“This skulking here will not avail us,” he snarled at them, as if it were by their contriving that he was trapped. “By delay we but increase our peril. What is written is written. Allah has bound the fate of each man about his neck. Betide what may, to-night we take the open sea.”
“And by morning you’ll have found the bottom of it,” drawled a voice from one of the oars.
Dragut, who was standing on the gangway between the rowers’ benches, whipped round with an oath upon the speaker. He encountered the languid eyes of Messer Brancaleone. The repose of the last few days had restored the Italian’s vigour, and certain thoughts that lately he had been thinking had revived his courage.
“Are you weary of life?” quoth the infuriated corsair. “Shall I have you hanged ere we go out to meet your friends out yonder?”
“You’re very plainly a fool, Messer Dragut,” was the weary answer. “Hang me, and you hang the only man in all your fleet who can show you the way out of this trap.”
Dragut started between anger and amazement.
“You can show me a way out of this trap?” he cried. “What way may that be? Tell me, and I’ll discuss it with you.”
“Strike off my fetters, restore me my garments, and give me proper food. Then I may help you.”
Dragut glowered.
“We have a shorter way to make men speak,” said he.
Brancaleone smiled, and shook his head.
“You think so? I might prove you wrong.”
CHAPTER V
It was odd what a power of conviction dwelt in his languid tones. The corsair issued an order and turned away. A half-hour later Messer Brancaleone, nourished, washed and clothed, once more the elegant, willowy Italian in his doublet of sapphire velvet and in pleasantly variegated hose of blue and white, stepped on to the poop-deck where Dragut awaited him.
Seated cross-legged upon a gorgeous silken divan that was wrought in green and blue and gold, the handsome corsair combed his square black beard with fretful fingers. Behind him, stark naked save for his white loin-cloth, stood his gigantic Nubian, his body oiled until it shone like ebony, armed with a gleaming scimitar.
“Now, sir,” growled Dragut, “what is this precious plan of yours — briefly?”
“You begin where we should end,” said the imperturbable Genoese. “I owe you no favours, Messer Dragut, and I bear you no affection that I should make you a free gift of your life and liberty. My eyes have seen something to which yours are blind, and my wits have conceived something of which your own are quite incapable. These things, sir, are for sale. Ere I part with them we must agree on the price.”
Dragut pondered him from under scowling brows savagely. He could scarce believe that the world held so much impudence.
“And what price do you suggest?” he snarled, half-derisively, by way of humouring the Genoese.
“Why, as to that, since I offer you life and liberty, it is but natural that I should claim my own life and liberty in return, and similarly the liberty of Madonna Amelia and of my servants whom you captured; also, it is but natural that I should require the restoration of the money and jewels you have taken from us, and since you have deprived us of our felucca, it is no more than proper that you should equip us with a vessel in which to pursue the journey that you interrupted. Considering the time we have lost in consequence of this interruption, it is but just that you should make this good as far as possible by presenting me with a craft that is capable of the utmost speed. I will accept a galley of six-and-twenty oars, manned by a proper complement of slaves.”
“And is that all?” roared Dragut.
“No,” said Brancaleone quietly. “That is but the restitution due to me. We come now to the price of the service I am to render you. When you were Gianettino Doria’s prisoner, Barbarossa paid for you, as all the world knows, a ransom of three thousand ducats. I will be more reasonable.”
“Will you so?” snorted Dragut. “By the splendour of Allah, you’ll need to be!”
“I will accept one thousand ducats.”
“May Allah blot thee out, thou impudent son of shame!” cried the corsair, and he heaved himself up in a fury.
“You compel me to raise the price to fifteen hundred ducats,” said Brancaleone smoothly. “I must be compensated for abuse, since I cannot take satisfaction for it as between one honourable Christian gentleman and another.”
It was good for Dragut that his feelings suddenly soared to a pitch of intensity that defied expression, else might the price have been raised even beyond the figure of the famous ransom that Barbarossa had paid. Mutely he stood glowering, clenching and unclenching his sinewy hands. Then he half-turned to his Nubian swordsman.
“Ali —” he began, when Brancaleone once more cut in.
“Ah, wait,” said he. “I pray you calm yourself. Remember how you stand, and that Andrea Doria holds you trapped. Do nothing that will destroy your only chance. Time enough to bid Ali hack off my head when I have failed.”
That speech arrested Dragut’s anger in full flow. He wheeled upon the Genoese once more. “You accept that alternative?”
Brancaleone met his gaze blandly.
“Why not? I have no slightest fear of failure. I have said that I can show you how to win clear of this trap and make the admiral the laughing-stock of the world.”
“Speak, then,” cried Dragut, his fierce eyes kindling.
“If I do so before you have agreed to my terms, then I shall have nothing left to sell.”
Dragut turned aside and strode to the taffrail. He looked across the shimmering blue water to the fortifications at the harbour’s mouth; with the eyes of his imagination he looked beyond, at the fleet of Genoa riding out there in patient conviction that it held its prey. The price that Brancaleone asked was outrageous. A galley and some two hundred Christian slaves to row it, and fifteen hundred ducats! In all it amounted to more than the ransom that Kheyr-ed-Din Barbarossa had paid for him. Yet Dragut must pay it or count his destiny fulfilled. He came to reflect that he would pay it gladly enough to be out of this tight corner.
He came about again. He spoke of torture once more, but in a half-hearted sort of way; for he did not himself believe that it would be effective with a man of Brancaleone’s mettle.
CHAPTER VI
Brancaleone laughed at the threat and shrugged his shoulders.
“You may as profitably hang me, Messer Dragut. Your infidel barbarities would quite as effectively seal my lips.”
“We might torture the woman,” said Dragut the ingenious.
On the words Brancaleone turned white to the lips; but it was the pallor of bitter, heart-searing resolve, not the pallor of such fear as Dragut had hoped to awaken. He advanced a step, his imperturbability all gone, and he spat his words into the face of the corsair with the fierceness of a cornered wildcat.
“Attempt it,” said he, “and as God’s my witness I leave you to your fate at the hands of Genoa — ay, though my heart should burst with the pain of my silence. I am a man, Messer Dragut — never doubt it.”
“I do not,” said Dragut convinced. “I agree to your terms. Show me a way out of Doria’s clutches, and you shall have all that you have asked for.”
Trembling still from his recent emotion, Brancaleone hoarsely bade the corsair to call up his officers and repeat his words before them.
“And you shall make oath upon this matter,” he added. “Men say of you that you are a faithful Moslem. I mean to put it to the test.”
Dragut, now all eagerness to know what plan was stirring in his prisoner’s brain, unable to brook further suspense in this affair, called up his officers, and before them all, taking Allah to witness, he made oath upon the beard of the Prophet, that if Brancaleone could show him deliverance, he, on his side, would recompense the Genoese to the extent demanded. Thereafter Dragut and Brancaleone went ashore with no other attendant but the Nubian swordsman. It was the Genoese who led the way, not towards the fort, as Dragut had expe
cted, but in the opposite direction. Arrived at the northernmost curve of that almost circular lagoon, where the ground was swampy, Brancaleone paused. He pointed across a strip of shallow land, that was no more than a half-mile or so in width, to the blue-green sea beyond. Part of this territory was swampy, and part was sand; vegetation there was of the scantiest; some clumps of reeds, an odd date palm, its crest rustling faintly in the breeze, and nothing else.
“It is really very simple,” said the Italian. “Yonder lies your way.”
A red-legged stork rose from the edge of the marsh and went circling overhead. Dragut’s face empurpled with rage. He deemed that this smooth fellow dared to mock him.
“Are my galleys winged like that stork, thou fool?” he demanded passionately. “Or are they wheeled like chariots, that I can sail them over dry land?”
Brancaleone returned him a glance that was full of stupefaction.
“I protest,” said he, “that for a man of your reputation you fill me with amazement. I said you were a dull fellow. I little dreamed how dull. Nay, now, suppress your rage. Truth is a very healing draught, and you have need of it.
“I compute, now, that aboard your ships there will be, including slaves, some three thousand men. I doubt not you could press another thousand from the island into your service. How long, do you think, would it take four thousand men to dig a channel deep enough to float your shallow galleys through that strip of land?”
Dragut’s fierce eyes flickered as if he had been menaced with a blow.
“By Allah!” he ejaculated; and gripped his beard. “By Allah!”
“In a week the thing were easily done, and meanwhile your fort there will hold the admiral in play. Then, one dark night, you slip through this canal and stand away to the south, so that by sunrise you shall have vanished beyond the skyline, leaving the admiral to guard an empty trap.”
Dragut laughed aloud now in almost childish glee, and otherwise signified his delight by the vehemence with which he testified to the unity of Allah. Suddenly he checked. His eyes narrowed as they rested upon Brancaleone.
“’Tis a scurvy trick you play your lady’s grandsire!” said he.
The Genoese shrugged.
“Every man for himself, Messer Dragut. We understand each other, I think. ’Tis not for love of you that I do this thing.”
“I would it were,” said the corsair, with an odd sincerity. And as they returned to the galleys it was observed that Dragut’s arm was about the shoulders of the infidel, and that he spoke with him as with a brother.
CHAPTER VII
The fact is that Dragut, fired with admiration of Brancaleone’s resourcefulness, deplored that so fine a spirit should of necessity be destined to go down to the Pit. He spoke to him now of the glories of Islam, and of the future that must await a gentleman of Brancaleone’s endowments in the ranks of the Faithful. But this was a matter in which Brancaleone proved politely obdurate, and Dragut had not the time to devote to his conversion, greatly as he desired it. There was the matter of that canal to engage him.
The Italian’s instructions were diligently carried out. Daily the fort at the Boca de Cantara would belch forth shot at the Genoese navy, which stood well out of range. To the admiral this was but the barking of a dog that dared not come within biting distance; and the waste of ammunition roused his scorn of that pirate Dragut whom he held at his mercy.
There came a day, however, when the fort was silent; it was followed by another day of silence, in the evening of which one of the admiral’s officers suggested that all might not be well. Doria agreed, laughing heartily in his long white beard.
“All is not at all well with that dog Dragut,” said he. “He wants us within range of his guns. The ruse is childish.”
And so the Genoese fleet continued well out of range of the empty fort, what time Dragut himself was some scores of miles away, speeding for the Archipelago and the safety of the Dardanelles as fast as his slaves could row.
In the words of the Spanish historian Marmol, who has chronicled the event, Dragut had left Messer Andrea Doria “with the dog to hold.”
Brancaleone accompanied the Moslem fleet at first, though now aboard the galley which Dragut had given him in accordance with their agreement. And with the Genoese sailed the lovely Amelia Francesca Doria, his chest of gold, the jewels, and the fifteen hundred ducats that Dragut — grimly stifling his reluctance — had paid him. On the second day after leaving Jerbah, Messer Brancaleone and the corsair captain parted company, with mutual expressions of goodwill, and the Genoese put about and steered a north-westerly course for the coast of Spain.
It was some months ere Dragut learnt the true inwardness of Messer Brancaleone’s conduct. He had the story from a Genoese captive, the captain of a carack which the corsair scuttled in the Straits of Messina. This fellow’s name, too, was Brancaleone, upon learning which Dragut asked him was he kin to one Ottavio Brancaleone, who had gone to Spain with the admiral’s grand-daughter.
“He was my cousin,” the man answered.
And Dragut now learnt that in the teeth of the opposition of the entire Doria family the irrepressible Brancaleone had carried off Madonna Amelia. The admiral had news of it as he was putting to sea, and it was in pursuit not only of Dragut, but also of the runaways, that he had gone south as far as Jerbah, having reason to more than suspect that they were aboard one of Dragut’s galleys. The admiral had sworn to hang Brancaleone from his yardarm ere he returned to port, and his bitterness at the trick Dragut had played was increased by the circumstance that Brancaleone, too, had got clear away.
Dragut was very thoughtful when he heard that story.
“And to think,” said he afterwards to Othmani, “that I paid that unconscionable dog fifteen hundred ducats, and gave him my best galley manned by two hundred Christian slaves that he might render himself as great a service as ever he rendered me!”
But he bore no malice. After all, the Genoese had behaved generously in that he had left Dragut — though not from motives of generosity — the entire glory of the exploit. Dragut’s admiration for the impudent fellow was, if anything, increased. Was he not, after all, the only Christian who had ever bested Dragut in a bargain? If he had a regret it was that so shrewd a spirit should abide in the body of an infidel. But Allah is all-knowing.
THE TAPESTRIED ROOM
“Very well, then,” said our host reluctantly. “Since even the ladies insist, you shall hear it. “But I warn you again that it is not a pleasant story.”
There was a drawing-in of chairs about the big fireplace in the long library. Outside, the wind clamoured piteously, and through the tall windows the scudding, eddying snow was just visible in the blue-grey twilight. It heightened our relish of the cosy gloom about those blazing yule-logs.
Sir James, with the firelight playing upon his ruddy, shaven face and silver hair, buried his square chin in his ample stock, and proceeded to respond to our insistence by dragging the family skeleton from its cupboard.
“Briefly, then,” he began, “it happened in Christmas-week of 1745. My grandmother, Lady Evangeline Margatt, was living here alone at the time; her husband was dead, and her two boys were away from home.
“Three days before Christmas a man presented himself here at the hall and asked to see her. He was a fugitive Jacobite whom King George’s men had been seeking for some three months — ever since Culloden, in fact — and who had wandered into England. He had known Lady Evangeline in happier days, and it is believed that at one time they had been betrothed. Knowing her circumstances here, and having got as far as Preston and being in most desperate straits at the time, he came to cast himself upon her mercy.
“To receive and shelter a rebel was a very dangerous thing; but when sentiment prompts them, women can be very reckless. She gave him the shelter he begged, and announced him as a cousin to her household. But it happened that the messengers were hot upon his scent, and on the following evening, as Lady Evangeline and her Ja
cobite were sitting down to supper, in comes a lieutenant with a posse of red-coats, and my fine Jacobite was carried off and lodged in Preston Gaol.
“Whether her sometime lover believed that Lady Evangeline had betrayed him, or whether he acted from other motives, will never be known. What happened was that on Christmas Eve — that is to say, on the night after his arrest — he broke out of Preston Gaol whilst the guards were carousing. He made his way hither in the dead of night, scaled to the window of her ladyship’s room, which is just over the porch; forced his way in, and brutally murdered her.
“He was taken at Lancaster on the day after Christmas, and he was hanged as he deserved. That is all.”
A rustle went through the company as Sir James ceased. Then I sat forward to protest against this curtailing of the narrative we expected.
“But the sequel, Sir James — this haunting: what precisely is the traditional story of that?”
“The traditional story, my dear Dennison, is that on every anniversary of the crime the Jacobite is to be seen scaling to the window of the tapestried room — as Lady Evangeline’s sometime bedroom has come to be called. It is said that he enters, and that the crime is committed all over again by a ghostly murderer upon a ghostly victim.”
Edgeworth’s laugh of frank contempt broke harshly upon the general awe. The story had left him undaunted. But then an Irishman who had landed at Lisbon as a lieutenant in 1810 and returned to England as a colonel a short five years later — just after Waterloo — is not easily daunted. “Of course you, yourself, attach no faith to any of this nonsense, James?” he exclaimed uncompromisingly.
As seen in the firelight, the baronet’s face wore an expression of doubt as to what he actually did believe. “I don’t know,” he answered slowly. “I don’t think that I either accept or reject the story. I have no proof. That is to say,” he added, as if to temper the statement, “no proof afforded me by my own senses.”