The Pirate City: An Algerine Tale, R. M. Ballantyne [great novels of all time .TXT] 📗

which Ted Flaggan and his Friend Rais Ali act a Conscious Part, and a Political Storm begins to break.

There is unquestionably many a slip ’twixt the cup and the lip, but on the present occasion there was no such slip. Mariano succeeded in diminishing and flattening himself to such an extent that the janissaries passed without observing him. The moment they were out of sight he glided from his hiding-place, and soon found his way to the top of the ramparts, near the Bab-Azoun gate. The head of Castello was at his elbow; the wearied Turkish sentinel was not a hundred yards distant Mariano could see him clearly defined against the eastern sky every time he reached the end of his beat.

“If he takes it into his head to walk this way, I am lost,” thought Mariano.

It seemed as if the man had heard the thought, for he walked slowly towards the spot where the youth lay at full length on the ground. There was no mound or niche or coping of any kind behind which a man might conceal himself. The dead man’s head was the only object that broke the uniformity of the wall. In desperation, Mariano lay down with it between himself and the advancing sentinel, and crept close to it—so close that while he lay there he fancied that a drop of something cold fell from it and mingled with the perspiration that stood in large beads upon his brow!

The sentinel stopped just as Mariano was preparing to spring upon and endeavour to strangle him. He looked earnestly and long in the direction of the dead man’s head, as if in meditation on its owner’s untimely fate, or, possibly, on the unusual length and solidity of the shadow that tailed away from it!

Fortunately he advanced no further, but, turning on his heel, walked slowly away. Just then the moon shot forth a ray of light from the midst of the cloud that had covered it, as if to cheer the fugitive on his desperate adventure. Instead of cheering, however, it alarmed him, and expedited his movements.

In a moment Mariano put a loop of his rope over the head and drew it tight on the spike close to the masonry. Another moment and he was over the parapet, down the wall, and into the ditch. Here again unusual caution was needful, but the youth’s cat-like activity enabled him to overcome all obstacles. In a few minutes he was speeding over the Sahel hills in the direction of Frais Vallon.

We need scarcely say that wind and muscle were tried to their uttermost that night. In an incredibly short space of time he reached the gate of the consul’s garden, which stood open, and darted in.

Now it chanced that night that the stout British seaman, Ted Flaggan, lay in a hammock suspended between two trees in a retired part of the consul’s garden, the weather being so warm that not only he but several of the other domestics had forsaken their dwellings during the night, and lay about the grounds in various contrivances more or less convenient, according to the fancy or mechanical aptitude of the makers thereof.

Flaggan had, out of pure good-will, slung a primitive hammock similar to his own between two trees near him for his friend Rais Ali, in which the valiant Moor lay sound asleep, with his prominent brown nose pointing upwards to the sky, and his long brown legs hanging over the sides. Ted himself lay in a wakeful mood. He had fought unsuccessfully for some hours against a whole army of mosquitoes, and now, having given in, allowed the savage insects to devour him unchecked.

But the poor victim found it difficult to lie awake and suffer without occupation of any kind; he therefore arose and cut from a neighbouring hedge a light reed which was long enough to reach from his own hammock to that of his friend. With the delicate end of this, while reclining at his ease, he gently tickled Rais Ali’s nose.

After making several sleepy efforts to kill the supposed insect that troubled him, and giving vent to three or four violent sneezes, the interpreter awoke, and, growling something in Arabic, opened his eyes, which act enabled him to observe that his neighbour was awake and smiling at him.

“Ha! yous not be for sleep, hey? Mos’ troubelzum brutes dem muskitoes.”

“Och! it’s little I mind ’em,” said Flaggan.

“W’y you no for sleep, den?” demanded Rais.

“’Cos I likes to meditate, young man, specially w’en I’ve got sitch a splendid subjic’ of contemplation before me as a slumberin’ Moor! Won’t ye go in for a little moor slumberin’, eh?”

Rais turned his back on his friend with an indignant growl. He was evidently indisposed for jesting.

In a few seconds, being indifferent to real mosquitoes, the Moor was again sound asleep. It was soon clear, however, that he was not indifferent to Ted’s artificial insect. Being unable now to reach his nose, the restless son of Erin thrust the feathery point of the reed into his friend’s ear. The result was that Rais Ali gave himself a sounding slap on the side of the head, to Ted’s inexpressible delight. When Rais indicated that he was “off” again, he received another touch, which resulted in a second slap and a savage growl, as the unfortunate man sat up and yawned.

“They seems wuss than ornar,” said Flaggan gravely.

“Wuss? I nebber know’d noting wusser,” replied Rais, with a look of sleepy exasperation. “Beats ebberyting. Been five-an’-twenty ’eer in de kontry, an’ nebber seed de like.”

“Seed the like!” echoed the seaman. “Did ye saw ’em when ye was aslape?”

“Feel um, then,” replied the other sulkily; “yoos too purtikler.”

“Suppose we goes an’ has a whiff?” suggested Flaggan, leaping to the ground. “It’s a fine night entirely, tho’ a dark ’un. Come, I’ll trate ye to a taste o’ me cavendish, which is better than growlin’ in yer hammock at the muskaities, poor things, as don’t know no better.”

Feeling that the advice was good, or perhaps tempted by the offer of a “taste” of his friend’s peculiarly good tobacco, the interpreter arose, calmly made a paper cigarette, while Flaggan loaded his “cutty,” and then accompanied him in a saunter down the road leading to the gate.

“Ally,” began the seaman, making a stopper of the end of his little finger—“by the way, you ain’t related, are you, to the famous Ally Babby as was capting of the forty thieves?”

“No, nuffin ob de sort,” replied Ali, shaking his head.

“Well, no matter, you deserve to be; but that’s neither here nor there. What I was agoing to say is, that it’s my opinion that fellow Seedy Hassan ain’t all fair an’ above board.”

Ted glanced keenly at his companion, for he had made the remark as a sort of feeler.

“W’at de matter wid um?” asked Rais carelessly.

“Oh, nothin’—I only thought you might know somethin’ about him. I doesn’t, only I’m a dab at what’s called in Ireland fizzyognomy, an? I don’t like the looks of him. Why, bless ye, I knows a feller by the cut of his jib directly. I could have taken my davy, now, that you were a sly, clever sort o’ chap, even before I was introduced to ’ee, d’ee see?”

Whether he saw or not remains to this day an uncertainty, for it was at that moment that, as before stated, Mariano rushed in at the gate, and, unintentionally, into the arms of Rais Ali, who uttered a loud cry and flung him off with a kick that unfortunately took effect on the youth’s shin.

Supposing that he was intercepted, afraid lest his mission should miscarry, and angered by the pain, Mariano lost the power of self-restraint which he had hitherto exercised so well that night. He rushed at the interpreter and hit him a blow on the forehead that caused him to tumble backwards violently.

The act was scarcely done when the youth found himself in the embrace of Ted Flaggan, and, strong though he was, he found it impossible to throw off, or to free himself from, that sturdy tar. Still he struggled fiercely, and there is no saying what might have been the result, had not Rais, recovering from the blow, hastened to his friend’s aid.

Between them they succeeded in securing Mariano, and, with a handkerchief tied his hands behind him.

“Now then, young feller,” said Flaggan, taking the youth by the arm, “you’ll have to go before the British couns’l an’ give an account of yerself. So come along.”

Of course when Mariano was taken into the presence of Colonel Langley, and had whispered a few words in his ear, the seaman and his friend Rais Ali were dismissed with the assurance that all was right—an assurance, by the way, which was not quite satisfactory to the latter, when he reflected on and tenderly stroked the bump, about as large as a pigeon’s egg, which ornamented the space between his eyes!

“Never mind, Ally Babby,” was his friend’s consolatory remark as they left the house and returned to their hammocks; “it can’t damage your good looks, an’ ’ll prove a mighty source of amazement to the muskaities.”

Meanwhile the consul accompanied Mariano a short way on his return to town, so that the latter might not be delayed.

“I hope there is no fear of an outbreak occurring before I can get into town to-morrow,” said the consul, as they were about to part. “It is impossible that I can demand an audience of the Dey before breakfast without creating suspicion. Tell Bacri, however, that he may depend on my doing my utmost without delay to avert the evil. And now, how do you mean to return to him—for it occurs to me that although you may scale the walls easily enough, you won’t be able to retrace your way to the house of the Jew who favoured your escape?”

“Bacri had foreseen that,” replied the youth, “and has arranged to meet and guide me from a street leading south from the Bagnio, which is known to both of us.”

“He runs great risk in doing this,” said the consul; “however, he knows the outs and ins of the city well. Good-bye, and God speed you on your way.”

Mariano, who was impatient to return, at once darted away like a deer, and was soon lost to view among the aloes and cactuses that clothed the slopes of the Sahel hills.

Not long afterwards the grey light of day began to tip the domes and minarets of the pirate city, and with it began the soft hum of a general awakening—for Mohammedans are early risers, and even pirates deemed it consistent with their calling to commence the day with formal—not to say ostentatious—prayers. Any one traversing the streets at that early hour might have seen men at the fountains busy with their prescribed ablutions, while elsewhere others were standing, kneeling, or prostrating themselves, with their faces turned carefully in the direction of Mecca, their holy city.

It must not be supposed, however, as we have already remarked, that all the men of the town were pirates. That the town existed by means of piracy, and that all its chief men from the Dey downwards were pure and simple robbers, is quite consistent with the fact that there were many honest enough traders and workmen whose lot had been cast there, and whose prayers were probably very heartfelt and genuine—some of them, perchance, being an appeal for deliverance from the wretches who ruled them with a rod of iron—indeed, we might almost say, a rod of red-hot iron. Whatever the nature of their prayers, however, they were early in presenting, and remarkably particular in not omitting, them.

Down at the Marina there was a group of Christian slaves who were not behind their task-masters in this respect. In an angle of the fortifications the Padre Giovanni was kneeling by the side of a dying slave. The man had been crushed accidentally under a large piece of the rock