It
was the first time that Barbary rovers were seen in England. That
famous raid of theirs upon Baltimore in Ireland did not take place until
some thirty years after this date.
"Sir Oliver Tressilian!" Killigrew gasped, and "Sir Oliver Tressilian!"
echoed Lord Henry Goade, to add "By God!"
"Not Sir Oliver Tressilian, came the answer, but Sakr-el-Bahr, the
scourge of the sea, the terror of Christendom, the desperate corsair
your lies, cupidity, and false-heartedness have fashioned out of a
sometime Cornish gentleman." He embraced them all in his denunciatory
gesture. "Behold me here with my sea-hawks to present a reckoning long
overdue."
Writing now of what his own eyes beheld, Lord Henry tells us how Sir
John leapt to snatch a weapon from the armoured walls; how Sakr-el-Bahr
barked out a single word in Arabic, and how at that word a half-dozen of
his supple blackamoors sprang upon the knight like greyhounds upon a
hare and bore him writhing to the ground.
Lady Henry screamed; her husband does not appear to have done anything,
or else modesty keeps him silent on the score of it. Rosamund, white to
the lips, continued to look on, whilst Lionel, overcome, covered his
face with his hands in sheer horror. One and all of them expected to
see some ghastly deed of blood performed there, coldly and callously as
the wringing of a capon's neck. But no such thing took place. The
corsairs merely turned Sir John upon his face, dragged his wrists behind
him to make them fast, and having performed that duty with a speedy,
silent dexterity they abandoned him.
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