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Updated: May 13, 2025
"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.
"Numbers, I fear," replied Vigitello, "would be in favour of Asad. No truly devout Muslim will stand against the Basha, the representative of the Sublime Portal, to whom loyalty is a question of religion. Yet they are accustomed to obey thee, to leap at thy command, and so Asad himself were rash to put it to the test." "Ay a sound argument," said Sakr-el-Bahr. "It is as I had thought."
Below on the waist-deck Sakr-el-Bahr was pacing with Vigitello, and Vigitello's words to him were of a tenor identical almost with those of Biskaine to the Basha. "I scarce can judge," said the Italian renegade. "But I do think that it were not wise for either thou or Asad to take the first step against the other." "Are matters, then, so equal between us?"
So Sakr-el-Bahr, in his turn, lifted up his voice, and in answer to his shout came Vigitello and Larocque.
The corsair was supremely ill at ease, as a man must be who has something to conceal, and who begins to fear that he may have been betrayed. Yet who was there could have betrayed him? But three men aboard that vessel knew his secret Ali, his lieutenant, Jasper, and the Italian Vigitello.
Sakr-el-Bahr's sea-hawks called upon him, reminding him of their fidelity and love, and asking could he repay it now by dooming them all thus to destruction. "Have faith in me!" he answered them. "I have never led you into aught but victory. Be sure that I shall not lead you now into defeat on this the last occasion that we stand together." "But the galleon is upon us!" cried Vigitello.
"Vigitello," said he, "is it possible that I have been betrayed to the Basha?" Vigitello looked up sharply at the question, then smiled with confidence. They were standing alone by the bulwarks on the waist-deck. "Touching what we carry yonder?" quoth he, his glance shifting to the bale. "Impossible.
Sakr-el-Bahr's arm swung up a second time. "Thou dog!" he roared, and then checked, perceiving that Lionel appeared to have swooned. He turned and bellowed for Vigitello and his mates in a voice that was hoarse with passion. Vigitello came at a run, a couple of his men at his heels. "Unshackle me this carrion, and heave it overboard," was the harsh order.
The murmurs swelled, not to be overborne by his fierce presence and scowling brow, and suddenly one of the renegades secretly prompted by the wily Vigitello raised a shout for the captain whom they knew and trusted. "Sakr-el-Bahr! Sakr-el-Bahr! Thou'lt not leave us penned in this cove to perish like rats!" It was as a spark to a train of powder.
On that they parted, Vigitello to make his way to the prow and there engage in his investigations, Sakr-el-Bahr slowly to retrace his steps to the poop. But at the first bench abaft the gangway he paused, and looked down at the dejected, white-fleshed slave who sat shackled there. He smiled cruelly, his own anxieties forgotten in the savour of vengeance.
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