The Sea Hawk quotes

Master Baine bowed gravely.

He was a man whom Nature had made grave.

“But since I would not that any evil consequences might attend your action, I am come to lay proof before you that you have acted more rightly even than you think, and that I am not the slayer.”

Further reflection presented a new fear to him. It came to him that if Sir Oliver cleared himself, of necessity his own implication must follow. His terrors very swiftly magnified a risk that in itself was so slender as to be entirely negligible.

In his eyes it ceased to be a risk; it became a certain and inevitable danger.

If Sir Oliver put forward this proof that the trail of blood had not proceeded from himself, it must, thought Lionel, inevitably be concluded that it was his own.

In his heart he was ashamed of his fears; in his heart he knew himself for a craven. He realized to the full the hideousness of his selfishness, and yet, as before, he was not strong enough to conquer it.

In short, his love of himself was greater than his love of his brother, or of twenty brothers.

The morrow—a blustering day of late March found him again at that alehouse at Penycumwick in the company of Jasper Leigh. A course had occurred to him, as the only course now possible.

Sakr-el-Bahr, the hawk of the sea, the scourge of the Mediterranean and the terror of Christian Spain, lay prone on the heights of Cape Spartel.

Above him on the crest of the cliff ran the dark green line of the orange groves of Araish—the reputed Garden of the Hesperides of the ancients, where the golden apples grew.

“God’s light!” he said at last, in English, to vent his infinite amazement. Then reverting to the cynical manner that he had ever affected, and effacing all surprise—

“Good day to you, Sir Oliver,” said he. “I suppose ye’ll give yourself the pleasure of hanging me.”

“Allah is great!” said Sakr-el-Bahr impassively.

Their assurance of this was based upon the fact that when the Spaniard fired across the bows of the Swallow as an invitation to heave to, she had kept upon her course.

Thus, with unanswerable Castilian logic was the evil conscience of her skipper proven.

Captain Leigh protested on the other hand that his action had been dictated by his lack of faith in Spaniards and his firm belief that all Spaniards were pirates to be avoided by every honest seaman who was conscious of inferior strength of armaments.

He turned to the Moor beside him, and addressing him in Spanish—

“Hell,” he said, “was surely made for Christians, which may be why they seek to make earth like it.”

Fortunately for him the creak and dip of the oars, the clank of chains, and the lashes beating sharply upon the wretched Jew were sufficient to muffle his voice. But the Moor heard him, and his dark eyes gleamed.

“By Allah, was ever such a lusty fighter seen!” cried the latter. “The strength of the Prophet is within him thus to smite the unbelieving pigs.”

“I was returning them some of their whiplashes⁠—with interest,” said he.

And those were the circumstances under which he came to meet the formidable Asad-ed-Din, Basha of Algiers, those the first words that passed between them.

If indeed his heart wept, it was for the last time; thereafter he was more inscrutable, more ruthless, cruel and mocking than men had ever known him, nor from that day did he ever again concern himself to manumit a single English slave.

His heart was become a stone.

Thus five years passed, counting from that spring night when he was trepanned by Jasper Leigh, and his fame spread, his name became a terror upon the seas, and fleets put forth from Malta, from Naples, and from Venice to make an end of him …

“Five years of it, and four of them spent aboard the galleys of Spain, and no day in all of them but that I prayed for death. Did you but know what I ha’ suffered.”

“Never was suffering more merited, never punishment more fitting, never justice more poetic,”

said Sakr-el-Bahr in a voice that made the skipper’s blood run cold. “You would have sold me, a man who did you no hurt, indeed a man who once befriended you—you would have sold me into slavery for a matter of two hundred pounds. …”

I need a navigator,” he added in explanation, “and what five years ago you would have done for two hundred pounds, you shall do today for your life. How say you: will you navigate this ship for me?”

“Sir,” cried Jasper Leigh, who could scarce believe that this was all that was required of him, “I’ll sail it to hell at your bidding.”

“I am not for Spain this voyage,” answered Sakr-el-Bahr. “You shall sail me precisely as you would have done five years ago, back to the mouth of the Fal, and set me ashore there. Is that agreed?”

“Sir Oliver Tressilian!” Killigrew gasped, and “Sir Oliver Tressilian!” echoed Lord Henry Goade, to add—“By God!”

“Not Sir Oliver Tressilian,” came the answer, “but Sakr-el-Bahr, the scourge of the sea, the terror of Christendom, the desperate corsair your lies, cupidity, and false-heartedness have fashioned out of a sometime Cornish gentleman.”

He embraced them all in his denunciatory gesture. “Behold me here with my sea hawks to present a reckoning long overdue.”

“I hear thee,” answered Asad sourly. “And were thine own hearing less infirm, woman, thou wouldst have heard me answer thee that thy words weigh for naught with me against his deeds.

Words may be but a mask upon our thoughts; deeds are ever the expression of them.

Bear thou that in mind, O Fenzileh.”

“

As her beauty wanes so her presumption waxes,

” he growled. “She is growing old, Tsamanni—old and lean and shrewish, and no fit mate for a Member of the Prophet’s House. It were perhaps a pleasing thing in the sight of Allah that we replaced her.”

“How?” he choked. “Am I to lose a hundred philips?”

“What is written is written,” replied the serene dalal.

Ibrahim was frothing at the lips, his eyes were blood-injected. “But it was never written that. …”

“You are my slave, do you understand?—bought in the marketplace as I might buy me a mule, a goat, or a camel—and belonging to me body and soul.

You are my property, my thing, my chattel, to use or abuse, to cherish or break as suits my whim, without a will that is not my will, holding your very life at my good pleasure.

”

“

If you will manufacture devils, little toad of a brother, do not upbraid them for being devils when next you meet them.

”

How idle is that boast. My body you may bind and confine; but my soul. … Be very sure that you shall be cheated of your bargain. You boast yourself lord of life and death. A lie!

Death is all that you can command.

”

“Say ‘better,’ Fenzileh,” he rejoined. “I said thou art not subtle. By the Koran, I lied.

Thou art subtle as the serpent.

Yet I see whither thou art gliding. Were I to be guided by thine advice a twofold purpose would be served. First, I should place her beyond Asad’s reach, and second, I should be embroiled with him for having done so.

“I thank thee,” cut in Marzak, “for the justice of thy words. To be the partner of thy soul were to be an infidel unbelieving dog.”

“Thy tongue, O Marzak, is like thine archery,” said Sakr-el-Bahr.

“Ay—in that it pierces treachery,” was the swift retort.

“Dost threaten?” he cried, his eyes aflash.

“Threaten?” sneered Sakr-el-Bahr. “I prophesy.”

And on that he turned, and stalked away down the gangway to the vessel’s waist.

“And … and I believed that you … that you. …”

“Just so,” he grimly interrupted. “You always did believe the best of me.”

And on that he turned and went out abruptly.

“It is too late,” he answered her.

“There is no bridge can span the pit I have dug myself. I must go down into it as cheerfully as God will let me.”

“Then,” she cried in sudden exaltation, “I will go down with you. At the last, at least, we shall be together.”

“That’s a heathen creed,” said he in fear and loathing.

“Nay, now; it’s a creed by which men live. They perform as they preach, which is more than can be said of any Christians I have ever met.”

“How can you talk so upon the eve of death?” cried Leigh in protest.

“How can you talk so upon the eve of death?” cried Leigh in protest.

“Faith,” said Sir Oliver, “it’s considered the season of truth above all others.”

“Then ye don’t believe in God?”

“But not in the real God?” the skipper insisted.

“There can be no God but the real God⁠—it matters little what men call Him.”

“Then if ye believe, are ye not afraid?”

But Master Leigh refused to be comforted. “Oh!” he groaned miserably. “I would that I did not believe in God!”

“Your disbelief could no more abolish Him than can your fear create Him,” replied Sir Oliver.

“But your mood being what it is, were it not best you prayed?”

Sir John’s head drooped, his countenance drawn and grave. “Nor can my justice,” he added gloomily. “Though it avenge him, it cannot give me back my friend.” He looked at the surgeon.

“Vengeance, sir, is the hollowest of all the mockeries that go to make up life.”

“Your task, Sir John,” replied the surgeon, “is one of justice, not vengeance.”

He dropped her hands and stood away. “God’s light!” he swore. “You sue for pity for Oliver Tressilian, for that renegade, that incarnate devil? Oh, you are mad!” he stormed. “Mad!” and he flung away from her, whirling his arms.

“I love him,” she said simply.

That answer smote him instantly still. Under the shock of it he just stood and stared at her again, his jaw fallen.

“We have had you brought hither to afford you an opportunity of urging any reasons why we should not hang you out of hand, as is our right.”

Sir Oliver looked at him in almost amused surprise. “Faith!” he said at length. “It was never my habit to waste breath.”

“I doubt you do not rightly apprehend me, sir,” returned his lordship, and his voice was soft and silken as became his judicial position. “Should you demand a formal trial, we will convey you to England that you may have it.”