The Sea-Hawk

f the Mediterranean and the terror of Christian

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 ab

im squatted a negro from the Sus both naked of all save white loin-cloths, their muscular bodies glistening like ebony in the dazzling sunshine of mid-May. They wielded crude

white turban wound about his brow. His eyes, by contrast, were singularly light. He wore over his white shirt a long green tunic of very light silk, woven along its edges with arabesques in gold; a pair of loose calico breeches reached to his knees; his brown

e moved there was a glint of armour from the chain mail in which his body was cased, and from the steel casque about which he had swathed his green turban. Beside him lay an enormous curved scimitar

s a space of sea whose clear depths shifted with its slow movement from the deep green of emerald to all the colours of the opal. A little farther off behind a projecting screen of rock that formed a little haven two enormous masted galleys, each of fifty oars, and a smaller galliot of thirty rod

nd with every foot of canvas spread to catch it she stood as close to it as was possible. Nearer she came on her larboard tack, and not a doubt but her master would be scanning the hostile African littoral for a sight of those desperate rovers who haunted it and who took toll of every Christian ship that ventured over-near. Sakr-el-Bahr smiled to think how little th

at which the white crests of the wind-whipped wavelets ceased and the water became smoother. Did she but venture as far southward on her present tack, she would be slow to go about ag

kicked his heels in the air, then swung rou

cried in the Frankish jargon-the li

s the laconic ans

of the white belly under her black hull. Sakr-el-Bahr shaded his eyes, and concentrated his vision upon the square ensign fly

rowled to his companion. "It is

ure in?" wonde

ts no danger, and it is not often that our galleys are to be foun

d it, for there was still a moderate breeze on the leeward side o

the lightning-like impetuousness in which he was wont to

re certain is her doom. Time enough to sound the charge when she goes about. Give me to

into a cup. Sakr-el-Bahr drank slowly, his eyes never leaving the vessel, whose every ratline was clearly defined by now in the pellucid air. They could see men

f the bo'suns, and that again by the splash and creak of oars, as the two larger galleys swept out from their ambush. The long armoured poops were a-swarm with turbaned corsairs, their weapons gleaming in the sunshine; a doze

bout went all awry, and precious moments were lost during which she stood floundering, with idly flapping sails. In his desperate haste the captain headed her straight to leeward, thinking that by running thus before the wind he stood the best chance of avoiding the trap. But there was

ojecting stone, but all with the speed and nimbleness of an ape. He dropped at last to the beach, then sped across it at a run, and went bounding along a black reef until he stood alongside of the galliot which had been left behind by the other Corsair vessels. She awaited him in deep water, the length of her oars from the rock, and

ave the word. Up the middle gangway ran a bo'sun and two of his mates cracking their long whips of bullock-h

rounded him, quivering in their impatience to be let loose upon the Christian foe. Above, along the yardarm and up t

d sweated under the Moslem lash that drove them

ring hail of arrows was pouring down upon her decks from the Muslim crosstrees; up her sides crowded the eager Moors, ever most eager when it was a question of tackling the Spanish dogs who had d

ll, what could be done they did. They made a gallant stand against this pitiless assailant. But the corsairs charged home as gallantly, utterly reckless of life, eager to slay in the name of Allah and Hi

s aloft, hacking from the mainmast the standard of Spain and the wooden crucifix that was nailed below it.

to acclaim him this hawk of the sea, as he was named, this most valiant of all the servants of Islam. True he had taken no actual part in the engagement. It had been too brief and he had arrived

m already the Muslimeen were heaving overboard-dead and wounded alike when the

ving Spaniards, weaponless and broken in

had set out from Cadiz in high hope of finding fortune in the Indies. Their voyage had been a very brief one; their fate they knew-to t

d slightly in advance, his face livid with rage and grief. He was richly dressed in the Cast

. "Fortuna de guerra, senor capitan," said

g himself erect, and speaking with conscious pride i

I should judge. In the s?k at Algiers you might fetch two h

Catholics, favoured the oath anatomical. What else he would have added i

ousand philips, then," said he. And to his followers-"Away with him!

orne awa

e care of Biskaine, who acted as his Kayla, or lieutenant. But before doing so he bade the ship's bo'sun stand forward, and demanded to know what slaves there might be on board. There

kull-caps upon their curly black locks, smiled ingratiatingly, hoping for the best since they were fallen into the hands of people who were nearer akin to them than Christians and allied to them, at least, by the bond of common enmity to Spain and common suffering at the hands of Spaniards. The two heretics stood in stolid apathy, realizing that with them it was but a case of passing from Charybdis to Scylla, and that

ie as live. Thus some few moments during which the stalwart Muslim stood regarding him; then as if drawn by that persistent scrutiny he raised his dull, weary eyes. At once they quickened, the dulness passed out of them; t

infinite amazement. Then reverting to the cynical mann

id he. "I suppose ye'll give your

" said Sakr-el-B