Читать книгу The Stampeder - Samuel Alexander White - Страница 3

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ILLUSTRATIONS

"Rex gazed into the rolling eyes, the wild, distorted visage of the Corsican, and felt himself shoved to the very brink of the crevasse" . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece

"The two teams raced side by side, the leaders snapping at each other"

"From the Indian's extended palm the yellow flash of native gold filled Britton's startled eyes"

THE STAMPEDER

CHAPTER I.

Britton's steam-yacht tore out its lungs in protest at the black smudge of a coasting vessel reeling straight across its bows.

The siren bellowed thrice in a choking fury of warning and denunciation till the echoes boomed over the Algerian harbor and floated high up to the Mustapha Supérieure, where English lords slept at peace in luxurious hotels.

Disconcerted by this tremendous volume of sound, the coaster vacillated, veered and yawed as if under some drunken steering-hand, to leap forward unwarily and bury her weather-beaten prow in the white side of the Mottisfont.

The terrific impact swept the yacht's forecastle clear of snoring sailors, and, after shooting the temporary owner headlong from his berth, commenced to polish the companionway passage with his features, an operation which he instinctively though not wholly wakefully resented by a frantic grasping for something substantial.

The effort was rewarded when his fingers clutched the lower stairs, and Rex Britton staggered to his feet. Every light below was out, and the man so roughly aroused stood dazedly wondering if a horribly real nightmare held him in its grip.

Then, like a flash, intelligence permeated his shaken brain, and all the faculties stirred again. He remembered the grinding crash and clambered on deck in his pyjamas!

Upon the bridge loomed the figure of the captain, frantically banging at the engine-room signals, but the bell refused to sound. A medley of curses vibrated in the humid night air, emanating partly from the lower deck, and partly from the bows of the coaster as the Berber sailors gave free vent to their displeasure.

"Daniels–Captain Daniels!" roared Britton, "what the deuce is this turmoil?"

"An accident, sir," was the reply. "A coasting vessel has rammed us. I'm afraid we're badly hit; and the signals are out of business. We'll reverse in a moment if the engines are not disabled."

He waved a sailor down with the order to the engine-room. The big yacht trembled under the mighty strain and began to creep backward, inches at a time, since the nose of the other craft was tightly wedged in its vitals.

Britton was beside the captain in a moment, with a perfect stream of questions as to details and responsibility.

"The coasting steamer was entirely at fault, sir." Daniels gravely assured him. "She cut across our bow in spite of three warnings. Judging by her careening, the wheelsman was very drunk!"

An increased throbbing of the Mottisfont's engines made the whole hull shiver, and the yacht scuttled backward from the coaster like an immense crab.

"She sinks! she sinks!" rose the cry from the sailors on the poop.

"What is sinking?" cried Britton, excitedly; "not the yacht!"

"No, the coaster," said Captain Daniels. "She has no water-tight compartments."

The terrified wail of the Arab crew proclaimed the inrush of the water as the steamer listed at an alarming rate to starboard. The officers shouted orders which were smothered in the tumult, for an uncontrollable panic seized passengers and sailors. Pandemonium in its wild, selfish authority ruled on the coaster's decks, and Britton, from the bridge of the Mottisfont, could view the mad, strenuous struggle for safety. A feminine cry startled him in its piercing shrillness.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed, "there are women there, and those brutes of Berbers will trample them to death. Quick, man! Drive the yacht in close and throw out the ropes."

Daniels instantly obeyed, observing: "It's dangerous work, sir, and she's liable to drag us down when she founders, which may be any moment now!"

"Doesn't matter," said Britton, curtly. "We're bound to help them even if this was their own doing. Have you lowered the launch?"

"Mr. Ainsworth and Mr. Trascott have it, sir."

"The smaller boats?"

"They're out, sir, trying to take some of the passengers off. Why in the name of Neptune don't they lower their own?"

The Mottisfont was larger than the steamer, and overtopped it as they drew in again. Britton leaned forward and listened to the tumult on the smaller vessel.

"I'm afraid they're fighting for their own boats," he said, quickly. "The panic's getting worse."

The hubbub was redoubled. A woman's scream, sharp and piteous, was cast despairingly on the night. Britton muttered something like an oath, and swinging down from the bridge he ran forward with all speed.

"Anyone in the turret?" he yelled to the group of sailors straining on the ropes.

"No, sir," answered the first mate. "The lookout was thrown to the deck when we struck. His shoulder is broken."

"Go up yourself," ordered Britton. "See if the searchlight works, and turn it on the coaster. We are only groping like blind men in the dark."

Turning to the second mate, he added: "Fire that brass cannon at intervals to call out the harbor boats. I see the usefulness of it after all!"

Leaving the mates to execute his orders, Britton sprang to the taffrail and vaulted at hazard down into the struggling mass of humanity that surged over the steamer's forehold. He landed squarely upon an Arab's back, knocking that swarthy individual into the lee scuppers, but without pausing to unravel the puzzling Algerian profanity which was thus elicited, Britton pushed his way aft.

He could feel the vessel rock to the roll of the water in the hold as the weight above was continually and suddenly shifted, and he knew that with one of those evolutions she would roll a little too far. There would be no recovery, and the steamer would turn turtle.

About the stern-davits a struggle raged. The forward boats were stove in with the force of the collision, and only four were left intact. The brown-skinned Berber sailors endeavored to lower them, and blue-coated officers vainly attempted to keep them back and to preserve order among the demented people.

One boat got away as Britton came up. The yacht's searchlight, pricking out of the gloom, showed the craft to be full of Arabs, while women and children were wailing in supreme terror upon the foundering vessel.

The crowd swayed to the rail as another boat was slung from the davits. Rex grasped the arm of a man in marine uniform.

"Where's your captain?" he demanded, harshly.

"I am the captain," said the man, helplessly; "but what can I do? The passengers have gone mad! The Berbers are beasts!"

Britton flung aside the arm he had seized with a gesture of repulsion.

"Do?" he cried, in fine scorn. "You might at least try! You act like a baby. This rush must be stopped–"

Boom! rang the Mottisfont's cannon. Its message reverberated like hollow thunder over the great bay. Two score whistles rose in answer from the inner reaches of the harbor.

Boom! The whistles shrieked anew, and the riding lights of the vessels plunged into activity.

"You hear!" exclaimed Britton. "If that rush isn't stopped half of those on board will be drowned by the swamping of the boats, with a hundred harbor craft coming to the rescue. Come on, sir–be a man!"

Rex took hold of a heavy piece of broken stanchion and made a flying leap into the knot of Berbers stamping about the stern davits.

"Back, men!" he shouted in a voice that soared above every other noise. "Be calm! There'll be a hundred boats here in a minute, with room for all of you. Let the women forward at once!"

A female figure sprang to the davits at his words, but the Arabs roared their dissent and charged in a body. Britton had a vision of a girlish form with an ethereal face and pale-gold hair, tossed rudely in the rush of men. She lost her footing suddenly and went down with a suppressed scream.

Snarling like an enraged animal, Rex leaped in front of them.

Crack! sounded his stanchion on the foremost head. Crack! crack! He pierced their ranks and dragged out the luckless woman. Shielding her with one arm, he was carried back against the ship's side by the pressure of the frantic throng.

"Are you hurt?" he found time to whisper.

"No–only frightened," she sobbed. The nervous strain was too much for her.

Britton made her kneel down under the rail behind him, and, with his legs protecting her from the trampling, he faced the angry Arabs again.

They had hesitated a little, daunted by the impetuosity of his attack. The Englishman's blood was now thoroughly aroused. Away back in his line of ancestors there had been knights of the old regime; there were soldiers of the empire among the later generations; and his grandfather had fallen at Waterloo. The fighting, bulldog strain was in him, and only sufficient baiting was required to bring it into evidence!

Boom! sounded the Mottisfont's cannon for the third time. Across the mysterious stretch of bay the shout of rowers answered.

"They're coming!" exclaimed Britton, triumphantly. "You pack of fools, have you no sense?"

A growl was the reply. Whether fear had driven out their understanding, or whether the rough fellows were actuated by a desire of revenge for the blows inflicted by the Englishman, they rushed upon him once more.

"Ah! you will have it, will you?" he cried, exulting in the mere thrill of battle. "Then lay on, you rabble!"

He stood in the central focus of the steam-yacht's searchlight, with muscle action unhampered and with bare feet gripping the deck firmly, while his enemies strove to reach him. His stanchion rose and fell like a flash as he circled in and out, avoiding the blows of his adversaries, and every time he struck a man went down. Once a sinewed Moroccan locked with him, and he felt the sting of steel in his shoulder, but a jolt on the fellow's neck from Britton's other arm stretched him senseless, while the knife clattered over the rail into the sea.

Crack! crack! The sound of his club grew monotonous; the soft, warm trickle of something down his left shoulder filled him with a strange disgust for the combat; he felt ashamed of himself standing in pyjamas on the lighted deck of another ship and striking down Berbers with a stanchion.

Since it was wholly necessary, the Englishman wondered at the sense of shame. Perhaps it was an odd trick which the wounded nerves in his arm were playing him.

Only three or four Arabs opposed Britton now. He ran at them with hands placed wide on his stanchion, like a wand, and swept them aside. The captain of the steamer stepped through into the cleared space on the after-deck.

"Give your orders," said Britton, with a sigh of relief.

He turned to the woman by the rail and raised her up as the feminine contingent was passed to the side and lowered into the harbor boats which were already alongside.

"You may enter one of them now," he said, marvelling vaguely at her perfect face. She touched his arm with a movement of gratitude, but her fingers came away wet and sticky.

"Someone slashed you!" she exclaimed in concern. "Let me see. Oh, let me bandage it. And I was the cause of your wound!"

"It is only a flesh wound–" began Britton.

"Madam, the boat!" interrupted the anxious captain.

"I'll wait," answered the woman. "This man is wounded–the man who saved all of us. Can't you do something? See! he's weak!"

She gave an alarmed cry as the Englishman staggered. He saved himself by clutching the rail.

"It must–have been those–those circles I cut among the rascals," he laughed unsteadily. "They make me dizzy."

"You're evading," she said quickly; "it's the Berber's knife."

With a strong effort Britton summoned his will-power to control his weakened nerves, and roughly dashed a hand across his eyes. It was with a great sensation of relief that he felt his returning steadiness of muscle, and he glanced at the rope ladders which filled the waiting boats with fleeing people.

"We had better be getting down," he advised. "The steamer will not float long."

Even as he spoke, the coaster lurched alarmingly. Rex grasped the woman's arm and drew her quickly to the rail.

A thrown rope whipped his cheek, and he caught it skilfully, peering below at a small boat which swayed to the roll of the steamer.

"For God's sake, Britton, come off that old hulk," shouted someone. "She's sinking fast!"

Rex looked downward with the pleased expression on his own face contrasting strangely with the anxious countenances of the two occupants of the launch.

"It's my friends, Ainsworth and Trascott, from the yacht," he explained to the woman at his side.

"I was beginning to wonder why they hadn't showed up. You see they must have been out before I awakened, for they had taken the launch to the rescue."

"Come off!" commanded Ainsworth, peremptorily. "Can't you see you're last, you two mooning fools? The old coffin will drop in a minute."

They could hear Trascott's mild protest at Ainsworth's trenchant phrasing of the situation, and Britton laughed.

"Trascott's a curate," he said, disengaging a rope ladder for their own use, "a very orthodox, English curate! Sometimes he doesn't approve of his friend's strenuous speech. You'll have to overlook it, though. Ainsworth is a lawyer, and he thinks he has us in the witness-box."

They were descending the rope-ladder as he spoke, the lady going first, and Cyril Ainsworth heard the last part of his host's comment.

"It's no witness-box you're in, Britton," he growled. "It's a bally old tub, and you needn't think because you're dressed in beautiful, silk pyjamas that you must stay there till you have to swim. If I were the lady, I would vigorously object to getting wet."

Ainsworth emphasized his tirade with a swift revolution of the engine-crank. The curate cast off the rope, and they puffed away from the water-logged vessel. Gleaming white against the inky color of her side was the nameplate–Constantine.

Britton pulled an overcoat and a pair of sea-boots from a locker and put them on.

"That's better," grunted the lawyer. "You don't look so much like a posing matinee idol in crimson jersey and biceps!"

Britton apparently did not hear him, being intent upon the dénouement of this harbor tragedy. Under the Mottisfont's powerful search-light everything stood out nakedly clear for rods around. The stricken vessel rolled in a last, pitiful struggle, listed too far for the recovery of her equilibrium, turned turtle and sank like a stone.

"There's the end of incompetence," rasped Ainsworth, while the lady beside Britton gave a sympathetic cry, and the fleet of boats flying from the vortex peril with their human cargoes echoed in choruses of dismay.

"Had you friends?" Britton asked of the woman.

"No,–only my maid and baggage," she answered. "My name is Morris, Maud Morris–and I was travelling alone."

"To Algiers?"

"Yes, to Algiers–at least temporarily."

"Then the inconvenience is not considerable," Britton said. "We will go on board the yacht, and I can find your maid in the morning."

"Ah! you are too generous," murmured the lady. "You have already done more than a woman can repay, and I have not even attended to your wound. Does it pain much?"

"Very little," replied Britton, lightly. "I believe I shall hold you to your promise to bandage it, and I believe it will get well very soon."

She laughed a low, sweet laugh which harmonized with her pale beauty, and Britton felt some unexplained fascination as her green-blue eyes held his.

The launch bumped the Mottisfont's side abaft of the great hole which the Constantine's prow had torn. The occupants surveyed the black, yawning break somewhat ruefully before they stepped on deck.

"What the deuce will the Honorable Oliver Britton say when he finds his nephew has smashed up his floating palace?" asked Ainsworth, meditatively.

"My honorable uncle will never see it till it is restored to its original state," Rex answered. "And the Moroccan Steamship Company, owners of the Constantine, will pay for the restoration."

"What a legal beacon you might have been!" sighed Cyril, generously. "But this pin-scratch they gave you in the arm!––who pays the doctor-bill?"

"That is my affair," said the lady of the adventure, very sweetly, "and it is time it was given attention." She took Britton's sleeve and drew him to the companionway. There Rex paused and hailed the bridge.

"Daniels, get us in close to the eastern jetty at once and anchor there. We don't know how badly we're damaged, so moor right under it."

"Aye, aye, sir," the captain answered.

"And send me the steward," Britton added.

"Here he is, sir! Bannon, go forward."

The portly form of the steward joined the two by the stairs.

"Bannon, have your wife prepare a stateroom for Miss Morris at once," said Britton, "and bring us some linen strips for bandages."

"You're hurt, sir?" said the steward.

"Only scratched! Water and linen is all I want."

Bannon brought it as directed, and having given the simple necessaries to the lady, Britton dived below to reappear some minutes later in yachting trousers, shirt and shoes, with his left sleeve rolled up to the shoulder and his duck coat on his other arm. He had washed the knife-wound while in his bath-room, but it bled afresh, and the lady hastened to staunch it.

Trascott assisted her by the use of much cold water. When the flow of blood was stopped, she called into requisition some healing ointment which Bannon had brought on his own authority and then bound the limb neatly with linen. There was something exquisite in the sensation for Britton. The soft touch of her fingers, the near fragrance of her person and the electric glow of awakened sympathy combined to influence him and awake strange thrills to which he was not at all subject.

She felt the throb of his pulse as she held his wrist down to straighten the bandage, and the knowledge of its origin flushed her cheek. An instant she looked up at him inquiringly, almost with the spirit of challenge, but her lashes drooped under the tensity of his glance.

Virility was Britton's most salient attribute. When the man in him was stirred, it moved strongly, and the proximity of so fair a vision would have excited a less impressionable person, one with less of Britton's youthful and unbounded faith in women!

The steward disappeared about his business. Trascott and Ainsworth loitered away. Britton and the woman were left alone with that magnetic bond of touch binding them. With the man, the impression lasted for many a day! A new, uncurbed power was loosed within him, and the woman felt the trend of its might. It thrilled and awed at the same time. She shifted her hands to a final arrangement of the bandage.

"I think it will do," she murmured in a confused way.

Britton shook himself out of a wild dream, slowly fastened his shirt-sleeve and donned his coat.

"We will go below," he said, taking her arm and guiding her down the companionway. The stewardess met them in the passage and led the way to the stateroom she had prepared, disappearing therein.

"Good-night," she said, extending both hands. "I haven't found much opportunity to thank you. To-morrow I shall tell you more."

Britton took her fingers, and the mad blood leaped in his veins again.

"To-morrow," he cried gladly. "Ah! yes, there are many to-morrows, for you stay at Algiers."

"Many to-morrows!" she exclaimed with a happy laugh, as she turned into the stateroom. "That is a sweet way of putting it. Many to-morrows!–I like that idea."

CHAPTER II.

"It's hell,–isn't it, Trascott?" asked Ainsworth, dismally.

"My dear fellow," protested the shocked curate, "such liberty of expression, to put it mildly–"

"Fudge!" interrupted his friend. "You divines all agree as to the existence of an infernal region. Why shouldn't I introduce a comparison if I choose? If you don't like its rugged exterior you can at least appreciate the sentiment. It's hell–isn't it?"

"Well, well, it's decidedly unpleasant," grumbled Trascott.

"It's a bally shame!" said the lawyer, tritely. "Britton takes us away on his uncle's yacht for a cruise of the African shore of the Mediterranean. Witness our cruise! We get as far as Algiers and there his two long-suffering comrades have to stagnate while he plays the gallant to a blonde will-o'-the-wisp whom he made a show of rescuing. He found her maid, installed her at the Hotel de ––, attended to her remittances from England in her stranded position and played the modern hero role to a triple curtain call–which he is certainly getting!"

"Of course the yacht had to be repaired," put in Trascott, as if it was his kindly duty to find some extenuation.

"Of course!" echoed Ainsworth sarcastically, waving a hand to where the Mottisfont, quite intact, rode proudly at anchor.

The two men were standing on the harbor piers above the landing-stages, and they had a good view of the vessel. Behind them the capital of Algeria rose precipitously up the sides of an immense hill a mile in length at the base by five hundred feet in height. The foot of the picturesque city was the sprawling sea; the head was the Casbah, the ancient fortress of the Deys. Up on the hill reposed the old or high town with its quaint Moorish edifices, while sloping below to the rim of the port lay the lower, new, or French town filled with government buildings, squares and streets, together with lines of warehouses and wharves, dotted here and there by mosques that looked strangely out of place amid the European architecture.

Blocked out against the harbor water from their conspicuous stand, the two friends were very dissimilar in appearance. Ainsworth's was the short, squat figure, Trascott's the tall, lanky one. The lawyer, in spite of the disadvantage of height, probably weighed more than the curate. His stockily-built body filled out his gray tweeds, while the black garments of Trascott hung loosely on his hollow frame. A gray cap of the same material as his suit was jauntily perched on the lawyer's head, but his companion wore the familiar and inevitable round, dark hat.

Still, if Trascott's form lost dignity beside Ainsworth's, that dignity was more than regained when it came to a comparison of faces. The lawyer had a gray-eyed, regular countenance, smooth and unmarked by any dissipation, but it lacked the shading that beautified his friend's. The curate's features, though more rugged in casting, had the high lights of earnestness glowing in his brown eyes, the deeper tones of endeavor blending in the moulding of the chin, while the shadows of responsibility rested in the firm curve of his lips.

Cyril Ainsworth, with his unchanging mask of precision, was the keen, well-oiled machine which cut straight to the core of things in the performance of its work. Bertrand Trascott was the living actor of a great belief, the exponent of a mighty drama calculated to uplift and regenerate his fellow-beings. Each had his part in the work of the present-day world, and, strange to say, men loved the machine-like precision of Ainsworth almost as well as the generous heart of Trascott.

The lawyer again called the curate's attention to the yacht with another motion of his hand.

"The yacht had to be repaired," he snapped. "It took three days to splice the timbers and rivet the plates. We should then have proceeded with our cruise. There was no impediment, for the steamship company settled the damages in full. Yet here we have been for two weeks–and so has the woman! At this rate we may be here for two months–and so may the woman!"

They sat down upon the piers for their after-supper smoke, having fared sumptuously on board the Mottisfont, in an effort to reconcile themselves to the inertia under which they chafed. The soft dusk began to glide in from the sea and enfold the dark wharves in misty wreaths. One by one the riding lanterns of the harbor vessels shone out like stars in a fog, and the rhythm of an Arab sailor song came swelling over the broad bay.

The two friends smoked in silence as the dusk grew deeper. Presently the beacon light flashed up on Matifou ten miles away, sending out its nightly warning to the ships at sea. A thousand lamps flared in the lower town, and far up the hill the boulevard lanterns starred the gloom with their fiery eyes.

"Can you tell me the space of time an Algerian romance requires?" asked Ainsworth, finally.

Trascott's cheery laugh was the only answer.

"In England," the lawyer mused, "I would give them six weeks. In this southern climate, where the blood runs hot, the climax must come in less time, but just how long only Britton knows."

Trascott tapped his pipe upon the pier, refilled it and settled back with a sigh.

"Do you think this affair is really serious?" he asked, with a certain earnestness and anxiety.

"Serious!" Ainsworth snorted, "it's the most serious thing that ever happened him. Do you understand Britton's disposition? He's a whole-hearted fellow full of generous and chivalric impulses, with a belief in the goodness of all the feminine sex. He has run against nothing to knock those notions into chaos. Do you think he can view that fine-looking woman unmoved? Do you think that she is going to pass by Reginald Britton, the heir to Britton Hall and old Oliver's estates? Not if I know anything, Trascott! And mark me, I don't like the woman. She's fair enough for a lord–but I don't like her. Please remember that, Trascott."

The curate started, for he had earlier confessed to himself a similar dislike of the blonde beauty who had taken the yacht and Britton and the port itself, as well as the great English hotels, by storm. However, he was too fair-minded not to combat such an antipathy so far unwarranted.

"Why do you not like her?" he asked, seeking perhaps in Ainsworth's attitude a solution of his own state of mind.

"Intuition, I suppose," the lawyer answered gruffly. "When I see a lady travelling alone, except for her maid, coming apparently from nowhere and heading for a destination wholly indefinite, I always regard her with suspicion. What has Britton learned about this woman? He knows her name is Maud Morris. He knows she can madden him with those eyes and lips. That is the extent of his knowledge. Does he know her home, her county, her family, her support? No! I have questioned Britton, not to mention warning him–"

"You have!" exclaimed the curate, "and what did he say?"

"Told me to go to that infernal region I mentioned. He can't listen to sound reason. They never can!"

"Ah, well," sighed Trascott, "I intended dropping a hint, but since you've anticipated me without result–"

"Might as well talk to a log!" Ainsworth cut in. "I shall be glad when the thing has run its course and we get out of here. This Algerian scenery palls on me! If something would only happen to hasten the climax, it might cheer my heart. I believe I shall hire some dogs of Arabs to abduct the fair princess and let Britton play the rescuer somewhere out on the Djujuras."

"It may not be necessary," said Trascott. "He's going to that dance to-night."

"Yes," muttered the lawyer, "he's been dressing and fussing ever since supper. There's the launch now!"

The gasoline craft spluttered and danced over the waves to the pier where Ainsworth and the curate were smoking.

"You lazy duffers," Britton cried, "aren't you going up?"

He stepped out of the launch, a tall, handsome figure in his evening clothes and top-hat. His paletot hung on his left arm, which was now entirely well, and as he faced his friends they both thought how singularly powerful he looked. Broad of shoulder and deep of chest, it seemed as if the frames of the other two men together would have been required to equal his bulk. His straight, finely-cut features and blue eyes held an expression unmistakably aristocratic.

"Aren't you going up?" he repeated.

"We'll look into the reading-room later on," replied Ainsworth. "I don't care to dance, and it disagrees with Trascott's digestion."

"See you there, then," was his farewell. "Don't forget you can get all you want to eat in the dining-room for the sum of six francs."

A fiacre pulled up near the wharf at his hail.

"Hotel de ––," he said, jumping in with an object-lesson of alacrity.

The driver accepted the hint and dashed away at a swift pace through the lower town till the long ascent which led up to Mustapha Supérieure compelled him to walk his animal.

The last two weeks had passed for Rex Britton as a single day. Not a minute of the whole time dragged, for the reason that he had spent every available minute with Maud Morris. He considered the sojourn, which he had lengthened day by day, as Paradise–the direct antithesis, in fact, of Ainsworth's view! He had pursued the wild dream of that first night on the harbor with all his passionate persistence till it suddenly ensnared him in its tangible and compelling reality.

The lawyer back on the pier was wishing for something to hasten the climax. In spite of his faculty of shrewd observation, Ainsworth did not dream of how deeply Britton was already involved with the woman whom he, Ainsworth, mistrusted.

It would take a wise man indeed to time and trace the development of a romance when the setting lies between the pagan Djujuras and the legend-steeped Mediterranean. Britton would have been filled with dismay had he stopped to inspect, analyze and adjudge his actions during those two weeks. His impulses were at riot under the sway of a heavenly elixir which the woman held to his lips; he never looked back; his mind was centred on the days ahead, planning a wonderful permanency for the exotic, filmy atmosphere of present experiences.

As the fiacre climbed the Mustapha Supérieure Britton could possess in vision the whole expanse of the port, the wharves dimly lighted and busy with the night-labor that the volume of trade enforced, the illuminated vessels in the wide anchorage and the mingling gleams that marked the Mustapha Inférieure.

Britton knew every nook of the climbing city, old, by almost a thousand years, in story and conflict. With the lady of pale-gold beauty he had explored all the charming retreats of both towns. They had loitered in the Place Royale amid the orange and lime trees, finding pleasure in watching the cosmopolitan crowds which thronged that oblong space in the centre of the city. The traits of character disclosed by representatives of so many different nations–Moors, Jews and Arabs, Germans, Spaniards, French, Corsicans, Italians and Maltese, and scores of other races–proved very interesting to the English observers.

The mild, balmy Algerian evenings seemed temptations to roam abroad, and the two had grown accustomed to promenade the Bab-el-Ouad and the Bab-azoun, which ran north and south in a parallel direction for half a mile. Those walks down the dim vista of flanking colonnades beneath an ivory moon, the same that lighted the Sahara caravans through the desert tracts, intoxicated senses and blood alike.

They had delved into the djamas, or superior mosques, the mesjids, or inferior ones, and the marabouts, which were the tombs or sanctuaries of the ancient Moorish saints; they had plunged into the market rabbles on the Squares de Chartres, d'Isly and Mahon, lolled in the Parisian-like boulevards and arcades of the new town, sat upon the flat-roofed, prison-windowed houses at sunset to catch the tang of the sweeping sea-wind on their faces, journeyed in the yacht as far as the lighthouse on Cape Matifou and the forbidding brow of Cape Caxine, or stretched their land-legs in the ascent of the narrow, jagged street called the Casbah that led up to the old Moorish fortress of the same name perched high on the steep, and commanding all Algiers.

Standing on the height of the Mustapha Supérieure where the fiacre had left him in front of the hotel piazza, Britton felt as if under some binding spell which the land of the sheik had cast upon him, a spell from which he would not willingly escape, for the delicious, cobwebby fetters only thrilled instead of chafing.

Dismissing his driver with a liberal fee, Britton ran lightly up the steps of the magnificent hostelry, resplendent with blazing lights and ornate structural patterns designed to rival the architectural beauties of the other fashionable resorts that contested for the patronage of the most select people who came to stay at Algiers.

The obsequious concierge, stationed in the hall to look after new-comers, directed a servant to appropriate Britton's coat and hat and bowed the Englishman toward the reception-room with a flood of welcoming French.

The reception-room–which some took the liberty of calling the morning-room–was a cosy, oak-panelled, damask-hung chamber where hotel inmates and visitors could meet or wait for friends. It gave one the impression of being very well appointed with rugs, round tables, leather-covered chairs, cushioned divans, pictures, mantels and window-seats.

At Britton's entrance the solitary occupant of the reception-room rose from a divan. She came forward with a glad, excited light beautifying her face, the filmy, silver-colored gown she wore sweeping gracefully about her slim, exquisite figure.

Quite close to Britton she paused and took hold of the lapels of his coat, smoothing them with her soft white fingers.

Had the lawyer been there to see, this action would have settled once for all the question of Britton's relation to Maud Morris. In her movement was the suggestion of intimate possession never to be mistaken for anything else. It told more than could be expressed in whole chapters of explanation.

"The dance has begun," she murmured, looking up, her eyes soft and shining beneath the burnished gold of her hair, "and everybody has gone either to take part or to watch. You are somewhat late, aren't you?"

"Yes, I am late," Britton said softly–"later than I thought, but I am glad, for my tardiness lets me meet you like this!" He nodded around the empty room.

She smiled into Britton's dancing eyes. He laid his hands gently upon hers, and the touch brought the delicate rose to her cheek, but the concierge's rapid French jabber warned them. Someone was approaching the reception-room. She slipped a hand in Britton's arm and turned to the door.

"Let us go to the concert-room," she said simply.

Britton bowed courteously as an attaché from the British Consulate entered with a party of ladies, and they went out amid the customary admiring stares.

They passed the rooms whence came the rattle of ping-pong, the whirr of billiards or the almost noiseless shuffle of bridge, and finally came to the ballroom. A ravishing Hungarian waltz swelled up from the palm screens which hid the orchestra; a hundred couples tripped the glassy floor-space, the conventional black-and-white attire of the gentlemen lending an effective contrast to the wonderful, daring toilettes of the ladies.

Everybody portrayed supreme happiness as well as a nice consciousness of what was correct, and everybody seemed to be trying to outdo everyone else in the ardor of enjoyment.

Not least by any means among the joy-seekers was Rex Britton.

His arm encircled his companion's waist and they stepped out, the handsomest couple in the room, swaying a second to the time of the orchestra. Then they glided away, captivated by the pulsating strains of the waltz, and lost themselves in the maze.