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Roy Glashan's Library
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Adventure, August 1914, with "The Sword of Iskander"
THE Anthonys were ever an untamable breed, unbowed by circumstances, and though the last but one, the present laird, was a sport from the true type, Richard, the last of all of them, was the most uncompromising, the most indomitable of the lot. He carried his head as a king should want to, and was the instant enemy of anything that blustered.
When black clouds gathered and all the signs pointed to foul weather, Dick Anthony was at his best; it brought out the fight in him. A storm to him gave promise of fast sailing with a tight sheet and a steady helm. Thunder meant clearing of the air. And, never a man of very many words, he said least at times when many other men talk most.
So, since babbling brooks boil loudest 'round the rocks, his uncle, Major Wallace Anthony, strode up and down the room and damned him by a dozen Highland devils and as many English ones.
"Failed!" he swore for the dozenth time. (Richard was keeping count.) "A fool, fat-headed, failed civilian, over-age to pass ex-examinations! Bah! God pity you!"
So far as age and a certain failure went the indictment was exactly true, and Richard held his peace. He leaned with his back against the table and both hands resting on its edge—insolently lackadaisical—smilingwith the humorous patience that so exasperated any one who did not like him. There were few who did not like him, but he knew how to make them very angry.
He looked much the less fat-headed of the two. As the sun burst through banking clouds a moment and shone behind him through the mullioned window it lit up his tawny hair and made his head seem cleanly chiseled out of gold. It shone past him, too, into the eyes of Major Anthony, showing up lines that meant high living—contrasting has-been strength with strength, firm outline with incipient rotundity—as. the sun's disconcerting manner is. The Major had to turn his head and blink before he could resume.
"First failed for the Army—now failed for the Civil Service! What's the good of you—the earthly good? The first Anthony in thirteen generations not to be a soldier or a ruler! An education wasted—good money thrown away—result what? Failed, by the two-tailed devil of Dunalaistair! Failed twice! What next, pray? What are you here for?"
"To talk business," smiled Richard, in no apparent hurry to begin. "I didn't fail—the first time—for the Army; I missed."
"What's the difference?" snapped his uncle. "What was a would-be soldier doing in a boat so near examination-time? Eh? Hurt yourself, eh? Broke a leg, eh? Couldn't attend, eh? That's a nice story for an Anthony to tell! A pretty—a characteristic story! I suppose that's how the Duke of Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo, eh? Couldn't attend, I suppose! Wasn't there! Huh! A very pretty story! And what next?"
"I don't believe there's a case on record," smiled Dick, "of a man being educated for the Army and then passing for the Indian Civil. If so, the man's a freak. I'm not a freak."
"You're a failure!" snapped his uncle.
Dick smiled exasperatingly. Always—even when a little boy—he had been adept at drawing the other fellow's fire. He could wait, and wait, and wait until the other fellow overstepped himself; but then there would be a flurry.
"What good are you?" demanded Major Anthony. "What good to anybody? How will you justify the room you take up in the world? What can you do?"
"I have to thank circumstances," smiled Richard, "I can swim. I know Persian—Hindustani—French—more than a little Arabic—I'm up in ancient and modern history—know something of military tactics—I can ride "
"Any of that get you a living?" snarled the Major. But Richard was amused, and saw fit to enumerate.
"I'm in excellent health"—(he could feel the young blood racing in his veins, and his eyes, that had so many colors in them, sparkled as his uncle's could not)—"and I can sail a boat against any man I ever met."
"That's it!" swore his uncle, blowing up with rage. "Sail a boat! That's all you can do! That's all you own beyond a suit or two of clothes! Sail a boat!"
"I mean to," said Richard. "I'm only waiting—for you—to talk—business—first."
A man who had been at school with him and had seen him fight or play three-quarter-back in a losing game would have recognized the danger now, and have summoned caution. But his uncle floundered straight on into a direct encounter there could be no dodging.
"What business? Balderdash! What d'you think I'll do for you?—A failure!—A disgrace to the Anthonys! There has been too much good Anthony money squandered on you, sir! Not one penny! Not one ha'penny!"
Dick laughed outright, still leaning back and still disgustingly at ease. Had his laugh been forced it would have pleased his uncle; but it was not forced. It was manly—free—unmusical as always—eloquent of disregard.
"What the devil do you see to amuse you?"
Dick laughed again in three glad, random keys. His eyes lit with laughter as they rested on the family motto, carved deep below the coat of arms in the black oak of the Elizabethan mantelpiece:
"Agree with thine adversary quickly."
Dick looked like the spirit of agreement of a certain kind. Wisdom would have urged agreement with him.
His uncle read the meaning of the laughter now, and showed the first symptoms of awakening mistrust. Dick was no taller and no heavier; each of them stood the merest fraction under five feet eleven inches, and each was lean-limbed and muscular. They were at exactly equal distances from either end of the low, beamed room, with the huge old fireplace to Richard's right and the portraits of dead-and-gone Anthonys to his left.
Yet, Major Anthony felt small, and at a disadvantage, and a great deal nearer to a wall. He looked into Dick's eyes, which were exactly on a level with his own—and flinched.
He had to say something. Dick's silence was too strong for him.
"You're disinherited! It's automatic. The estate provided for you while there was a chance to pass an examination. That ceased when you failed for the Indian Civil. To inherit, an Anthony must enter one or other of the Services. You know that. You failed. What are you here for? What's the nature of the business?"
There was no gainsaying the assertion; it was based on the well-known wording of a famous will, and every Anthony had complied with it. But Dick folded his arms as if about to state an unanswerable case.
"I'll support no able-bodied man!" snapped his uncle, misinterpreting the attitude.
"Did you ever fight one?" wondered Dick.
"What d'ye mean?"
Major Wallace Anthony sprang back two paces, two shades paler, but Richard did not move.
"I'm giving you your choice." Richard also was speaking very slowly. "You fight, or you pay me a thousand pounds; a thousand pounds was provided in the will for every Anthony in line of succession on entering any of the Services. I want that thousand."
"You want—! I've heard of impudence!" his uncle stammered. "I've heard of nerve—but—! What d'ye mean? You can't get into any of the Services—you're too old to pass—you're a back number—what d'ye mean?"
"The Territorials," smiled Dick, "were not invented, were they, when that will was written?"
"No, sir, they were not. Much good they'd do you in any case!"
"I've taken Counsel's opinion," said Dick, "and I'm assured that a commission in the Territorials will count. There's a thousand pounds for every Anthony in line on getting his commission."
"I'll take care you don't get a commission, even in the Volunteers!" crowed his uncle. "The War Office ask for references. They investigate. They'll apply to me for information. I've only got to mention this little attempt at blackmail! Blackmailers don't get commissions!"
"This," said Dick, drawing a parchment from his pocket, "is my commission in the Territorials. Care to read it?"
"It's a lie!" swore the Major, seizing it and crumpling it between his fists.
Then he uncrumpled it and read it, and flung it back at Dick.
"It's a trick! It's a damned rat-lawyer's scheme! As present beneficiary—with all that that involves—" (He winced as Dick laughed. It was notorious that while the Major's present wife lived there could be no son and heir.)—"I shall consider it my duty to fight! It's a sheer attempt at imposition—robbery! No such thing as the Territorials was contemplated in the will—no, sir—no such thing—and I shall fight!"
"You either fight or pay," smiled Richard without moving.
"What d'ye mean?"
"I mean I'm entitled to the money, and I've come for it. Don't answer yet. Listen! Just before old MacDougal diedhe told me how much you paid him to break my leg by accident. He quoted your actual words. 'If he's not there, MacDougal at examination-time, there'llbe a hundred pounds for you.' He showed me the actual hundred—the actual bank-notes you gave him. He offered them to me. His son Andry has the hundred now; he knows where it came from and for what, and he has tried to get me to take it."
The Major's jaw dropped, but he on his heel in an attempt to bluster.
"I'll thrash you for old MacDougal's sake if you try to make him out a liar!" laughed Dick. "I've found you out! If MacDougal had told me sooner, I'd have seen throughyour advice to begin cramming for the Indian Civil. I ought to have known it was impossible, and I blame myself to that extent; but what you said seemed so dashed disinterested, and you raised such wail about the honor of the Anthonys, that I listened. Of course I understand now that you deliberately encouraged me to do what you believed impossible, and you made matters more sure by bribing my tutor!"
"What mare's nest is this?" his uncle spluttered.
"He admitted that you bribed him, and I thrashed him for it just three weeks ago today. He and I are quits. He put the admission in writing and I had it witnessed; my lawyer has it now."
The Major said nothing, thoughtfully. An officer—presumably a gentleman—found out at such expedient for saving money, is perhaps wiser if he doe nothing.
"Under the circumstances," continued Dick, "I applied for a commission in a hurry, and saw a lawyer. I know where I am and where you are. I've come for that thousand, and I'll take it now or fight—now, understand—not tomorrow or the day after—now! And I give you from now exactly five minutes to come to a decision! No, don't try to leave the room—I've got my eye on the bell, too—thirty seconds are up! Think, man—you'd better think!"
After one wild glance around him for a way of escape Major Wallace Anthony sat down and thought deliberately, The stake he had played for had not been a very big one—a mere thousand pounds in cash, and four hundred pounds a year—but he had played for it with underhanded patience of the kind that legacies and jealousy and barren wives give being to. It went hard with him to have to admit that he had lost after spending two hundred pounds in bribes—on a fisherman who did not use the money, and on a tutor who very likely would have accepted less.
His eye wandered to that motto in the oak of the mantelpiece: "Agree with thine adversary quickly." He knew young Richard's habit when his word was passed, and realized that if he tried to equivocate or spar for time the thrashing sure to be administered would take him weeks to recover from.
And he considered the legal side of things. He had overlooked that Territorial possibility. The case would be at least strong enough to tempt the lawyers, and costs would come out of the estate.
"I'll pay," he said quietly, pulling out his check-book, just as Dick snapped his watch shut. "It's extortion, but I'll pay."
Dick watched him write the check, and watched him write and sign a letter to the Lamlash bankers in confirmation of it.
"Now I'm off," he said, putting both into his pocket. "You'll pay my four hundred a year to my lawyer, or he'll be after you to know why. There's only one thing more before I go—the sword—I'm heir—I've a right to it—I want it."
"No," said Major Wallace Anthony.
"Possession," said Dick, walking to the mantelpiece, "is nine points of the law."
HE took down a wonderful old claymore, basket-hilted, with a beryl set in the top of the hilt, and characters etched rather rudely down the blade. It had no scabbard; and though the blade had been kept polished by almost unnumbered generations, the weapon looked older than the mantelpiece.
"I'll take it with me," said Dick, "and if you want it back you'll have to fight for it—except on one condition, of course. The day a direct heir is born I'll bring it back, if I'm at the other end of the world. Failing an heir—remember the written evidence I hold against you—and—don't—let—me—catch—you—again! Good day!"
Holding the strange sword by the blade, he strode out, straight up the road to Lamlash. Before he was half way to the island-locked harbor he seemed to have forgotten the low, slate-roofed mansion of his ancestors that snuggled in the hills behind him—to have forgotten its occupant—to have forgotten that he was heir to anything except the freedom of the earth and sea.
Walking like a king and utterly unconscious of it, he kept his eyes fixed ahead to where a few yachts and a crowd of fishing-boats lay huddled under Holy Island's shelter, moored snug against the gathering storm. Soon he began to whistle. There were footsteps hurrying behind him—big, heavy, crunching ones—but he took no notice of them. It needed a touch at his sleeve to arouse him from smiling daydreams.
"Where away, Mr. Dicky, sir?"
The voice and the accent were a Scotsman's, speaking English with the prideful accuracy of learning newly won. The speaker strode Anak-like in pipe-clayed gaiters, and swung the kilt and sporran of a Highland regiment. The sight of the uniform produced more pang in Dick's inside than any of his uncle's sneers had done, and his smile faded as he faced about.
"Where are ye goin', sir?"
"Away, that's all," said Dick. "Just away."
"Ye have the sword, I see. I'm glad ye have it. Ye'll be goin' in the yacht?" Dick nodded.
No two greater contrasts, judged superficially, ever stood and eyed each other. No two men ever owned between them more of the extremes of strength, physical and mental, but showed the strength in ways more different. There were certain resemblances, for both were red-headed, although Dick Anthony was tawnier than red; Andry MacDougal owned a poll that would have graced an Angus heifer fresh from grass. Both men looked active. Both men stood on springs. Both men had humor, and both mouths were evidently meant to smile with. But there the likeness ended, except that both men were good to look at; blue serge suit and plain straw hat or not—sporran and kilt and plaid or not—a woman would have turned to look twice at either of them, and a man three times.
Andry was six full inches the taller of the two, and looked even bigger in his uniform. If regularity of feature makes for beauty he was hideous; he was handsome if a man may be handsome and have freckles and break all the other rules. But though he stood as a drilled man does—as a proud man should—straight, unafraid, and deferent—he looked no stronger and no more attractive than the gentleman who stood at ease and eyed him with such quiet confidence.
"I joined the Ar-r-my to serve ye, Mr. Dicky. I've that hunner' pound ye won't accept, an' I'll not gi'e it to y'r uncle. Speakin' o' him, I've twa sets o' fingers ready noo to tear his thrapple oot at a word from ye! I'm at y'r service, Mr. Dicky, sir."
"Not at all," said Dick promptly. "You're at the King's service."
Andry made a huge grimace, expressive of disgust a Southron could never rise to.
"I'll deser-r-t at one word from ye!"
"If you do, I'll hand you over to the police the first second I set eyes on you!"
"Man, I believe ye! Where are ye goin', Mr. Dicky? Where awa'?"
"Africa—Tunis—Algeria—Egypt— anywhere."
"Alone?"
"Of course."
"Tak' me!"
"No."
All that Andry MacDougal knew of Africa was that it was sinful, and that black men lived there. On the little schoolhouse map in Lamlash he remembered Africa as yellow and immense; on the map in the regimental schoolroom it was red, though, and immenser, which was disconcerting, although due no doubt to military machinations. He was disposed to believe that the red represented blood. He shook his head solemnly a moment.
"Aweel," he said then, "ye wash often."
There was a pause while they eyed each other, Dick uncompromising, Andry recognizing fact. "Ye can carry ten days' water—maybe fourteen days'. An' there's a map in barracks. I'm gaun' back to barracks; ma leave's up—I'll no forget where ye're gaun'. Here's a Godspeed to ye!"
Forgetful of his uniform, he held out a great fist like a club with hairs and freckles on it. Then he remembered and changed to a salute. Dick reached his own hand out (and it was only very little whiter); Andry seized it, and was satisfied. He was stubborn wrath-of-God-weaned Covenanter to his iron backbone, and he had paid no wet tribute to emotion since he left his mother's knee, but his eyes ran water. Dick Anthony could squeeze hard when he chose.
"If I could have gone into the old regiment, Andry, I would have been proud have you for a servant. It was decent of you to enlist on my account. As it is, you're in and I'm out; you can't get out, and I can't get in. Do your best to be a credit to the regiment. Try for promotion, Andry—try for promotion. Good-by."
Andry saluted him again and stood a-gaze as Dick walked off. Then he, too, turned, and each man went his way, walking along as if the earth belonged to him, though neither of them looked like a man who would be very harsh to trespassers. Neither looked back until they were out of each other's sight.
THEN, though, Andry MacDougal climbed a hillock by the roadside and sat down to smoke where a clump of wind-blown alders hid him from casual view. There he wrestled hour after hour with his Covenanter's conscience and a muttered something that he called a "hunner' pound." He was still in the throes of it—still arguing with himself—when Dick Anthony had finished filling his yacht's fresh-water tank at the hose-pipe on the quay, and was listening to a homily from the apple-cheeked ancient in a tam-o'shanter who officiated there in all the different capacities a 'longshore Scotsman can assume. And they are many, and include the moralities.
"Ou-aye—ou-aye—a young man an' his fancy!—Aye, I've seen the like many a time! Ye will go, won't ye! Ye want to go, an' ye will go, an' be domned to all advice on that or any other subject! Aye—storm or no storm—an' her that's comin' will be ter-r-ific, mind ye—ye'll have y'r way! Aweel—go then, an' droon—go an' droon an' be done with ye! I've said all I have to say, but you say y'r prayers—say y'r prayers, Mr. Richard Anthony—for I'm thinkin' hell's a verra hot place, an'—"
"Want to hear me say them?" asked Dicky. Ideas that did not run in ruts always won his fancy.
"Aye. I'm thinkin' ye've had no mother to hear ye prattle them this many a year. Say on!"
"Lord God," said Richard, pulling off his hat, as serious as Doctor Gillespie had ever been in kirk on Sunday, "here sails Dick Anthony, with only a thousand pounds between him and a life of shame. Do unto him as he would do to Thee, were he God and Thou Dick Anthony! Amen."
With that he freed his hawser—threw it inboard—and jumped after it. He stood at the little ketch's helm until his headsails drew, and then sat down comfortably, headed down the Firth of Clyde with wind and tide aiding.
Old Tam-o'shanter stood gazing after him, gasping and blinking like a man who has swallowed gasoline instead of whisky.
DICK had spent every second he could wring out of study-time for ten years past in learning and conquering the tides and cross-currents that go boiling through the Kyles of Bute and the savage maze of rock-torn water within forty or fifty miles of Arran.
In fishing-boats—in fragile open-decked affairs intended to be raced—in dinghies—with all the different varieties of rig to aid or to confuse him—he had found his way by day and night, in fog, in driving rain, in sleet or when the wild nor'westers blew—by dint of lead and pluck and reckoning and mother-wit—until in course of time and accident he won to singlehanded seamanship. His uncle had always given him free leave to drown, since it was long ago evident that he rode a horse too well to break his neck that way.
"Fine way to grow into a man!" said his uncle when the question of permission had been raised; and Dick, long since a man in everything but years, had grown into something very few attain—a man who was completely self-contained and self-reliant. He did not know it, and his uncle never even guessed it. He fought the sea indomitably, and had no time to notice how he grew.
But not even Dick had ridden out a storm such as swept the whole of Western Europe for six weeks or more that Summer. There were men who urged the series of rain and gales as disproof absolute of Biblical tradition and the promise there should be no second Deluge.
Before Lamlash had dropped below the skyline to the north and westward of him—while Holy Island was still a dull gray rim above the sea—he noticed that the usually stolid steamers wallowing up the Clyde to Greenock and Clydebank were racing against time, their dirty funnels astream with forced-draft smoke. The few sailing-craft he passed were racing with housed topsails for the nearest port. There was something out of ordinary coming.
His barometer—the hurrying black clouds—the wind—the behavior of other craft and of the birds—all pointed to the one thing, tempest. Soon the wind backed hard, and he had to take three reefs down one by one, coming up into the wind each time and taking a good sweeping stare at the horizon. He was as well fitted as any man living to read the signs, and he noted each one. Better than most men he knew the dangers of those coasts. He considered them.
So those who said afterward that he had been blown to sea along the course he took were altogether wrong. How can a man be blown against a hurricane?
A fishing-fleet, close-hauled in a frantic hurry to reach shelter, made signals as it passed. The last boat—there is no Samaritan so kindly as the storm-taught sailor—altered its course more than a point or two to speak to him, and he put his own helm down to meet the men half way.
"Run for it!" they yelled, with a lot of arm-waving, pointing to the dirty clouds and the white-tops lifting off the dull-gray waves. "Put about an' run for it! Follow us!"
But Dick shouted back to "Give my love to Glasgie!" and went on; so they told ashore afterward of "a puir dementit laddie sailin' into it wi' three reefs down." And that is interesting chiefly as disproof of the other story that he was blown away and could not help himself.
His action was deliberate. He steered out for wider sea-room, and passed Pladda out of sight of everything, just as the storm burst with a full-gale overture.
Then, as if to prove himself (for most of the Anthonys had had to prove themselves when they first set out into the world with a commission and a thousand pounds), he set his boat's nose close into the teeth of the quarreling wind, and pricked out a long leg on his chart that would take him to the middle of St. Patrick's Channel.
He recalled the legend that another Anthony, picked up by chance and promised anything, had piloted the suffering remnant of Spain's Armada around the coast of Ireland in just such another gale as this; and, true to his creed that small-boat sailors are bolder men and better than the high-poop captains, he set out to do better than his ancestor.
Night hid him scudding, low-gunwaled, in a coal-black sea, toward the Irish coast, his little binnacle-light glowing warmly in the shelter of the cockpit, and his ketch—a ten-ton, spoon-bowed cruiser of a thing that he had dubbed the Also Ran—snoring into it, lifting as a duck lifts, easily, over savage seas that thundered down on him past Sanda Island.
Morning found him taking full advantage of a lull in the storm to beat his way to windward past the Mull of Kintyre, sighting land at the end of each alternate "leg" to take cross-bearings. There was plenty of record of him so far, for he was seen and logged with a query after him by more than one hurrying steamer.
But after he passed the Mull his course must be conjectured, for Dick was at no time talkative. He could be induced, sometimes, to talk of what he meant to do, and of what other men had done, but of his own brave doings never. He fought and he won, and there the matter ended; thereafter he was much too busy looking for a bigger tyranny to beat to waste good breath on bragging of the past.
He fought to a finish with the biggest bully he could find—the North Atlantic. He won, and it took him a month to win. It is not easy to imagine how the battle went, with the overhanging cliffs of Ireland on his port bow, and to starboard all the boiling wrath of hurricane- torn ocean. More than one big steel liner sank in that succeeding mess of gales, and many a ship with horse-power reckoned by the thousand turned up three or four weeks overdue.
The captains of the big ships spoke of the storm in shudders. A month in a ten-ton cabined ketch, alone, beggars imagination altogether. He must have come through like the spirit of the wind, too light to swamp, too small to break up underneath a weight of water, and too full of the soul of fight to quit and give the weather best.
He sheltered in Lough Swilly once, and a London paper had a paragraph about him. Once he was reported lying-to under the lee of Tory Island. A report of him reached his uncle many a long week afterward by devious routes from Inishmurray. Three times the papers had him drowned, and once he was reported picked up by a passing ship, but he always turned up a few days afterward, still smiling and still safe in his own weather-hammered ketch.
Tired-eyed and triumphant, he put into more than one place to refit, and once he waited three days while a new sail was made for him, his own fo'sail having gone to feed the mad Atlantic. The fishermen begged him to remain in port until the gales blew by, but he laughed—unmusically as the devil, attractively as a sunny morning—while he thanked them for the warning and refused to wait.
Unshaven, sea-salted, weathered, uncommunicative, he was not a man of whom strangers cared to ask too many questions; and, questioned or not, he put to sea again without any explanation. They would point to barometers, and to the weather signs, and read him off a list of wrecks; he would content himself with paying for what he had come ashore to buy, and then beat out to windward. And he made his goal.
HE reached Cork Harbor utterly dog-weary, but as quietly satisfied as some merry-minded men might be who had come into a legacy. His hands were no longer ornaments, and his complexion bore the imprint of the sea; but he had beaten the sea, and he wore the laurels of the victor in the shape of self-acquaintance unashamed. He wondered why people turned to stare at him as he strode the streets of Cork, and was vaguely annoyed by various and frequent efforts at making his acquaintance.
From Cork he wrote letters and sent telegrams. A letter from his lawyer notified him that the courts had confirmed him heir to the Anthony estates, failing the birth of a son to the present beneficiary; then he promptly applied to Whitehall for three years' leave of absence for travel abroad, and obtained it. Not all of the sweeter fruits of service fall to the Regular Army.
After that he wasted no more time avoiding crowds, but pulled his little anchor out of the mud of the River Lee and took a tow behind a string of barges, out to what should have been blue water. The sun ought to have been shining, to fit in with his mood of venture, for none of Drake's men ever put to sea with more or manlier hope in their hearts or less fear of any consequences. But the sun seemed to have lost heart.
The journey across half a hundred steamer-lanes to the nearest point in France would have called for not much more than caution in ordinary weather, but in the stew of savagery such as that late Summer had to show it proved to be no track for any but a fish, or flotsam, or the wind, or Richard Anthony. The conquerable would have quit and gone back to shelter; the merely foolhardy or the ignorant would have drowned.
In addition to two Channel currents fighting with the wind-flung hate of the Atlantic, there were wallowing ships to reckon with, hurrying homeward with their blind bridge-ends awash at every other roll. The wind, tearing through the plow-steel shrouds, mimicked the steamer whistles that shrieked and passed on. It was the little boats that did the getting out of the way!
He was three days and three nights and another day in making sight of Brest; and he dropped anchor in French water on a lee shore, too tired to do anything but let out every fathom of chain he had, and fling himself below to sleep. He fell at once into the twenty-second stage of sleep and stayed there, tossed like the club of a flail at thrashing-time, and sung to by an anchor-chain that clanked rhythmically through the dirge of wind and sea.
But sleep was his servant, not his mistress. Like the majority of men who have the gift of greatness in them, he could take his rest in concentrated doses when he chose. He was awake again long before midnight, back in the cockpit, watching the winking of the best-lighted coast in all the world, and growing happier each minute as the wind and water tried to winnow him loose, but could not. His was the spirit that draws little pleasure out of half a gale; he must conquer the terrific, even if he must quarter the wide earth to find it, and bring it then to bay.
Now, with the black waves racing past him and the wet wind dirging in his ears he reached the ultimate of human ecstasy. He had to celebrate it. The untamed heathen in his blood wore through the centuries of tutored self-restraint; the same wild blood of mountain-men who had driven back the Romans, of men who had exulted savagely in Killiekrankie Pass, boiled in his veins and crowded for exquisite expression. He dived into the cabin and by dint of stern gymnastics dragged out and unlocked a water-tight steel box. The thing he took from it and brought back to the cockpit it suited him and others of his countrymen to call an instrument of music.
Soon, away and away over the hurrying sea, wilder than the wind that bore it, storm-tortured and confused, there wailed a Highland coronach that split the night—bloodcurdling melancholy ripped from the heart of Wo herself to revel in the murk—no doubt a symphony, but not evident as such to the uneducated ear.
He was a failure, was he? "Lochaber No More" announced to the elements the knell of prospects. Fate and the law of England and his uncle had combined, had they, to clutch away his ten-year-grueled-for career? "Duncan Grey" wrung tears about it from the angry majesty of night. He was that most useless, now, of all things, was he, a crammed, damned, done-for, over-age civilian? So said the Government examiners. So said his uncle. So said the world. "Adieu, My Native Banks of Ayr" went skirling through the drones and chaunter until friend Richard's big, soft, rugged heart was near to splitting under multiplied emotion.
None but the Caledonian Muses know what tune he would have called on next; he was in a mood for anything, provided it were only minor-keyed. But out of the illimitable dark there swept a beam of sudden light, full in his eyes. Through the many-sounding blackness presently there drummed the double din of bronze propellers, driven hard. Almost before he realized that he was not alone—while he yet reached for his pitiful tin-bleating foghorn—gongs rang loud in the waist of a foreign battleship, whose bulging funnels glowed red it seemed a hundred yards above him. The splash of a lowered boat was succeeded instantly by the measured thump of oars. Then a boat-hook found his gunwale, and a voice yelled from the darkness—
"Tchomp!"
DICK blinked into a glare that made his eyes ache, and sought words that might express his incredulity—his wish to understand. Was there war? Were the navies of the world gone mad? Might not a gentleman seek anchorage in foreign waters without——
"Tchomp! Kvick! Fear not, saire! Ve catch you, yes!"
"What for?" asked Dick, illumination not yet dawning on him. His little vessel was plunging heel and toe in a death-dance beside the warship's cutter, and the risk of being crushed together by a wave grew greater each second.
"Vot for? Vot for you summon help? Vot for you blow your vissle—yes?"
"Some mistake," said Dick, leaning on one elbow to avoid the glare, and peering into the face of gallantry in Gallic uniform. "I don't want help."
A shout came from the warship's bridge, and her tremendous whistle started to rip slits in the protesting storm. Even fifteen thousand horse-power dare not dally with a lee shore overlong. He in the cutter's stern waxed angry.
"Not vant help? Then vy you make dangaire signals? Vy you make ze execrable sacré goddam noise, yes—vot for?"
It dawned, then, on Dick Anthony that his music faced indictment. He held up his bagpipes in the beam of light, at the risk of wetting the precious leather bag that held the wind. The spray sploshed heavenward between the plunging boats, and the Frenchman eyed spray and bagpipes with equal disenchantment.
"Sacré nom de quar-r-rante mille culottes!" he swore, considering that the name of breeches would be insult to a Scotsman.
"Carnemuse!" he shouted through the spray. "Un imbecile écossais et sa cornemuse!"
With a curse at Dick Anthony, the weather, and the night, he ordered the cutter about and set the men pulling for the screaming battleship, whose three hundred pounds of superheated steam were singing second to the noisy elements. One had to think in deft inharmonies in order to recognize one's thoughts.
"Run for sheltaire, imbecile!" he shouted back, making a megaphone of his two hands and then waving good-by with a gesture that was art as well as insult. A minute later the cutter was hoisted high in davits and the warship disappeared, hooting like all hell on a holiday.
Now, Dick was no neurotic visionary. He was not an advocate of art for epilepsy's sake, although he did believe himself an expert on his national instrument. He was a level-headed, decent Scots gentleman of more than ordinary parts. His vices—if bagpipes are a vice, for instance—were national. He felt the breath of new things borning, and he needed wilderness and room in which to make acquaintance with the strength he felt was gathering inside him. Whatever the French might think about his "cornemuse," he knew the necessity for playing pibrochs.
And, since within their five-mile limit it was nothing more than reasonable to permit the French a preference for other music, he decided to move on, storm or no storm. There was a witchery about the darkling night that summoned all the prowess and adventure from the depths of him.
So, with a bell-buoy clanging the knell of sailormen close by, he humped his neat, sinewy shoulders above the little winch and worked until his muscles cracked, wrenching his anchor off the bottom by almost superhuman effort. Then he started to beat seaward off a dangerous lee shore.
The lights of Brest, that would have welcomed him, blinked cheerily and brought feather-beds to mind—cooked food in lieu of canned—conversation—frivolity, perhaps. The sea grew wrather each minute—blinder—more bitter—colder—more uninviting. He remembered he had meant to visit Brest.
But, the more the red and white lights called, the clearer called the witchery of being all alone. He knew that to the tune of Highland music in among the bull-backed breakers thoughts were coming to him big enough to burst the heads of unimaginative men. Men do not achieve freedom by yelping with the crowd; they win it alone, and then the crowd yelps after them to do their bidding.
Dick was not thinking of the crowd. Nor was he thinking of Dick Anthony. He was letting thoughts come to him where the bigger thoughts are born, and where none but the bravest and the best dare go to gather them. He was not choosing where the thoughts should lead. He knew—and that was sufficient—that he was winning freedom.
Strengthened by the savage music he had made and meant to make, his fight that time for open sea was his fiercest yet. Sea, wind, tide, currents, and fatality combined to oppose him. A ton of water, flung like a joke from the caldron where the devil's broth is brewed, flopped ton-heavy in the cockpit, drowning his binnacle-light and rendering his compass valueless. He had to guess, and wear to sea by judgment and dead reckoning.
And the man who understands the art by which dead reckoning is made knows too how the seamew and the albatross can find the way. He is a man who holds his tongue, as a general rule, and does things.
Nursing his sails' strength, Dick bored close-hauled into the blackness, luffing a little and again when the worst of the wrenching squalls took hold of him, until a glimpse behind him over one shoulder told him that the lights of Brest were fifteen miles away; they were growing paler in the first dim efforts of a watery dawn.
Then he hove-to. Then, with the spirit that had brought him out still running high, and growing higher as the promise of foul weather showed the need of it, he reached again for his bagpipes. "Should Auld Acquaintance" skirled aloud and louder, where the gulls had days since ceased to dare.
So it was not a gull that answered him, as the last notes died away. And the sea gives back no echo. They were pipes!
The tune, perhaps, was inappropriate, for what Campbells could be coming over that wet ridge and furrow? He was no beleaguered garrison—no last man left—only the last of the Anthonys, alone and unafraid, hove-to in a waste of water. It occurred to him, though he did not know why, that it was not good to be hove-to. He unlashed his tiller and let the yacht's nose fall away.
THEN, as the gray dawn lifted, he caught the lilt and skirl and swing of pipes again. Then, as he rose on a giant comber and could see 'round a twice-as-wide horizon, a patched gray lugsail showed, bellied tight and bearing down on him at a terrific pace.
In a small French fishing-boat, such as the poorer Bretons use, a giant of a man sat perched with what certainly were pipes across his knees, He sat with his legs in water, and was steering with the evident intent of coming very close indeed to Dick.
He shouted, but it was not possible to hear him. It was only possible to realize one arch-impossibility. Whoever he was, he could not possibly, by any stretch of seamanship or skill or chance, go about into the wind—come to—lose weigh—alter his course—or stop—without swamping instantly. He was running, as the sailors call it, "on" the wind, and behind him raced death in the shape of piled-up, greedy waves.
The man made a signal as he came within a lusty shout's length, but a shout's length was not his nearest. He carried on until he was all but abreast, some thirty feet away. Then, as the yacht rose high on a mountain of a thing with a bitter fanged fringe wind-whipped along' its summit, and the little boat sank deep into a swirling valley—as the spray swept up in a singing curtain between them, half blinding Dick, he caught sound of a yell—he saw what seemed to be the last of a drowning man—and the small boat went on uncontrolled, to swamp a minute later, cockle up, and sink.
It has been hinted, once or twice perhaps, that Richard Anthony was neither more nor less than gentleman. Death offered now—wet death—unwitnessed. As a man does see such things and comprehend their meaning in a flash, he saw the total of the pride of mastery he had won by all that fighting—he saw his hard-won leave to live and believe in Richard Anthony—he saw the dismal end of it. He could see his uncle exulting, and could read the obits in the papers. He tasted, felt, saw, weighed the temptation to let this unknown idiot drown—felt the full strength of it—realized the utter certainty of being whelmed—swamped—ended—cut off in his prime of newly born ambition—laughed in the eyes of it—and went about!
He put his ketch's bulk between the swimmer and the wind. He took the full force of the rage and weight of hell on his trembling broadside. He flung a life-line while he held on in the cockpit, his leg jammed up against the side until the coaming cut into his thigh like an ax. He felt and heard the thunder of the waves on his ketch's underside, as she keeled, and keeled, and shook. He saw the water up above him—saw a burst wave fill his mainsail—saw the fo'sail fill—saw both sails go down, down, all but under, as the deck hove skyward—felt a tug—hauled hard on the lifeline—humped his shoulders as he never yet had strained them, even at the winch—and hauled into the brimming cockpit a spluttering, wet human who thrust dripping bagpipes underneath the seat and leaped like an orang-outang to the weather-shrouds.
In a second it was evident that there were two men laboring to save the ship, not one. The newcomer sprang on the sails and slashed them with a dirk, letting the water pour away to freedom. Before another wave could fill them up, Dick Anthony had headed her a little to the wind. In five minutes the ketch was floating upright, with a foot of water flopping on the cabin floor, but whole—into the wind—and safe.
"If ye'll heave her to," said the dripping giant, staggering aft, "I'll bend ye new sails on."
Dick said nothing, but hove-to as desired and let out a sea-anchor. Then he watched the gaunt jetsam of a man perform gymnastics that would have taxed the strength of most athletes on dry land.
"I found ye by wireless," he said with a note of pride, as he dropped into the cockpit later and accepted bread and cheese. "I was waitin' yonder at the signal-station, givin' up hope of ye, though I thought ye must pass this way. Then there cam' news of a man they said was mad, playin' tunes an' orderin' battleships to go to hell, an' I knew I'd found ye. Aye, it was easy then! But, man, I'm tellin' ye, I've fairly bur-r-rned money—bur-r-med it! I've not a ha'penny left of all that hunner' pound—buyin' yon boat that's sunken took ma Last penny piece."
"Did you desert?" asked Dick; and those were the first words he had spoken.
"Eh?"
"Did you desert?"
"I did not. I bought ma dischar-r-rge. It was varra costly, but I broke into the hunner' pound an' bought it."
"Oh."
"So, I'm at y'r ser-r-vice," with an air of triumph.
"Very well, Andry. Man the pump."
So, two men went on from Brest, where one had started out alone, and through all that followed there was never any more compact than that between them—three words of agreement, and an order—"Man the pump." They were enough.
CAIRENE society is cosmopolitan, but Princess Olga Karageorgovich was out of place. In spite of her Servian name, her money and her influence were Russian, and her dresses were "conceived" in Paris.
If she was more than two and twenty, then the extra years were as artfully concealed as were her motives. And if appearance went for anything, she should have been adorning Mayfair, or the Bois, or any of the promenades of Europe where cream and roses vie with one another. She had all junior officialdom enthralled—enraptured—hypnotized by the art that glowed behind her eyes—attendant on her. And they were paid of course for wet-nursing dry fellaheen. The seniors (and their wives) all voted her a nuisance.
She spoke French chiefly, and there is not much sense in talking politics in any other tongue in Egypt, for English politics—at all events along the Nile—are stodgy and utilitarian to the stuffiest degree.
All the finer, in-between-the-lines work is hinted at in French, and it was the high-falutin' stuff that appealed to her; she posed as a student of institutions. And after Dick let go his anchor in the harbor of Alexandria and came on to Cairo by express, she grew interested in purely British things, asking a brand-new line of questions. Officialdom had hopes, for a while, that she even meant to visit Scotland.
The sunshine of Dick's character had strengthened, now that he had a companion of kinds. He might have grown tired of his Odyssey, but for having to lead Andry. Keeping the man's courage up in the Bay of Biscay, without letting Andry know that he was doing it, was Dick's first serious lesson in the art of leading, and it held his interest.
The Bay of Biscay had treated them according to tradition. Twenty-mile-long rollers, hove high on one another by the mid-Atlantic and sent hurrying along the leagues to thunder at the rock-bound feet of Portugal, pitched them up into the spray until their keel showed clear above a lifting ridge—caught them in seething spume, to be sucked down valley-deep into a maelstrom—only to fling them up again and heave them, flat-beaten by the wind, against another white-topped wall of sea. They had no second of unwatchfulness.
Turn about, they had to nurse the little ship day and night, night and day, ceaselessly. Again and again Andry, laboring at the pump, begged him to seek aid from some high-sided merchantman, thrashing past into the gale. But Dick laughed and refused. They blew on southward like the spirit of the storm, logged as wreckage by the big ships—a wraith of something darker than the weather, glimpsed for an instant and then gone.
When Andry was despondent, out would come Dick's bagpipes, and a swaggering refrain would answer back the storm, putting new fight in both of them. No man can listen to the pipes for long and be afraid, unless the pipes are preaching at him. The skirl of them draws out a strong man's courage, as a snake comes from its hole, backbone crawly-wise, and the might-have-been-a-quitter lifts his chin. (But it takes a man to play them when the bullets whistle, or, as in this case, when the wild sea is the enemy.)
They scooted through the raging straits of Gib. as the dolphins go, swift, straight, and foaming, all eyes awake for the steamers coming through along twenty or more diverging lanes and chasing their own smoke. But after that, there followed blue, sweet-sailing months in which they dawdled leisurely along the coast of Africa, oblivious of time and unannoyed by the flag of England.
Even the old mercantile Red Ensign, hanging tousled from the stern of some filthy tramp, would give Dick qualms and set him to considering unbeaten trails. For all his sunniness, he was hard-bitten. Failure—rejection—had hurt his inmost soul, and he needed those lazy, sunny months to give him back a little of proportion. When he started he could have almost taken sides with England's enemies; by the time that he reached Egypt he could keep his shame hidden, but he was as far, still, from forgetting as the Jews were in ancient Babylon. He had some hazy notion that the Sphinx might prove good company, and that there would be solace in the desert silences.
Andry—ready to fight anybody at the drop of anybody's hat for Dick's sake—nearly wept when the little Also Ran was sold for fifty pounds to a 'longshore Greek. She was worth that for her keel and rivets. The yacht was wheezy by this time—strained all to pieces—leaking in every seam—and another deep-sea journey in her would have been unthinkable. But from that minute Andry hated Greeks and Egypt. He would have bought her himself, if he had had the money, and he declared war there and then on all the systems of the East, social, business, and religious.
He shepherded the luggage up to Cairo with perspiring care, and not one single dragoman eked out a tip. And he punched one dragoman so fiercely that Dick had to pay two pounds (Egyptian) to settle matters.
For a few days Cairo swallowed Dick. Officialdom, for his father's sake, put him up for the swellest clubs and entertained him. Sharp-eared, wide-eyed officialdom in sweat-wet suits extracted facts from him and sympathized in a manner of its own. It was on a club veranda, with a long "John Collins" on the table at her side, that Princess Karageorgovich heard Richard say things which convinced her—which made her send a cablegram or two in code.
She was not supposed to hear. She was supposed to be listening to the admiring chatter of a little group of worshipers. Dick—never a lady's man, even when the lady had soft eyes and was twenty-two—would have winced at the thought of sharing secrets with her. The hot, tired-eyed Proconsul in starched white drill drew Dick aside to where both thought themselves out of earshot. He was in quest of new, strong nerves—of unmosquito-bitten energy—of youth, and young idealism, and clean pride—to feed the Government machinery at thirty-three per cent. of market price.
"You must be reasonable, my boy." It was clear that Dick had told him many things. "You must take what you can get. Because you failed for the Indian Civil and couldn't make the Regular Army for some reason or other is no reason why you shouldn't be a huge success with us. We want good men. We're looking for them. Go home and get nominated—I'll give you a letter that will turn the trick."
"I wouldn't go home if they'd give me Egypt," answered Dick. But the elder man persisted.
"Take my advice, now, and pack off home. There's a splendid field waiting for you here."
"No," said Dick quietly, leaning back against the pillar and looking the Proconsul straight between the eyes. "It's very good of you to suggest it, and—er—thanks awfully—"
"Why not?"
"You wouldn't like it if I told you."
"Not at all. Go ahead. Always glad to listen to another point of view. Speak up!"
"Well—I'm sick and tired and disgusted with the British Government. I despise the whole damned kettle of fish, and I won't demean myself to the extent of taking service. I despise any Government that'd turn a good man down just because some other man knows a little more Sanskrit poetry, or some such twaddle. It was Sanskrit, if you please, that pilled me! For that, I'm a rebel—yes—a rebel! I feel like becoming an American. I'd as soon be a Jew as an Englishman!"
"I've no doubt America could put you to work," laughed the official. "Have you any definite plans?"
"No. Except that I'm going to leave Egypt. Can't afford to stop here for one thing—too expensive."
"This isn't like the Home Government," smiled the Proconsul, stroking a gray mustache. "You'd like it here—think it over."
"Done thinking!" answered Dick with one of his sun-lit smiles, that broke as a rule so suddenly and melted opposition. "I think it's high time British ideas of things were routed out and cleaned. What interests me most is wondering who's big enough to do it. No, I won't take a Government job on any terms, but thanks awfully—and please don't construe anything I've said as personal. If the rest were like you I wouldn't hesitate."
"It seems to me that your ideas are the ones that want cleaning, young man!" The senior was showing traces of annoyance.
"No," said Dick, cocksurely, "I've cleaned mine. Good afternoon, sir."
He raised his hat and stalked away, walking like a king and not at all aware of it; he seemed to himself more like a little, unimportant man who had said a lot too much. He felt hot all over—hot with shame—and his storm-taught sense of freedom chafed again at the thought of lingering where officialdom lay in wait for him with a cunning noose of words. He reached his hotel and a new decision simultaneously.
HE found Andry on his bedroom floor, crouched over the beryl-hilted sword, cleaning it, and he watched him for a while, half amused, half wondering. That sword always did make him wonder, just as it always filled Andry with loyal ecstasy. To Andry it stood for all that mattered in the way of ethics—birthright, loyalty, clan-leadership, obedience, possession—he would have sooner left his meals and money than that relic of a more-than-feudal past. To Dick it was scarcely any more than a reminder of his home, and he wondered oftener than not why he had seen fit to insist on taking it. He certainly would not have owned to a superstitious regard for it, whereas Andry would not trust it even under lock and key, but carried it with him wherever he went.
"Pack up!" said Dick, after watching a little while. "We take the evening train for Alexandria."
Nothing loath, Andry obeyed, folding things with an Army-taught exactness and locking them with Scots suspicion of the world. It was all one to him where the service led him; he was fixed for life, and knew it, and perfectly content to travel anywhere.
BUT, if Dick imagined that he was drawing back from a trap and that a quick retreat from Cairo would see him free of the world again, he mistook the signs, or else he failed to see them.
"Who was the young man with the royal stride?" asked Princess Olga Karageorgovich, not more than two minutes after Dick had left the club. And, glad of a chance to answer what seemed for once a genuinely harmless question, the Proconsul wiped inside his collar with a dripping handkerchief and told the truth.
"Traveling for his own amusement, or so he says, and none too pleased with what he sees. Feels the weather, I expect—name's Anthony—Richard Anthony of Arran—dunno, I'm sure, what his plans are."
He did not know that from behind a pillar the Princess had heard every word of Dick's conversation, and he would not have cared two pins in any case. He was merely glad when the Princess nodded him good afternoon and drove away. Everybody knew that she was there for something; but what Russian intrigue expected to achieve in Egypt was beyond imagining, and the presence of an unnecessary addition to his legitimate problems bored him.
But Andry—who was so suspicious of all strangers as a rule—was frankly and delightedly bewitched. She met him in the hotel corridor—by accident, of course—and wisely resisted the temptation to give him a gold coin. He would have taken it, would have put it in the pocket of his "trews," and would thenceforward have been on his closest guard. But she divined that much, and refrained.
"Off back to bonnie Scotland?" she asked him, with a smile that won his heart. Her eyes had melted it already, but the smile seemed like the spirit of all the kisses that had ever been, and Andry fell to pieces morally.
"No-no, leddy—na-na! We're gaun' tae Alexandria, on the train the nicht."
She smiled again, and left him feeling as if the Sphinx had grown young again and had laid siege to him. And that evening, as he stood on the station platform outside Dick's reserved compartment, he pointed out the Princess and her little retinue fussing on to the train.
"She's a varra fine wumman, sir—verra fine!" he assured Dick, with an air of confidence. "Name, sir? Her name's the Princess Krakatchoustiwich. She's French. From France."
SUSPICIOUS—canny— dour—immense—and something slow of movement, Andry was nevertheless a "de'il wi' the lasses." If they wanted to admire the height and the heft of him, the brightness of his eyes and the sheen of his red hair, they had his leave and he gave them opportunity. He had seldom enjoyed anything so much as standing about in the great hot foyer of the Hotel Tewfik Pasha, as he always did when Dick chose to wander off alone.
No woman went in or out without the benefit of his notice, and there was one whom he particularly favored; she had round, brown eyes, and a dainty ankle, and she spoke so little English that he had to repeat things over and over again. Thus she learned what he said by heart, without his realizing it.
"If it is the business of a maid to let herself be kissed by a cannibale écossais and c-r-r-r-r-ushed comme ça," she panted, still trying to speak English, she was so unhinged with indignation, "then it is also business to say the price is a hundred francs, n'est-ce pas?"
"Speak French, imbecile," purred Princess Olga Karageorgovich, "and do not speak so loud."
So the maid continued in her own swift-flowing tongue:
"He says—ugh! Lemonstre!—says—that he carries the sword in that bag, and that he sleeps with it because his master would rather die than lose it. He says he never, no, never, leaves it—not at any time. He showed it to me—ugh!—so big—and sharp—with two edges—and with a great beryl in the handle, old and badly cut—it is antique. He says—there is a king, once on a time, in his disgusting Scotland—name of Alexander. This Alexander cochon conquers in a battle—name of Larg—in Arran, wherever that is—year 1266—another cochon king of Norway—name of Haakon. He says—his master's ancestor—name of Anthony—performs terrific acts of valor, and the cochon Alexander gives to him this two-edged-sword affair, wishing to confer on him distinction. After that, he produces the sword of two edges—and—when I nearly faint at the blood-curdling spectacle—he kisses me—la! He c-r-r-r-r-ushes me, comme ça! In the name of Justice I demand a hundred francs!"
"Continue," smiled the Princess, not noticing the modest request.
"There was no more, except that they leave here at daybreak—he did not name the steamer. Their berths have been engaged."
"Send Henri to me," purred the Princess, and the maid decamped grumbling.
Henri proved to be a Levantine of sallow skin—dressed in an Egyptian fez and European clothes. He bowed, and waited in silence for his orders.
"Tell Filmi Fared I have news for him."
Henri bowed himself out again in silence, and the Princess walked to the window, whence she could see Dick Anthony striding along the sea-front as if the whole earth knew he owned it. She watched him as a snake might watch a bird until he crossed the street and disappeared in the hotel.
"I must see him on a horse," she told herself. "I ought to see him on a horse. But there isn't time! If he looked as well on horseback as he does on foot, I would know—that he is 'it'—and that 'it' has happened!"
Her reflections were broken into—or perhaps continued—by the opening of the door. Filmi Fared was bowed in first by the mixed-blood Henri; then he bowed himself in, with both hands folded in front of him and his brown eyes fixed on the floor. It was only when a sound suggested that the Princess might have moved her head that his eyes looked up. And at that she tricked him. She had looked away and back again.
She caught his eyes and laughed—stepped up to him and took his arm—led him to a couch—and stood there facing him, after compelling him to sit. He sat quite still, except that one hand stroked his gray-shot beard. Then a long, lean forefinger scratched at the side of his aquiline nose. Then he bit his knuckle. Then his eyes met hers again for an instant, and he looked guilty instead of being glad that he was privileged to gaze on Satanita at her youthful loveliest.
"News?" he asked. "Your messenger said news." He spoke French perfectly.
"Yes. News! I have the man for you." Her young eyes, that hinted so much deviltry, flashed as his old ones could never do. "I have the leader. Listen, Filmi Fared—listen! There is little time. A king, named Alexander, once gave this man a sword. Is not that delicious? Where are we—in Alexandria, n'est-ce pas? Who named it so? Alexander the Great—Iskander, as they call him—eh? Iskander, then, since our plot is laid in Arabic, gave a sword with a beryl in the hilt to this man's ancestor. Is that clear? Have you no imagination?"
FILMI FARED—both hands folded in his lap—looked down at his ill-fitting European clothes and then straight over at the wall in front of him. His eyes were puckered, like those of a man who peers through the mist to something dim beyond.
"These are great lands—and times—for breeding legends," he remarked.
The Princess laughed. "Have you one ready-made, or must we invent one?"
"I was searching my memory."
"Bah! Let us invent! What is the legend of this Alexander? The legend, not the truth. He is almost a god, is he not? Tall—golden-headed—dignified—served by a giant—fearless—would that description fit him?"
"In popular imagination—yes."
"Well—my man is all those things—and more! My man is English, and a rebel—for I heard him say it! Now for the legend, though! It must be a prophecy—those always take the popular fancy best. Let us say—Iskander was to come again—in Alexandria, the city that he built and named after himself—he was to come holding a two-edged sword with a beryl in the hilt, given to him by some god—go on, think, man!—by which god?"
"By Osiris," hazarded the Egyptian.
"Nonsense! This is a Pan-Islam movement—we must drag in Allah!"
Filmi Fared winced perceptibly. No Moslem likes to hear a Christian speak of Allah, disrespectfully or otherwise.
"Allah—no, Mohammed—gave the sword to Iskander, and—never mind dates, they'll swallow it!—and prophesied that he would be born again, and would reappear with a giant attendant and the sword in his hand, to conquer the whole world and plant the banner of Islam in all the capitals. How's that?"
"It sounds like legend—like genuine legend."
"Then start the legend on its rounds!" exclaimed the Princess, with the air of a teacher who has worked out a small boy's problem for him.
"We need more money," answered the Egyptian.
"Bah! You will get no more, my friend! Russia is generous—Russia is patient—but Russia asks results. Russia has paid liberally. Now, says Russia, where, my friend, where is your rebellion? Why are not England's hands full? How comes it that the British regiments are disengaged, and ready to be hurled into Persia? Eh?"
"But—"
"It is time to act! This man, who can lead if he is made to, has booked his passage for tomorrow at daybreak."
"But—"
"Filmi Fared—who is the arch-conspirator? Who stands more committed and involved than any other man? Whose life would be forfeit, did the English but suspect his treachery? Eh—Filmi Fared? And—and—who—by a word or two—by a hint dropped here and there—could send him—Filmi Fared—to the six-foot drop and the hempen rope, to dance by the neck on nothing—eh? She who could pour all that good Russian money through her fingers—and could pour more—could—ah—hadn't you better begin your rebellion—Filmi—Fared? The hour and the man are ready.—Russia has paid, and waits!"
He fidgeted nervously, avoiding her bright eyes with something like a system. He did not answer. He knitted his brows in thought, pretending to review the circumstances before he passed judgment. He was old and she was young: but she was triumphant and he too paralyzed by fear to think of new excuses. She had him cornered, for she held the purse-strings; and those who deal with Russia know that there is a hand which holds the long spoon out of which they sup.
"You hesitate," she purred, "but I assure you that the time has come to act—act—act!" She was very close to him. A real man would have—But Filmi Fared was not a man. "Your man of fire is ready for you—a gentleman—brave—poor—a rebel, hating English institutions—a man who can make others love him—a purblind ass, when it comes to his personal advantage—a man with a sword, who fits into a legend, sword and all, as a key fits in a lock—a man with a stride that fills the eye—who walks like a king—act, Filmi Fared, for the time has come!"
"Where is your man?" demanded the Egyptian.
"Here. In this hotel."
"Does he know?"
"He knows nothing. He is opportunity. He must be seized, and used! You must make him prisoner—must hold him while the legend starts on its rounds—must show him to the others—must compromise him, so that he dare not go back on you—must force his hand—and then strike, while the regiments are fat and the officers play polo and make love! And—do you hear me, Filmi Fared?—you must begin to-night!"
"How can he be seized—how compromised? A woman?"
"No. There is no time for that—and—I think it would be no use—at least—not yet. Later, perhaps—well—we will see what we will see. I have a good plan for tonight. His servant talks only English—therefore this Anthony is obliged to attend to most things himself. Anthony is going, I know, tonight to make sure that their luggage is safe on board the steamer. That means that his man will go off for a stroll on his own account."
THAT evening, when Dick had finished dinner, and had started for the steamer where his luggage was supposed to be all stowed by this time—one makes sure of these things, though, in the near and distant East—Andry set off to swagger through the streets, and let the ladies look him over. The new serge suit that Dick had bought for him was the keynote of the move. In lieu of a cane, he carried the precious sword in its canvas cover under his arm, and it served as well.
At a place where six streets came together—where by day Greeks, Turks, Italians and Jews, mixed Levantines and pure Armenians, English, French, German, Arab, Copt, and a dozen other breeds fought with each other to out-trade Egyptians—where at night were principally shadows that hid the unguessable—Andry was hustled suddenly.
Before he could swing around and smite for the honor of the clan of Anthony, some one slippery had snatched the sword from underneath his arm. And before he could raise an outcry, or summon his wits, sword, thief, and those who hustled him were gone—vanished—swallowed by the smelly silences.
FIVE minutes after Andry's breathless arrival back at the hotel found Dick there, too, listening in tight-kept silence—imagining his uncle with a son and heir—recalling his promise—and considering his own predicament.
For one whole minute he cursed himself for having brought the sword away—for another he cursed Andry; then he laughed though, for six feet five in tears can not be taken seriously for more than sixty seconds at a time. Being British, his next move was to spring into a cab and hurry to police headquarters.
The police knew nothing, and cared less. They found it difficult to show even a semblance of interest—until Dick let loose on them a brand of wrath that was new in their experience. Then they consented to arrest the thief—if possible. Dick, considering advertisements and half a hundred other wild expedients, drove sadly back to the hotel to think.
It was the Princess Olga Karageorgovich—pink-slippered—her diamonds a-glitter and her living eyes a-glow in the shaded corner of the hotel foyer—ignoring the conventions for the nonce and calling softly to him from between the potted palms—who first showed active sympathy. She hinted at the swarm of grave-robbers—well-diggers—dredgers, and the like who infest the city and are the human tentacles of the illicit back-door trade in curios.
"I buy many curios," she told him. "I know many of these men—and they know me. They trust me. They have a central market, quite unknown to the authorities, of course, where they dispose of their treasures by auction to one another, or to the agents of known buyers. I am a known buyer. My agent knows the ropes. Let me send for him, and tell him to investigate."
"I'd be awfully glad if you would," said Dick, wondering how a woman could seem so young and speak so reliantly, and know so much.
So the Levantine named Henri was sent for, and dispatched in search. Very little more than an hour later he returned, and found Dick pacing up and down on the walk outside the hotel; and he knew—though Dick did not know—that both of them were watched through the shutters of a first-floor window. He led Dick close up underneath the window before he spoke.
"A syndicate of thieves has bought the sword, sir, from the man who stole it. They say they will only deal direct. Will you come at once? If you keep at a little distance, so that no one will suspect, I will show the way."
"Andry!" called Dick, and the giant stepped out of a shadow, nearly frightening Henri out of his sallow skin; dumb with terror he glanced upward at the window. The shutters moved a trifle—forward and then backward—twice, silently, and Henri lost his fear. He made no objection, then, to Andry's following Dick.
They avoided the electric tram-lines, and they took no cab, although they were followed for a little way by half a dozen cabmen offering to drive them. The cabmen made their way back to the hotel, swearing audibly when they discovered that they had missed a fare by following Dick; a woman, unaccompanied, left the hotel before they got back, and they were too late to secure her custom. She took another cab, from a distant corner.
Following their guide carefully, but keeping on the side of the street opposite to him, Dick and Andry threaded mazy side-streets until they came at last to the dingiest, shabbiest part of Alexandria, off the Rue Ras et-Tin, between the Grand Square and the Western Harbor. On either hand, now, were Arab shops and dinginess—the East decaying, before yielding to the business West. It was easy to imagine knives in corners—the moving shadows were alive and loathsome—and the smells were purely Levantine. Andry and Dick drew closer, Dick leading, but Andry. so close behind that no man could have slipped between.
The guide crossed over at last—grinned in the sickly light of a small barred window—knocked a drum-signal on the panel of a door, ten feet down a narrow passage—put his foot inside the door directly it was opened—and beckoned Dick.
"Let me go first!" swore Andry, thrusting himself past, heaving the Levantine to one side, and rushing in. All he found was a pitch-dark passage and an old hag, nearly blind, who held a candle-lamp. She peered up at him, trembling and muttering.
"It's all right, Mr. Dick!" he called. And then he started, to find Dick beside him. He winced as Dick grabbed his arm. Iron though they were—iron lumps lashed into place with whipcord—his muscles gave beneath the pressure of Dick's fingers, and beside him he recognized the jaw—the voice—the attitude—of "him who is obeyed."
"You impudent ass! The only man who dare take my wind is a better man! Get to your place behind!"
He flung Andry by the taut-wrenched muscles back and out through the door to the street, then strode straight on alone down the unlit passage.
"I'd forgotten he'd lead or die!" muttered Andry, hurrying after him. "I'd forgotten, I'd forgotten!"
Dick took no notice of him when the giant brought up behind him, breathing hard, at another door. He seemed to have forgotten the incident completely.
The Levantine made more signals, and that door opened, too. The hag dropped out of the procession, and they went on in utter darkness—left, right, right, left—the guide calling out directions from behind and striking occasional matches to assure himself. Finally Dick paused at a narrow doorway on his right, that gaped blacker than the rest had done.
"That's right, sir," the guide called; "straight in there!"
Dick went ahead, and Andry followed close behind him. Suddenly the door closed on them—sliding in grooves, not swung—and they heard some kind of bolt go home with a well oiled click. They were shut in, tight, in blackness of which they could sense the narrow limits. There was neither light nor ventilation.
"Try the door we came through!" ordered Dick, and he listened to the creak as Andry hove his weight against it; but nothing gave. Then both men heard something, and stood listening in silence. There were voices—the low, steady hum of a hundred voices—in a room beyond.
"Stand still!" commanded Dick, and Andry recalled what the regiment had taught him. Pompey's Pillar—ninety-nine feet up into the night over by the Catacombs beyond—was not more still. Dick felt his way along a baked brick-wall.
He found another door. He could feel the jamb of it, but there was no crack anywhere that light could shine through, and it was shut so fast that the voices sounded through it like the distant murmur of the wind. He felt up and down for a latch, or lock, or keyhole, and found none. So he strode across the little room from wall to wall, to measure it. There were ten clear feet of floor-space.
"The two of us could bu'st yon door we entered by!" said Andry.
"'Engage the enemy more closely!'" quoted Dick, recalling the signal that had flown once at a masthead in Aboukir Bay, close by. "Lie down, Andry—on your back—feet against that wall—head toward this other door—that's it."
Andry obeyed, unquestioning, but shuddering at the "beasties," as the Scots call beetles. Then Dick laid his own strength down in line with Andry's, with his feet on Andry's shoulders.
"Understand me—when I give the word, I want you to shove like hell!"
"Ready, sir!" said Andry, gathering Dick's legs in his mighty arms and filling his lungs.
"Shove ahead!"
DICK felt the heft of Andry's shoulders through his boots—heard the huge leg-muscles crack, as the six-feet-five grew straight. His own hands—neck—shoulders—flattened and grew numb against the door—his own leg-muscles nearly burst—and something began to give. Both men gasped, and strained again—the still, hot blackness shook and filled with yellow streaks—they grunted—there was a din beyond of scattering chairs and suddenly rutched feet—and the door went down in a blaze of light with a crash and the snapping of split woodwork.
In an instant they were on their feet—purple-faced with effort—hair disheveled—tremendous in the door-frame. For an instant more they stared about them, blinking in the glare of light and trying to get focus. Then Andry leaped forward.
"I see the sword!" he yelled.
But Dick's outstretched arm prevented him, and he found himself jerked back again. Dick, too, had seen what Andry had. His eyes were fixed on a table-end, at which sat Filmi Fared. The crowd of at least a hundred men had opened down the middle, and there was a clear gangway down the center of the room. The sword—out of its canvas case—lay in front of Filmi Fared, and he blinked from it to Dick, and from Dick to the sword again.
"Give me that sword!" commanded Dick.
Filmi Fared sat still, dazed by the force and unexpectedness of Dick's arrival, plucking at a dozen plans and a dozen things to say—hesitating—shifting first one foot, then the other.
"Give me that sword!" demanded Dick, this time in Arabic. Framed as they were in the blackness of the burst-in door, he and Andry looked too angry—too immense—too positive to be tackled by a many-minded crowd that lacked a leader. No one moved. Then Dick strode forward suddenly, Andry closing up behind him, covering his master's back with his own huge bulk. In a second Dick had the sword and was examining it, to make sure that the beryl was still safely in the hilt. It was there! In his glee he swung it, and brought it to a whistling, humming shiver in the air above him.
"Hi-e-e-e-ee!" yelled Andry. And for perhaps the first time in his whole career Filmi Fared seized an opportunity before arguing the pros and cons. He made a signal that was understood.
"Zindabad Anthony Shah!" yelled somebody. And that was Persian. Dick understood it—knew what it meant. In twenty tongues the crowd yelled out the answer, "Long live King Anthony!"
He looked a king, as he stood there with the jeweled claymore in the air above him and the electric light streaming on him in the center of the room. The crowd swarmed nearer. Some one raised the fallen door, and twenty men took stand to guard it. Then Filmi Fared spoke.
"One would have to believe that was your sword," he smiled. "I would not nave thought such skill in wielding it possible."
Unthinking—but possibly with a vague idea that he was proving ownership—Dick swung the sword aloft again. The crowd yelled a salvo of applause, and a flashlight cannoned out. There was no camera visible—only a suspicious-looking box-affair in one far corner of the room.
"Thank you,"" said Filmi Fared, smiling. And Dick, still dazzled by the flashlight, lowered the sword again, feeling foolish.
"These gentlemen," said Filmi Fared, standing up, "are the sworn representatives of sixty-eight thousand armed men who are at present in secret rebellion against British rule. The movement is world-wide—it is named Pan-Islam—but our present plans are confined to Egypt. We have waited only for a leader. You have been chosen as that leader. You are required to take an oath of allegiance to our cause—on the Koran—on the Bible—and on your sword. You are required to swear that when you have been raised to the throne of Egypt you will rule constitutionally. And you are required to commit yourself in writing before these witnesses. You should sign here."
Dick threw back his tawny head and laughed aloud. Andry, breathing hard, crowded him closer, and tried to peer over Dick's shoulder at the document Filmi Fared had laid out before him on the table.
"You sign, or you die," smiled Filmi Fared. "You may choose which you prefer."
"When does the fight begin?" asked Dick, taking one step backward, and trying his sword-arm unostentatiously. Andry laid both hands on a chair. Filmi Fared chose, or else happened, to misunderstand.
"As soon as you see fit to lead us," he intimated calmly. "When you are leader, and in possession of the facts, it will be your business and not ours or mine to issue orders."
It might have been tempting enough to a man who did not know the strength of England's hold on Egypt—or to a man who knew it and was in a mood to take terrific chances with his honor. Dick was ready to take any other chance but that one. His smile made that much clear. Filmi Fared was about to speak again, but he was interrupted by a signal on another door, at the end of the room opposite to that through which Dick and Andry had burst in.
The signal was answered, and another one replied again. Then the door was opened, and closed again behind a woman, veiled to her heels in black. Her slippers happened to be pink and Dick wondered where—and when—he had seen just such slippers. He was no lady's man—by no means given to noticing the details of a woman's dress.
With a walk that was inimitable—and vaguely familiar—she walked down a gangway opened through the crowd, straight up to Dick. She tapped him with a fan. And, though she was veiled like the wife of some strict Mohammedan, Dick knew that no such acting—no such cocksure carriage—no such nerve came out of any harem.
Andry stepped back a pace, and began to study her inch by inch from the heels upward. He was always suspicious in the first instance, and more of a lady's man than Dick.
"You are the uncrowned King of Egypt!" she asserted—in French—aloud—for all the room to hear. Then she said it again in Italian, and in English, and in Arabic. She seemed to want it understood!
"Decidedly uncrowned!" smiled Richard not knowing what to say. He hated arguments with women.
"You are a prisoner at present. You must remain a prisoner for a day or two "
Dick's ears were alert to a deep-sea whispering behind him—a little sub-tone—too low for anybody else to hear. Andry was passing information.
"You must remain a prisoner until a story—a legend we have started—reaches its required destination. It went out tonight-like the ripples of a pond, when a stone is thrown into it. It will travel fast. In the meanwhile, you had better sign. You are offered more than you perhaps realize."
Dick smiled, but did not answer. He was bending the sword blade with his left hand, a little nervously. Young Scots gentlemen are not offered kingdoms every day. She turned to the crowd, and swept it with a majestic look.
"Leave me alone to speak with him!" she ordered.
The crowd drew back to the farthest wall. But that did not satisfy her; she waved them away. One half went out through the door that she had used; the other half poured through Dick and Andry's gap, and the two Scots could hear them shuffling their feet beyond. Dick heard them open the outer door to let air into the stifling space.
"You have your choice between a kingdom or death!" said the woman, standing close, and tapping Richard with her fan. She spoke in English now.
"Thanks awfully!" laughed Dick.
"Do you appreciate the possibilities?"
"Quite."
"You are said to be Iskander, come to life again, and with Iskander's sword. That is the story that has gone out tonight in ever-widening rings. In a week all Egypt will believe it. In a month—less, in two weeks—you will have all Egypt at your feet—you will be dealing with the Great Powers—acknowledged King of Egypt! Can you not see that these fools—these weaklings, none of whom dare lead—will then be your fools—your tools—you will be King, and they your instruments? Is Richard Anthony afraid? You were not afraid to speak your mind to a High Commissioner! Lead, man! Lead on! You are known for a rebel! Lead these other rebels!"
"I'm quite sober," said Dick, "and I'm not a drug-fiend. You've chosen the wrong man."
SHE changed her line of argument, but lost nothing of her emphasis. Dick sensed the hypnotic suggestion of two eyes that glowed through the eyeholes in her mask; and no woman lived who could get through his guard, once he was given warning. Besides, Andry had whispered certain information. She did not know either of these things.
"You're a proud man, aren't you?" she purred. "You are thinking of your honor —n'est-ce pas? Well—it is gone, my friend, and you must win it back again! Yes—gone! You have been flashlight-photographed, with your sword aloft, in the center of these rebels! Whether you consent to lead or no, that photograph hangs over you! That photograph alone would hang you—high as Haman—unless you lead, and win, win, win!"
Dick shuddered as the truth of her suggestion filtered home. It seemed that he was in a trap from which there was no way out.
"I wouldn't lead such an outfit as yours," he answered her, "if the King of England offered me the job!"
"Imbecile! Do you suppose that these men will risk letting you out of here alive unless you sign that paper there? In the face of certain death, do you refuse?"
"I refuse," smiled Dick; and Andry sighed like a grampus blowing.
"I beg you not to!"
"Who are you that ask?"
"Ah! My identity must always be a secret "
"So?" said Dick—and he shot one arm out—a long, left arm that gathered her, and drew her to him, screaming. Then the beryl-hilted sword performed a task for which it had never been intended. It split the long, black shroud that draped her to the heels. He pushed her away again, retaining her mask in his left hand, and she stood gasping in pink and cream and lace and diamonds—the Princess Olga Karageorgovich—indignant—flushed—more lissome and more beautiful than ever he had thought a woman could be—Satanita at her savagest!
"Cannibale!" she hissed. "Imbecile écossais! You have killed yourself!" Then she lifted up her voice and screamed:
"Help! Help! Help! Kill him! Let him die, now! Slay quickly! He is a traitor—would betray us! Kill!"
There was a rush, and Andry seized a chair. A hundred—more than a hundred—surged through the doors from either side. A knife, launched by a big Italian in the middle of the door that Dick had burst, whizzed at him—was seen as it flashed under the light—and stopped, caught in the sword-hilt.
"Take it, Andry!"
Dick's eyes were on the big Italian, but he waited long enough for Andry to reach out and wrench the knife from between the steel of the basket-hilt. Then he moved—and the Italian faded—leaving a gap in the doorway where he had been. And the football field at school had taught Dick what to do with an opening.
It was a fight that Sudanese might envy while it lasted—all rush and slash and thrust and roar—all movement—a terrific impact—the hot, delirious feel of blood, back-squirted as the sword went in—the crash of a broken chair on human skulls as Andry widened the breach that Richard carved—a charge into blackness, where the cold steel was all that glimmered—and a burst with a wild hurrah into God's good midnight air, where a carriage—a two-horse carriage—waited at the corner, and a driver slept.
Dick leaped for the box, and Andry sprang inside.
"Madame—where is madame?" asked the driver, waking up. But Dick's fist took him neatly underneath the jaw, and he toppled to the street gurgling. Then the two horses started to assimilate a lesson.
They went off as the five-furlong lined-up horses do on Epsom Downs, to the crack of a whip and the growled "Get-on-there" that moves animals and crowds so infinitely faster than bad language. They left their dust and the noise of bumping wheels for the dogs and the night to wonder at, and they took square corners as no fire-engine, since brigades had being, dared to turn. They went as the guns go into action. And the course Dick chose for them was far and away from straight.
By guesswork, and by sheer dead-reckoning, avoiding tram-lines and the streets where fixed-point policemen stood and yawned, criss-crossing side-lanes and chancing anything and everything but recognition, Dick drove at the most prodigious flog for the shore—for the darkest part of the harbor-front. At a yell from Andry he leaned back hard and swung his weight on the right-hand rein. It broke as the horses pawed the air above the water—but they managed it. The good, game, weary beasts contrived to keep their feet and their balance, and to swing 'round, clear,
Dick and Andry sprang from the carriage, and a last lash of the whip sent the horses galloping free in the direction of the city, with the empty carriage swaying in their wake.
"Look!" said Dick. "Jump for it!"
There was a boat, with three rowers in it, moored to a buoy some fourteen feet out from the shore. The rowers slept. Dick jumped first. He landed absolutely in the middle of the bottom of the boat, and fell headlong over one of the natives, frightening him almost out of his skin. Andry followed with a groan and a monumental effort. He hit the water, like a whale descending, four feet short. Dick hauled him in.
"Know the Themistokles?"he asked. "The other harbor, eh? Well—take us there—give way—hurry up!"
The still sleepy native crew gave way. They were too accustomed to the manners and peculiarities of drunken first-class passengers from ships to be suspicious, and too interested in the money they would earn to hesitate. A half-hour's row—for they had to search for the little ship—brought them alongside, and a sleepy watchman welcomed them.
"How much d'you want?" asked Dick.
"Ten shillings," said the owner of the boat; for the 'longshoremen of Alexandria are neither pessimists nor shy.
"I'll give you a pound," said Dick, "if you'll lie alongside here till the steamer leaves."
"Very good, sir," said the boatman with a grin.
"Remember! Stay alongside all the time. I may need you at any minute."
"A pound," said Andry with a wry face, "is an awfu' lot of money, sir!"
"It's cheap," said Dick. "It would cost us more than that, Andry, if they went back to the city and told tales!"
"Ou-aye!" said Andry. "Aye! Did ye kill any? I broke four skulls that I'm sure of—mebbe five—would God I'd hit that big Eyetalian where I aimed for!"
"Shut up, you idiot!" ordered Dick.
THE Themistokles—one thousand tons—one class of passengers—Greek flag—mixed cargo—anything for anywhere—was due to start a little after dawn. When Dick and Andry boarded her a whiff of steam betrayed the fact that her "chief" was warming cylinders. Unless you carry cotton, there is not much cargo to be picked up south of Jaffa on that run, and her derricks were swung in and lashed; the last bumboat had warped away from her soon after midnight.
But she was a liner in her way, and her way was to wait for sunrise; no amount of concentrated Irritation—nervousness—excitement— funk, he called it—on Dick's part helped to hasten her departure.
Andry went below—unpacked certain valises—changed into dry clothes and stowed away the sword. Thenceforward the two of them paced up and down the little after-deck, one on either side—Andry prayerful, Dick fuming, and both of them taut-strung to jumping-point. Each launch that left the quay-side was a police launch to their excited vision; each shout ashore was a hue and cry; each minute of delay was like an hour of crucifixion.
They exchanged no word. They walked the deck and waited, each knowing what the other thought too well to waste breath. Andry was wondering whether it would be wise or helpful to fight when the police turned up to arrest them; Dick wondered how far it was right to accept another's service, however willingly it might be given.
"Andry!" he said after a while, when the tenth false alarm had set their hearts to fluttering against their ribs. The huge man hove alongside, and fell into step.
"To cut a long story short, Andry my man, if we get out of this mess safely, this is where we part company. Listen, d'you hear me?—I don't want argument! What I say is final. It was all very well for me to accept your service at a time when I was an independent man of means. When you joined me in the Channel, I was a British officer—true, in the Territorials, but a British officer. Now I'm a fugitive! Then, I could draw a certain income from home at any time—a small income, but a certain one. Now—I have considerably less than a thousand pounds, and positively no prospects. If I were to draw on London for any of my income, I imagine the authorities would get on my trail at once. Are you listening?"
"Aye."
"I've been photographed with a drawn sword, surrounded by a crowd of known criminals. I suppose about a hundred men would swear in a court of law that I am a rebel. It seems I was overheard calling myself a rebel—in Cairo—to no less than a Commissioner. It's easy to laugh, but it would not be easy—I imagine—to prove myself innocent. Do you follow me so far? Very well. I've no right to drag you down into my quagmire, and I've no intention of doing it. At the first port we reach—provided we get away from here—I shall pay your passage back home again, and buy you a draft on Glasgow for a hundred pounds. That will put you where you were before. Do you understand me?"
"Aye."
"Very well, then."
"Is that all, sir?"
"That's all."
"Then hear me now! D'ye ken where I was before ye accepted my service, as ye call it? I was in the water—aye—swummin'—verra nearly drooned. Ye're big enough—ye're strong enough—tae put me back in again—an' I give ye leave. Then—I'd be where I was. Ye've a right to do that—an' no more."
He stood—facing Dick—grim—a little bit resentful—silhouetted in the first faint promise of the dawn.
"But—unless ye do that—I'm y'r man, Mr. Dicky—at y'r ser-r-vice—verra much so—an'—" for a second his voice shook—"if ye choose to mak' y'r bed in hell, I'll come along an' bur-r-rn with ye!"
Dick smiled a little. He was not much given to displaying the more serious emotions; they lay too deep.
"I didn't ask you to follow me in the first place," he asserted.
"Ye can get rid of me one way," said Andry.
Dick did not answer him. When another man was speaking he usually let him finish without interjected answers.
"If I'm no use—if ye don't want me—if ye blame me f'r makkin' all the trouble—if ye don't trust me ony mair—say so, an' I'll gang awa'!"
Dick still said nothing.
"I didn't hear ye speak, sir."
"I didn't speak."
Andry touched his forelock—and Dick held out his hand. For the second time, for the selfsame reason, Andry's eyes watered while the blood crept backward up his wrist.
And then they had a genuine alarm. A boat put out from the shore and came alongside. But it proved to be the ship's Captain with his clearance papers, and news of more passengers; the ship was to lie at her moorings twenty minutes longer.
Cursing the extra delay and the more than doubled risk of being recognized or sought for, now that daylight had aroused the world to action, Dick leaned over the stern and watched the sun. While he watched, a sound he knew too well drove spurs into his soul, and the spurs had red-hot rowels on them. Just as nothing could have made him skulk in the secrecy of his cabin to escape recognition, so nothing now could have made him spare himself the sight that he knew would rend his heartstrings. He deliberately turned—deliberately stood where the best view could be had—and deliberately watched.
The air was shimmering spun gold beneath a roofless blue. The city was opal, stained here and there with shadows, kissed by the dawn and sweet, as no other hour would see it. The setting was a semi-Eastern, semi-European panorama, foreshortened by a varied crowd of masts. And the pipes skirled through it all—bagpipes, fifes, and drums
The moving gold he watched was the sunlight caught on brass and the dull dark khaki of a Highland regiment. It was moving Might—quick-tramping—clean—obedient—in kilts—the tempered edge of order that had cut dominion out of desert sand, and could cut again—eight hundred fighting Scotsmen, picking up their feet clean after forty miles by night, and swinging best foot foremost! God! He—Richard Anthony—of Arran, by the grace of God—stood mourning for his birthright. His father had led that actual battalion! Andry, watching behind him, listened to his heavy breathing, and felt the full throb of hell held in.
The little liner's whistle screamed impatiently, but with due consideration of the cost of steam. Dick had lost his eagerness to get away. He watched—unconscious of the time. A launch came alongside and disgorged some passengers. The companion-ladder was hauled up and in. The steamer screamed again. The winch began to swallow steel chain with a roar as the windward kedge came home. But Dick watched spell-bound.
Then the little ship's propeller started turning with the steady, hypnotizing thug that calls more men than ever sails did. Alexandria began to fall away astern, and the chance of arrest grew insignificant. But Dick still stood there, gazing—gazing. He could hear the pipes. He could still detect the dancing glint of serried arms.
He felt a pluck at his arm, but he did not turn. Then a more deliberate tug at his coat-sleeve drew his attention, and he looked 'round—straight into the eyes of the Princess Olga Karageorgovich!
"I think we both had a very narrow squeeze for it!" she said in exquisitely shaded English. "But—" and she tapped him with a remonstrating finger—"you owe me for a two-horse carriage, Mr. Anthony! Remember—I shall claim the debt!"
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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