The mate's
gun was never fired, nor was the broadside from below. Indeed that
sudden list had set the muzzles pointing to the sea; within three
minutes of it they were on a level with the water. The Swallow had
received her death-blow, and she was settling down.
Satisfied that she could do no further harm, the Spaniard luffed and
hove to, awaiting the obvious result and intent upon picking up what
slaves she could to man the galleys of his Catholic Majesty on the
Mediterranean.
Thus the fate intended Sir Oliver by Lionel was to be fulfilled; and it
was to be shared by Master Leigh himself, which had not been at all in
that venal fellow's reckoning.
PART II
SAKR-EL-BAHR
CHAPTER I
THE CAPTIVE
Sakr-el-Bahr, the hawk of the sea, the scourge of the Mediterranean and
the terror of Christian Spain, lay prone on the heights of Cape Spartel.
Above him on the crest of the cliff ran the dark green line of the
orange groves of Araish--the reputed Garden of the Hesperides of the
ancients, where the golden apples grew. A mile or so to eastward were
dotted the huts and tents of a Bedouin encampment on the fertile emerald
pasture-land that spread away, as far as eye could range, towards Ceuta.
Nearer, astride of a grey rock an almost naked goatherd, a lithe brown
stripling with a cord of camel-hair about his shaven head,
intermittently made melancholy and unmelodious sounds upon a reed pipe.
Pages:
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131