‘Moreover,’ she said, as they watched Vesuvius receding when they left Naples, ‘your mountains are not mountains, but ant-hills, and I do not care for them. But your sea has the colours of many sherbets, rose-leaf and violet, and lemon and orange, and sometimes even of pale yellow peach-sherbet, which is good. Let me always see the sea till the fine dresses are ready to be tried on.’
‘This sea,’ answered Logotheti, ’is always most beautiful near land and amongst islands, and the big fire-mountain of Sicily looks as tall as Kasbek, because it rises from the water’s edge to the sky.’
‘Then take me to it, and I will tell you, for my eyes have looked on the Altai, and I wish to see a real mountain again. After that we will go back and get the fine dresses. Will Gula know how to fasten the fine dresses at the back, do you think?’
‘You shall have a woman who does, and who can talk with Gula, and the two will fasten the fine dresses for you.’ Logotheti spoke with becoming gravity.
‘Yes,’ Baraka answered. ‘Spend money for me, that I may be good to see. Also, I wish to have many servants. My father has a hundred, perhaps a thousand, but now I have only two, Gula and Spiro. The man I seek will think I am poor, and that will be a shame. While I was searching for him, it was different; and besides, you are teaching me how the rich Franks live in their world. It is not like ours. You know, for you are more like us, though you are a king here.’
She spoke slowly and lazily, pausing between her phrases, and turning her eyes to him now and then without moving her head; and her talk amused him much more than that of European women, though it was so very simple, like that of a gifted child brought suddenly to a new country, or to see a fairy pantomime.
‘Tell me,’ he said after a time, ‘if it were the portion of Kralinsky to be gathered to his fathers before you saw him, what would you do?’
Baraka now turned not only her eyes to him but her face.
‘Why do you ask me this? Is it because he is dead, and you are afraid to tell me?’
‘He was alive this morning,’ Logotheti answered, ‘and he is a strong man. But the strong die sometimes suddenly, by accident if not of a fever.’
‘It is emptiness,’ said Baraka, still looking at him. ‘He will not die before I see him.’
‘Allah forbid! But if such a thing happened, should you wish to go back to your own people? Or would you learn to speak the Frank and live in Europe?’
‘If he were dead, which may Allah avert,’ Baraka answered calmly, ‘I think I would ask you to find me a husband.’
‘Ah!’ Logotheti could not repress the little exclamation of surprise.
‘Yes. It is a shame for a woman not to be married. Am I an evil sight, or poor, that I should go down to the grave childless? Or is there any reproach upon me? Therefore I would ask you for a husband, because I have no other friend but only you among the Feringhis. But if you would not, I would go to Constantinople again, and to the Persian merchant’s house, and I would say to his wife: “Get me a husband, for I am not a cripple, nor a monster, nor is there any reproach upon me, and why should I go childless?” Moreover, I would say to the merchant’s wife: “Behold, I have great wealth, and I will have a rich husband, and one who is young and pleasing to me, and who will not take another wife; and if you bring me such a man, for whatsoever his riches may be, I will pay you five per cent.”’
Having made this remarkable statement of her intentions, Baraka was silent, expecting Logotheti to say something. What struck him was not the concluding sentence, for Asiatic match-makers and peace-makers are generally paid on some such basis, and the slim Tartar girl had proved long ago that she was a woman of business. What impressed Logotheti much more was what seemed the cool cynicism of her point of view. It was evidently not a romantic passion for Kralinsky that had brought her from beyond Turkestan to London and Paris; her view had been simpler and more practical; she had seen the man who suited her, she had told him so, and had given him the secret of great wealth, and in return she expected him to marry her, if she found him alive. But if not, she would immediately take steps to obtain another to fill his place and be her husband, and she was willing to pay a high price to any one who could find one for her.
Logotheti had half expected some such thing, but was not prepared for her extreme directness; still less had he thought of becoming the matrimonial agent who was to find a match worthy of her hand and fortune. She was sitting beside him in a little ready-made French dress, open at the throat, and only a bit of veil twisted round her hair, as any European woman might wear it; possibly it was her dress that made what she said sound strangely in his ears, though it would have struck him as natural enough if she had been muffled in a yashmak and ferajeh, on the deck of a Bosphorus ferry-boat.
He said nothing in answer, and sat thinking the matter over.
‘I could not offer to pay you five per cent,’ she said after a time, ‘because you are a king, but I could give you one of the fine rubies I have left, and you would look at it sometimes and rejoice because you had found Baraka a good husband.’
Logotheti laughed low. She amused him exceedingly, and there were moments when he felt a new charm he had never known before.
‘Why do you laugh?’ Baraka asked, a little disturbed. ‘I would give you a good ruby. A king may receive a good ruby as a gift, and not despise it. Why do you laugh at me? There came two German merchants to me in Paris to see my rubies, and when they had looked, they bought a good one, but not better than the one I would give you, and Spiro heard them say to each other in their own language that it was for their King, for Spiro understands all tongues. Then do you think that their King would not have been glad if I had given him the ruby as a gift? You cannot mock Baraka. Baraka knows what rubies are worth, and has some still.’
‘I do not mock you,’ Logotheti answered with perfect gravity. ‘I laughed at my own thoughts. I said in my heart, “If Baraka asks me for a husband, what will she say if I answer, Behold, I am the man, if you are satisfied!” This was my thought.’
She was appeased at once, for she saw nothing extraordinary in his suggestion. She looked at him quietly and smiled, for she saw her chance.
‘It is emptiness,’ she said. ‘I will have a man who has no other wife.’
‘Precisely,’ Logotheti answered, smiling. ‘I never had one.’
‘Now you are indeed mocking me!’ she said, bending her sharp-drawn eyebrows.
‘No. Every one knows it who knows me. In Europe, men do not always marry very young. It is not a fixed custom.’
‘I have heard so,’ Baraka answered, her anger subsiding, ‘but it is very strange. If it be so, and if all things should happen as we said, which Allah avert, and if you desired me for your wife, I would marry you without doubt. You are a great man, and rich, and you are good to look at, as Saäd was. Also you are kind, but Saäd would probably have beaten me, for he beat every one, every day, and I should have gone back to my father’s house. Truly,’ she added, in a thoughtful tone, ‘you would make a desirable husband for Baraka. But the man I seek must marry me if I find him alive, for I gave him the riches of the earth and he gave me nothing and departed, leaving me to die. I have told you, and you understand. Therefore let us not jest about these things any more. What will be, will be, and if he must die, it is his portion, and mine also, though it is a pity.’
Thereupon the noble little features became very grave, and she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap, looking out at the violet light on the distant volcano. After that, at dinner and in the evening, they talked pleasantly. She told him tales of her own land, and of her childhood, with legends of the Altai, of genii and enchanted princesses; and he, in return, told her about the great world in which he lived; but of the two, she talked the more, no doubt because he was not speaking his own language. Yet there was a bond of sympathy between them more natural and instinctive than any that had ever drawn him and Margaret together.
When the sun was up the ne
xt morning and Logotheti came on deck to drink his coffee alone, he saw the magic Straits not many miles ahead, in an opalescent haze that sent up a vapour of pure gold to the pale blue enamel of the sky. He had been just where he was now more than once before, and few sights of nature had ever given him keener delight. On the left, the beautiful outline of the Calabrian hills descended softly into the still sea, on the right the mountains of Sicily reared their lofty crests; and far above them all, twice as high as the highest, and nobler in form than the greatest, Ætna towered to the very sky, and a vast cloud of smoke rose from the summit, and unfolded itself like a standard, in flowing draperies that streamed westward as far as the eye could reach.
‘Let her go half-speed, Captain,’ said Logotheti, as his sailing-master came up to bid him good-morning. ‘I should like my guest to see the Straits.’
‘Very good, sir. We shall not go through very fast in any case, for the tide is just turning against us.’
‘Never mind,’ Logotheti answered. ‘The slower the better to-day, till we have Ætna well astern.’
Now the tide in the Straits of Messina is as regular and easy to calculate as the tide in the Ocean, and at full and change of the moon the current runs six knots an hour, flowing or ebbing; it turns so suddenly that small freight steamers sometimes get into difficulties, and no sailing vessel I have ever seen has a chance of getting through against it unless the wind is both fresh and free.
Furthermore, for the benefit of landsmen, it is well to explain here that when a steamer has the current ahead, her speed is the difference between her speed in slack water and that of the current or tide, whereas, if the latter is with her, its speed increases her own.
Consequently, though the Erinna could run sixteen knots, she would only be able to make ten against the tide; for it chanced that it was a spring tide, the moon being new on that very day. Similarly the Lancashire Lass, running her twenty-three knots like a torpedo boat, would only do seventeen under the same conditions.
CHAPTER XV
AT TWO O’CLOCK in the morning Captain Brown was called by the officer of the watch, who told him that he was overhauling a good-sized steam yacht. The latter was heading up for the Straits from the southward, and the officer judged her to be not more than three or four miles on the port bow.
Captain Brown, who meant business, was sleeping in his clothes in the chart-room, and was on the bridge in ten seconds, peering over the search-light with his big binocular. At two in the morning even the largest yachts do not show such a blaze of lights as passenger steamers generally do all night, and the one Captain Brown was watching had only two or three, besides the regulation ones. She might be white, too, though she might be a light grey, but he thought on the whole that she was painted white. She was rigged as a two-masted fore-and-aft schooner. So was the Erinna now, though she had once carried square topsails at the fore. She was also of about the same size, as far as it was possible to judge under the search-light. Captain Brown did not feel sure that he recognised her, but considering what his orders were he knew it was his duty to settle the question of her identity, which would be an easy matter in a quarter of an hour or less, as the course of the two vessels converged.
He had been told to find the Erinna, but for what purpose he knew not, and he naturally supposed it to be a friendly one. As a first step, he ordered the Coston signal of his owner’s yacht club to be burned, turned off the search-light, and waited for an answer. None came, however. Foreign yachts do not always burn signals to please vessels of other nations.
A couple of minutes later, however, the white beam of a search-light shot out and enveloped Captain Brown and his ship. The other man was evidently having a good look at him, for the light was kept full on for some time. But no signal was burned after it went out. Then Captain Brown turned on his own light again, and looked once more; and he had almost made up his mind that the other yacht was not quite as long as the Erinna, when she suddenly starboarded her helm, made a wide sweep away from him, and headed down the Sicilian coast in the direction of Catania.
Captain Brown was so much surprised that he lowered his glasses and looked at his chief mate, whose watch it was, and who was standing beside him. It really looked very much as if the other vessel had recognised him and were running away. The chief mate also looked at him, but as they were more or less dazzled by the search-light that had been played on them, they could hardly see one another’s faces at all. The captain wished his owner were on deck, instead of being sound asleep below. Owners who are not at all nautical characters do not like to be waked up at two o’clock in the morning by inquiries for instructions. Captain Brown considered the situation for two or three minutes before he made up his mind. He might be mistaken about the length and the bows of the Erinna, and if by any possibility it were she, he would not lose much by making sure of her. No other steamer could now pass out of the Straits without being seen by him.
‘Hard-a-starboard,’ he said to the mate.
‘Hard-a-starboard,’ said the mate to wheel.
The big Lancashire Lass described a vast curve at her racing speed, while the captain kept his eye on the steamer he was going to chase. Before she was dead ahead the mate ordered the wheel amidships, and the Lancashire Lass did the rest herself.
‘That will do for a course,’ the captain said, when he had the vessel one point on the starboard bow.
‘Keep her so,’ said the mate to the wheel.
‘Keep her so, sir,’ answered the quartermaster.
It soon became clear to Captain Brown that he was chasing an uncommonly fast vessel, though he was willing to admit that he might have been a little out in judging the distance that separated him from her. Allowing that she might do sixteen knots, and even that is a high speed for yachts, he ought to have overtaken her in half an hour at the outside. But he did not, and he was much puzzled to find that he had gained very little on her when six bells were struck. Twice already he had given a little more starboard helm, and the pursued vessel was now right ahead, showing only her stern-light and the glare of her after-masthead light.
‘Didn’t I hear four bells go just after you called me?’ he asked of the mate. ‘Or was it five?’
‘Four bells, sir. I logged it. At two-twenty we gave chase.’
‘Mr. Johnson,’ said the captain solemnly, ‘he’s doing at least twenty.’
‘At least that.’
The quartermaster who came to relieve the wheel at the hour, touched his cap, and reported eighty-five and eighty-six revolutions of the port and starboard engines respectively, which meant that the Lancashire Lass was doing her best. Then he took the other quartermaster’s place.
‘Chase,’ said the man relieved. ‘Keep her so.’
‘Keep her so,’ answered the other, taking over the wheel.
Captain Brown spoke to his officer.
‘Tell them to try and work the port engine up to eighty-six, Mr. Johnson.’
The chief mate went to the engine telephone, delivered the message, and reported that the engineer of the watch in the port engine said he would do his best, but that the port engine had not given quite such a good diagram as the starboard one that morning.
Then something happened which surprised and annoyed Captain Brown; and if he had not been a religious man, and, moreover, in charge of a vessel which was so very high-class that she ranked as third in the world amongst steam yachts, and perhaps second, a fact which gave him a position requiring great dignity of bearing with his officers, he would certainly have said things.
The chased vessel had put out her lights and disappeared into complete darkness under the Sicilian coast. Again he and his officer looked at one another, but neither spoke. They were outside the wheel-house on the bridge on the starboard side, behind a heavy plate-glass screen. The captain made one step to the right, the mate made one to the left, and both put up their glasses in the teeth of the gale made by the yacht’s tremendous way. In less than a minute they stepped back into
their places, and glanced at each other again.
Now it occurred to Captain Brown that such a financier as his owner might be looking out for such another financier as the owner of the Erinna for some reason which would not please the latter, whose sailing-master had without doubts recognised the Lancashire Lass at once, because she was very differently built from most yachts.
‘Search-light again, Mr. Johnson,’ said the captain.
The great beacon ran out instantly like a comet’s tail, and he stood behind it with his glasses. Instead of a steamer, he saw a rocky islet sticking up sharp and clear, half a point on the starboard bow, about three miles off. It was the largest of the Isles of the Cyclops, as he very well knew, off Aci Reale, and it was perfectly evident that the chased vessel had first put out her lights and had then at once run behind the islands, close inshore. Captain Brown reflected that the captain he was after must know the waters well to do such a thing, and that the deep draught of his own ship made it the height of folly to think of imitating such a trick at night. Yet so long as the other stayed where she was, she could not come out without showing herself under his search-light.
‘Half-speed both engines,’ he said quickly.
The mate worked the engine telegraph almost as soon as the captain began to speak.
‘Starboard five degrees more,’ said Captain Brown.
The order was repeated to the wheel, and the quartermaster gave it back, and repeated it a second time when the vessel’s head had gone off to port exactly to the required degree.
‘Slow,’ said Captain Brown. ‘Stop her,’ he said a moment later.
Twin-screw steamers cannot be stopped as quickly by reversing as those with a single screw can, and the Lancashire Lass would keep way on for three miles or more, by which time she would be abreast of the islands, and at a safe distance from them. Besides, the spring tide was now running fresh down the Straits, making a current along the coast, as Captain Brown knew. The instant the engines stopped, the third mate came round from the chart-room, where he had been sent to work a sight for longitude by Aldebaran for the good of his young nautical soul.
Complete Works of F Marion Crawford Page 1256