A Master of Fortune Part 24

"Of course. Haven't I told you that I've thought the whole thing thoroughly over already, and I'm not inclined to stick at trifles? But I may tell you that divorce is easy in these Mohammedan countries, and I shall take care to get the girl set legally free before we get away from here. You don't catch me getting mixed with bigamy."

"But tell me. Is a Mohammedan marriage made here binding for an Englishman?"

"It's as legally binding as if the Archbishop of Canterbury tied the knot."

"Very well," said Kettle. "Now let me tell you, sir, for the last time, that I don't like what you're going to do. To my mind, it's not a nice thing marrying a woman that you evidently despise, just for her money."

Wenlock flushed. "Look here," he said, "I refuse to be lectured, especially by you. Aren't you under promise to get 50 from me the moment I'm safely married? And didn't you fairly jump at the chance of fingering it."

Captain Kettle did not hit this man who cast such an unpleasant imputation on him; he did not even let him feel the lash of his tongue in return. He merely smiled grimly, and said: "Get down into the boat, you and your case of rifles."

For the moment Wenlock started and hesitated. He seemed to detect something ominous in this order. But then he took a brace on his courage, and after a couple of deck hands had lowered the rifles into the dancing boat, he clambered gingerly down after them, and sat himself beside the white-robed man in the stern sheets. Kettle followed, and the boat headed off for the opening between the reefs.

The Indian Ocean swells swung beneath them, and presently were breaking on the grim stone barriers on either hand in a roar of sound. The triangular dorsal fins of a couple of sharks convoyed them in, in case of accidents; and overhead a crowd of sea-fowl screamed and swooped and circled. But none of these things interested them. The town ahead, which jerked nearer to every tug of the oars, held the eye. In it was Teresa Anderson, heiress, a personage of whom each of them had his own private conception. In it also were fanatical Arabs, whom they hoped the fear of shadowy British gunboats would deter from open piracy.

The boat pa.s.sed between a cl.u.s.ter of ragged s.h.i.+pping which swayed at the anchorage, and Wenlock might have stared with curious eyes (had he been so minded) on real dhows which had even then got real slaves ready for market in their stuffy 'tween decks. But he was gazing with a fascinated stare at the town. Over the arch of the water-gate, for which they were heading, was what at first appeared to be a frieze of small rounded b.a.l.l.s; but a nearer view resolved these into human heads, in various stages of desiccation. Evidently justice in Dunkhot was determined that the criminal who once pa.s.sed through its hands should no more tread the paths of unrighteousness.

The boat landed against a jetty of stone, and they stepped out dryshod.

Wenlock stared at the gate with its dressing of heads as though they fascinated him.

"And Teresa will have been brought up within sight of all this," he murmured to himself, "and will be accustomed to it. Fancy marrying a woman who has spent twenty years of her life in the neighborhood of all this savagery."

"Strong place in its way," said Kettle, squinting up at the bra.s.s cannon on the walls. "Those guns up there are well kept, you can see. Of course one of our cheapest fourpenny gunboats could knock the whole shop into bricks in half an hour at three-mile range; but it's strong enough to hold out against any n.i.g.g.e.rs along the coast here, and that's all the Queen here aims at. By the way, Emir, not Queen, is what she calls herself, so the pilot tells me. I suppose she thinks that as she's doing a man's job in a man's way, she may as well take a full man's ticket."

They pa.s.sed in through the gate, the sentries staring at them curiously, and once inside, in the full heat and smell of the narrow street beyond, Wenlock said: "Look here, Skipper, you're resourceful, and you know these out-of-the-way places. How had we better start to find the girl?"

Kettle glanced coolly round at the grim buildings and the savage Arabs who jostled them, and said, with fine sarcasm: "Well, sir, as there doesn't appear to be a policeman about, I should recommend you to apply at the post office."

"I don't want to be mocked."

"Then, if you'll take the tip from me, you'll crowd back to my steamboat as fast as you can go. You'll find it healthier."

"I'm going on with it," said Wenlock doggedly. "And I ask you to earn your 50, and give me help."

"Then, if you distinctly ask me to help you on into trouble like that, of course, the best thing to do is to go straight on to the palace."

"Show the way, then," said Wenlock curtly.

Kettle gave the word to the white-robed pilot, and together they set off down the narrow winding streets, with an ever-increasing train of Arabs and negroes following in their wake. Wenlock said nothing as he walked, but it was evident from the working of his face that his mind was very full. But Kettle looked about him with open interest, and thoughts in verse about this Eastern town came to him with pleasant readiness.

The royal residence was the large building encircled with gardens which they had seen from the sea, and they entered it with little formality.

There was no trouble either about obtaining an audience. The Lady Emir had, it appeared, seen the steamer's approach with her own eyes; indeed, the whole of Dunkhot was excited by such an unusual arrival; and the Head of the State was as human in her curiosity as the meanest n.i.g.g.e.r among her subjects.

The audience hall was imposing. It was bare enough, according to the rule of those heated Eastern lands, but it had an air of comfort and coolness, and in those parts where it was not severely plain, the beauty of its architecture was delicious. Armed guards to the number of some forty men were posted round the walls, and at the further end, apparently belonging to the civil population, were some dozen other men squatting on the floor. In the centre of the room was a naked wretch in chains; but sentence was hurriedly p.r.o.nounced on him, and he was hustled away as the two Englishmen entered, and they found themselves face to face with the only woman in the room, the supreme ruler of this savage South Arabian coast town.

She was seated on a raised divan, propped by cus.h.i.+ons, and in front of her was a huge water-pipe at which she occasionally took a meditative pull. She was dressed quite in Oriental fas.h.i.+on, in trousers, zouave jacket, sash, and all the rest of it; but she was unmistakably English in features, though strongly suggestive of the Boadicea. She was a large, heavily-boned woman, enormously covered with flesh, and she dandled across her knees that very unfeminine sceptre, an English cavalryman's sword. But the eye neglected these details, and was irresistibly drawn by the strongness of her face. Even Kettle was almost awed by it.

But Captain Owen Kettle-was not a man who could be kept in awe for long.

He took off his helmet, marched briskly up toward the divan, and bowed.

"Good afternoon, your Ladys.h.i.+p," he said. "I trust I see you well. I'm Captain Kettle, master of that steamboat now lying in your roads, and this is Mr. Wenlock, a pa.s.senger of mine, who heard that you were English, and has come to put you in the way of some property at home."

The lady sat more upright, and set back her great shoulders. "I am English," she said. "I was called in the Giaour faith Teresa Anderson."

"That's the name," said Kettle. "Mr. Wenlock's come to take you away to step into a nice thing at home."

"I am Emir here. Am I asked to be Emir in your country?"

"Why, no," said Kettle; "that job's filled already, and we aren't thinking of making a change. Our present Emir in England (who, by the way, is a lady like yourself) seems to suit us very well. No, you'll be an ordinary small-potato citizen, like everybody else, and you will probably find it a bit of a change."

"I do not onderstand," said the woman. "I have not spoke your language since I was child. Speak what you say again."

"I'll leave it to Mr. Wenlock, your Majesty, if you've no objections, as he's the party mostly interested; and if you'd ask one of your young men to bring me a long drink and a chair, I'll be obliged. It's been a hot walk up here. I see you don't mind smoke," he added, and lit a cheroot.

Now, it was clear from the att.i.tude of the guards and the civilians present, that Kettle was jostling heavily upon court etiquette, and at first the Lady Emir was very clearly inclined to resent it, and had sharp orders for repression ready upon her lips. But she changed her mind, perhaps through some memory that by blood she was related to this nonchalant race; and presently cus.h.i.+ons were brought, on which Captain Kettle bestowed himself tailor-fas.h.i.+on (with his back cautiously up against a wall), and then a negro slave knelt before him and offered sweet sticky sherbet, which he drank with a wry face.

But in the mean while Mr. Wenlock was stating his case with small forensic eloquence. The sight of Miss Teresa Anderson in the flesh awed him. He had pictured to himself some slim, quiet exile, perhaps a little gauche and timid, but at any rate amenable to instruction and to his will. He had forgotten the developing power of tropical suns. The woman before him, whose actual age was twenty-nine, looked fifty, and even for a desperate man like himself was impossible as a wife in England.

He felt daunted before her already. It flashed through his mind that it was she who had ordered those grisly heads to be stuck above the water-gate, and he heartily wished himself away back on the steamer, tramping for cargo. He was not wanting in pluck as a usual thing, this unsuccessful solicitor, but before a woman like this, with such a record behind her, a man may well be scared and yet not be accused of cowardice.

But the Lady Emir looked on Wenlock in a very different way to that in which she had regarded Kettle. Mr. Wenlock possessed (as indeed he had himself pointed out on the _Parakeet_) a fine outward appearance, and in fact anywhere he could have been remarked on as a personable man. And things came about as Kettle shrewdly antic.i.p.ated they would. The Lady Emir had not remained unmarried all these years through sheer distaste for matrimony. She had been celibate through an unconquerable pride of blood. None but men of colored race had been around her in all her wars, her governings, and her diplomacies; and always she had been too proud to mate with them. But here now stood before her a male of her own race, handsome, upstanding, and obviously impressed by her power and majesty.

He would not rule her; he would not even attempt a mastery; she would still be Emir--and a wife. The chance had never occurred to her before; might never occur again. She was quick to make her decision.

Ruling potentates are not as other folk with their love affairs, and the Lady Emir of Dunkhot (forgetting that she was once Teresa Anderson, and a modest English maiden) unconsciously fell in with the rule of her caste. The English speech, long disused, came to her unhandily, but the purport of what she said was plain. She made proclamation that the Englishman Wenlock should there and then become her husband, and let slaves fetch the mullah to unite them before the sun had dropped below another bar of the windows.

She did not ask her future husband's wishes or his permission. She simply stated her sovereign will and looked that it should be carried out forthwith.

A couple of slaves scurried out on their missions--evidently their Emir was accustomed to have her orders carried out with promptness--and for long enough Wenlock stood wordless in front of the divan, far more like a criminal than a prospective bridegroom. The lady, with the tube of the water-pipe between her lips, puffed smoke and made no further speech.

She had stated her will: the result would follow in due course.

But at last Wenlock, as though wrenching himself into wakefulness out of some horrid dream, turned wildly to Kettle, and in a torrent of words implored for rescue.

The little sailor heard him quite unmoved. "You asked my help," he said, "in a certain matter, and I've given it, and things have turned out just as I've guessed they would. You maundered about your dear Teresa on my steamboat till I was nearly sick, and, by James! you've got her now, and no error about it."

"But you said you didn't approve," cried the wretched man.

"I quite know what I said," retorted Kettle grimly. "I didn't approve of your way. But this is different. You're not a very fine specimen, but anyway you're English, and it does good to the old shop at home to have English people for kings and queens of foreign countries. I've got a theory about that."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I'M A BRITISH SUBJECT"]

Now the Lady Emir was not listening to all this tirade by any means unmoved. To begin with, it was not etiquette to speak at all in her presence if unaddressed, and to go on with, although she did not understand one word in ten of what was being spoken, she gathered the gist of it, and this did not tend to compose her. She threw away the snaky stem of water-pipe, and gripped both hands on the trooper's sword, till the muscles stood out in high relief.

"Do you say," she demanded, "you onwilling marry me?"

"Yes," said Wenlock, with sullen emphasis.

She turned her head, and gave orders in Arabic. With marvellous readiness, as though it was one of the regular appointments of the place, a couple of the guards trundled a stained-wooden block into the middle of the floor, another took his station beside it with an ominous-looking axe poised over his shoulder, and almost before Wenlock knew what was happening, he was pinned by a dozen men at wrist and ankle, and thrust down to kneel "with his neck over the block.

"Do you say," the Lady Emir repeated, "you onwilling marry me?"