Читать книгу The White Blackbird - Robert Aitken - Страница 8

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On the stealthy-looking little grey steamship at anchor under the obscure stars not even a riding-light was visible. But she was close to the desolate coast, well out of the way of all respectable traffic. And a solitary figure, squatted in the bows, pipe in mouth, pannikin of rum within easy reach, was keeping a perfunctory anchor-watch, staring idly seaward so that he saw nothing of a tiny light which flashed three times from the shore in belated response to a similar signal from a screened port in the poop-cabin.

But for him, the decks were deserted. From the crew's quarters came frequent outbursts of ribald talk and uproarious laughter, the odour of food, the clank and clatter of tin-ware empty or full. The crew were at supper and satisfied for the present.

From the companion-hatch on the poop four soundless shadows emerged. Two of them were carrying cautiously a long, flat fabric which they in a moment or two converted into a fourteen-foot canvas boat. These two lowered that overside. One of the others, a bundle in hand, slipped easily down into it by means of a rope made fast to a stanchion. The last, cursing under his breath, was helped over the rail, with one foot in a loop of the same line, by the two remaining on deck.

Sallie, safely seated in the cockleshell below, laid a pair of muffled oars in the rowlocks and pushed quietly off from under the dripping overhang of the ship. Captain Dove, crouching in its stern, whispered curt directions to her. She could just see Reuben Yoxall and Jasper Slyne standing side by side at the steamer's taffrail, and then the black bulk of the Olive Branch became merged in the blacker water.

Once out of earshot of the ship, she set to rowing in earnest, a strong, steady stroke, like one well accustomed to that exercise; and Captain Dove, with an eye cocked at a helpful star twinkling dimly through the heat-haze, kept her heading straight for the shore. The boom of the breakers soon began to grow louder, but, even when it had become almost deafening, she did not look round. They had got into broken water and it was taking her all her time to handle the oars.

She was breathless and all but exhausted before they at length shot dizzily out of the wild turmoil of the surf into a tranquil, land-locked lagoon, concealed from seaward by a long sand-spit, which served it as a breakwater in such smooth weather.

"Way enough," said the old man gruffly, and, as Sallie shipped her oars, the light craft lost speed. Presently, its prow took the sand, and at last they were free of the ominous, phosphorescent black fins which had followed them from where they had left the ship.

"Strike a match," ordered Captain Dove, and held out a stump of candle. "Light this and stick it on the gunwale. Now, on with your cloak and hood—and lend me a hand with mine."

The tiny flame at her elbow burned steadily enough in the still night, while Sallie was slipping on over her dark dress the white robe he had bidden her bring with her. As soon as she had hooded her head and drawn the veil well over her features, she turned to help him. She was smoothing the crumpled burnous about his shoulders while he tugged irritably at it with his only available hand, grumbling at her in a low monotone, when she heard a sudden splashing behind her and, glancing round, saw a number of other white-robed figures wading out through the shallows towards the boat and its flickering light. Captain Dove took their coming as a matter of course, and she sat down again silently, though that cost her a great effort. It was unspeakably eerie there, in the very heart of a darkness that seemed to be whispering hints of such horrors as only exist in the dark.

The old man exchanged a few low words in doggerel Arabic with the strangers. Two of them, tall, brown, fierce-faced fellows, slung over their shoulders the long guns with which they were armed, stooped and lifted Sallie lightly up, carried her to the shore dry-shod. She was still shivering nervously when two more deposited Captain Dove at her side, and then the canvas boat was brought high and dry. At a curt remark from him a makeshift litter was formed of four rifles and, seated on that, he was carried away as if he had been a mere featherweight, Sallie following close behind on foot, uncomfortably conscious of the shadows at her own shoulders.

It was hard work for her in the darkness and ankle-deep in the soft, loose sand at every step, although his bearers made little enough of their burden. But farther on the footing grew firmer, and then they came to a rough, trodden path.

That led them to the still darker mouth of a narrow defile between two low, rocky bluffs, and from the summit of one of these there suddenly rang a harsh challenge. It was answered at once by their escort, and they went on without pause through that pitch-black, crooked passage with its invisible, whispering guard, until, emerging at an unexpected turn from its landward outlet, a most astonishing panorama presented itself to the girl's startled eyes.

Within a titanic natural amphitheatre formed by the rock-ridge which, except for the cleft they had entered by, enclosed it completely, there had been pitched an encampment that occupied its entire arena. Everywhere there were dry desert fires, burning redly, with little flame, and the vault of heaven overhead was like some vast crimson dome reflecting a light whose effect was weird and unreal to the last degree. Sallie, gazing about her with lips a little apart behind her veil, could scarcely convince herself that she was not dreaming.

In the foreground, on one side of the wide way which led straight to the heart of the camp, there were picketed rows upon rows of whinnying horses, and on the other almost as many restless mehari camels, among which a number of negroes, presumably slaves, were briskly at work. Past these was a wide, open space, at whose other edge stood a flagpole from which a great green flag with a golden harp on it fluttered and flapped in the red firelight on the first of the evening breeze. Under that was a group of men, all in flowing garments, one seated in state, the others standing about him. A dozen paces behind them a white pavilion that seemed rose-pink, with a heavily curtained porch, occupied a roomy, level expanse by itself. Surrounding and encircling it on three sides, but at a respectful distance, stretching as far back as the foot of the steep rock-rampart which hemmed them in, was ranged an orderly assemblage of horsehair tents, whose inhabitants, loose-robed men, swart women, and half-naked children, were all very busy about them in the open air. Everywhere there was life and bustle....

Beneath the searching rays of the sun it would all, no doubt, have appeared travel-stained and sordid and tawdry to a degree. But the desert night and the dim stars brooding above it had imbued it with all their own magic and mystery.

Captain Dove's carriers strode forward with him and set him carefully on his feet before the green flag, under which, on a great gilt chair, sat one who was evidently their chief, a man in the very prime of life and still younger yet than his years. Sallie eyed him over her veil with anxious interest. The group behind his chair was regarding her with no less curiosity. The attention of the multitude among the tents had been attracted to the new arrivals, and many inquisitive onlookers, more women than men, were beginning to gather about the boundaries of the area sacred to their Emir and his officers.

That dignitary got hastily up and came forward. He was tall and stalwart on foot, a fine figure of a man even in his loose, shapeless garments, with a bronzed, hook-nosed, handsome face of his own, a heavy moustache, the brooding, patient, predatory eyes of a desert vulture. And, as he confronted Captain Dove, over whom he seemed to tower threateningly, the hood of the selham slipped on to his shoulders, disclosing a flaming shock of red hair.

"At last!" he said, after a long time, in the difficult voice of one amazed almost beyond words. The muscles of his lean, brown face were working visibly. His eyes had become inflamed, his fingers were twitching.

"At last!" he said again, as if finally convinced in spite of himself, and licked his lips.

But Captain Dove met his wickedest glance unwinkingly, and made him no answer at all.

For a moment longer they two stood gazing thus at each other, the onlookers silent and still. And then the big man's blazing eyes shifted to the face of the girl at Captain Dove's elbow. Sallie's veil had slipped to her chin, but she had been unconscious of that till then. She pulled it up across the bridge of her nose again hastily. The red-haired Emir's scowl had relaxed; he was scanning her with a very different expression to that he had shown Captain Dove, but one which alarmed her no less.

He turned to the group behind him and, at a word, it melted away. The onlookers in the distance also went about their own business again. A black slave-boy came staggering forward with a heavy chair, and set that down side by side with the other there. Captain Dove seated himself at once, without ceremony.

The Emir, biting his lip, followed suit, and sat for a time sunk in his own reflections. He seemed to have mastered for the moment his first almost overwhelming impulse at sight of that venerable-looking adventurer, and had evidently some other and much more pleasant idea in his mind.

"That's a high-stepping filly you've brought with you," said he at length in a puzzled tone, and glanced round at Sallie again. She was standing at Captain Dove's other shoulder, her head bent, her hands clasped before her, in helpless, patient suspense. Captain Dove had gruffly informed her, before they had left the ship, that she would be perfectly safe in his company, but even his own safety seemed to be hanging on a very slender thread.

"I wonder, now," the Emir went on, "if it's to seek trade that you've come ashore here again—after all these years." His face once more darkened, as if over some recollection that rankled sorely, but which he was doing his best to dismiss from his thoughts in the meantime.

"I've some trifles in hand that might interest you if it is trade you're after," said he, speaking amicably with an effort, "such truck as gold-dust, and jewels, and silk—and ivory, too, galore."

The black boy had come back with an unwieldy tray of a dull yellow metal on which were set two cool, moist, earthenware chatties and a couple of uncouth drinking-cups. Captain Dove, with unerring instinct, laid his hand on the flagon which held strong drink, poured out for himself a liberal helping of the sticky magia it contained, and swallowed that off without a word. After the Emir had also helped himself the boy would have carried the tray away, but Captain Dove bade him set it down and dealt him an indignant cuff, so that he fled empty-handed, with an anguished yelp.

"It wasn't exactly to pay you a polite call that I came ashore to this God-forsaken hole, Farish," the old man at last remarked, with uncompromising frankness. "The fact of the matter is—I'm in a bit of a bog just now. And I've come to get you to give me a hand out of it—if your price isn't too high for me to pay."

The Emir stared at him, open-mouthed.

"You were always the bold one, Captain Brown," said he, reminiscently, after a lengthy interval, "but this beats all! And it's to the man you set ashore here, alone, long years ago, to die in the desert like a mad dog, that you come demanding a hand to get you out of a bit of a bog! You've surely forgotten—"

"I'm not one who forgets," Captain Dove interrupted sourly. "And you'll maybe remember, since you think it's worth while to hark back to such old stories, that I didn't shoot you down at once, as I might have done—for disobedience of orders. I gave you a chance for your life, anyhow. And you've made a very good thing out of it. You've risen in the world, Farish, since you were the second mate of the old Fer de Lance—and I was Captain John Bunyan Brown. I'm Captain Dove now, by the way."

"And how did you know who it was would be here to-night?" the soi-disant Emir demanded, turning it all over in his own mind.

"The Spaniards at the Rio de Oro told me, when I called in there the other day, that they were expecting the Emir El Farish shortly, from this direction, and, of course, I pricked up my ears at the name. I asked a few simple questions about him, and it didn't take a great deal of brain-power to figure out that the famous Emir was just my old second mate turned land pirate on his own account. They wanted me to wait on the chance of a cargo from your caravan, but—I had other fish to fry at the time.

"Then, coming up the coast, I caught sight of your smoke from the steamer's bridge—at least I judged it would be yours. I reckoned you'd be camping here, you see, and, when you answered my signal, I was quite sure. So—I'm in a bit of a bog, as I told you. And it'll pay you to give me a hand out of it—if your price isn't too high."

"The price that you'll have to pay for my help you can guess now without my telling you," returned the Emir in a muffled whisper, and nodded meaningly over his shoulder. "And you'll find me a fair man to deal with, so long as you deal fairly by me."

Captain Dove signified his comprehension by means of a non-committal grunt. He stooped down and helped himself awkwardly to another drink before making any other answer.

"But—you've got a wife already," he whispered back, at a shrewd guess, as he sat up again, smiling blandly.

"I won't have her long, poor thing!" said the other, some tinge of real regret in his tone. "And I'll miss her, too, when she's gone, let me tell you." He sat silent for a moment, musing, and then, "'Twas a notable revenge that I took on them-all!" he muttered darkly. "But I'll miss her for herself as well—after all these years."

"It's the desert has killed her," he said, pulling at his moustache. "I've had a doctor-fellow with her for a while past—I saved him out of an exploring party we cut up near Jebado. 'Twas nearly three weeks ago he told me she hadn't a month to live. The sand's got into her lungs, he says—and I've promised to shovel him into a sand-pit alive the day she dies, to see how he likes the sand in his own lungs, the useless scum!"

He sighed stormily, and then seemed to bethink himself again of the girl listening behind. In answer to a call of his, in a caressing voice, there came from the big tent in the background a woman, veiled as Sallie was but clad in silk instead of cotton, who bowed submissively to what he had to say to her and then held out a slender, bloodless, burning hand to Sallie.

"Go with her," ordered Captain Dove. "You'll be all right. I'll shout for you when I want you again."

And Sallie, glad so to escape from the Emir's glance, went willingly enough. It would not have helped her in any way then to disobey Captain Dove. But her hand, within the other woman's, was as cold as ice.