forged.
After them followed yet more corsairs, and then mounted, on a white Arab jennet, his head swathed in a turban of cloth of gold, came Sakr-el-Bahr.
"Why else, indeed?" returned Asad, and then he swung upon Oliver standing there in the entrance of the poop-house. "What sayest thou, Sakr-el-Bahr?" he appealed to him. Sakr-el-Bahr stepped forward, shrugging. "What is there to say? What is there to do?" he asked. "We can but wait. If our presence is known to them we are finely trapped, and there's an end to all of us this night."
"Thou hast heard, Marzak?" he said. "Sakr-el-Bahr is returned." "Victoriously, I hope," the lad lied glibly. "Victorious beyond aught that was ever known," replied Tsamanni. "He sailed at sunset into the harbour, his company aboard two mighty Frankish ships, which are but the lesser part of the great spoil he brings."
Sakr-el-Bahr smiled grimly. "It is an impatience well known to me, my lord, where she is concerned," he answered slowly. "I boiled with it myself for five interminable years. To make an end of it I went a distant perilous voyage to England in a captured Frankish vessel. Thou didst not know, O Asad, else thou wouldst...." "Bah!" broke in the Basha. "Thou'rt a huckster born.
Whether rowed by her two hundred and fifty slaves, or sailed under her enormous spread of canvas, there was no swifter vessel upon the Mediterranean than the galeasse of Sakr-el-Bahr. Onward she leapt now with bellying tateens, her well-greased keel slipping through the wind-whipped water at a rate which perhaps could not have been bettered by any ship that sailed.
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