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A Master of Fortune, 1898,
with "To Capture an Heiress"
THE PARAKEET had discharged the last of her coal into the lighters alongside, had cast off from the mooring buoys, and was steaming out of the baking heat of Suez harbor on her way down toward the worse heat of the Red Sea beyond. The clatter and dirt of the working ships, with the smells of hot iron and black humanity, were dying out astern, and presently she slowed up to drop the pilot into his boat, and then stood on again along her course.
A passenger, a young man of eight or nine-and-twenty, lounged on a camp-stool under the upper bridge awning, and watched the Parakeet's captain as he walked briskly across and across, and presently, when the little sailor faced him, he nodded as though he had decided something that was in his thoughts.
"Well, sir?" said Captain Kettle.
"I wish you wouldn't look so anxious. We've started now, and may as well make up our minds to go through it comfortably."
"Quite so," said Kettle. "I'm thinking out how we are to do this business in comfort—and safety," and with that he resumed his walk.
The man beside him had introduced himself when the black workers were carrying the Parakeet's cargo of coal in baskets from the holds to the lighters alongside; and Kettle had been rather startled to find that he carried a letter of introduction from the steamboat's owners. The letter gave him no choice of procedure. It stated with clearness that Mr. Hugh Wenlock, solicitor, had laid his wishes before them, and that they had agreed to further these wishes (through the agency of their servant Captain Owen Kettle) in consideration of the payment of £200 sterling.
The Parakeet was a cargo tramp, and carried no passenger certificate, but a letter of recommendation like this was equivalent to a direct order, and Kettle signed Mr. Wenlock on to his crew list as "Doctor," and put to sea with an anxious mind.
Wenlock waited awhile, watching squalid Suez sink into the sea behind; and then he spoke again.
"Look here, Captain," he said, "those South Arabian ports have got a lot worse reputation than they really deserve. The people down there twenty years ago were a pack of pirates, I'll grant you, but nowadays they know that if they get at any of their old games, a British gunboat promptly comes up next week and bombards them at two-mile range, and that's not good enough. They may not be honest from inclination, but they've got the fear of the gunboat always handy, and that's a wonderful civilizing power. I tell you, captain, you needn't be frightened; that pirate business is exploded for now and always."
"I know all about the piratical hankerings of those South Arabian niggers, sir," said Kettle stiffly, "and I know what they can do and what they can't do as well as any man living. And I know also what I can do myself at a push, and the knowledge leaves me pretty comfortable. But if you choose to think me frightened, I'll own I am. It's the navigation down there that gave me cold shivers the first moment you mentioned it."
"Why, it's no worse than the Red Sea here, anyway."
"Red Sea's bad, but you can get good charts of it and rely on them. South Arabian coast is no better, and the charts aren't worth the paper they're printed on. There are bad tide-rips down there, sir, and there are bad reefs, and there's bad fog, and the truth of it is, there's no handier place to lose a ship in all the big, wide world."
"I wouldn't like you to wreck the steamer down there. It might be awkward for me getting back."
"Quite so," said Kettle, "you're thinking of yourself, and I don't blame you. I'm thinking of myself also. I'm a man that's met a great deal of misfortune, sir, and from one thing and another I've been eight years without a regular command. I had the luck to bring in a derelict the other day, and pocket a good salvage out of her, and my present owners heard of it, and they put me as master of this steamer, just because of that luck."
"Nothing like luck."
"If you don't lose it. But I am not anxious to pile up this steamboat on some uncharted reef just because luck has left me, and have to wait another eight years before I find another command."
"And, as I say, I'm as keen as you are not to get the steamer wrecked, and if there's any way she can be kept out of a dangerous area, and you can manage to set me ashore where I want in a boat, just you say, and I'll meet you all I can. But at the same time, Skipper, if you don't mind doing a swap, you might give me a good deal of help over my matter in return."
"I haven't heard your business yet, sir. All you've told me is that you want to be set down in this place, Dunkhot, and be taken off again after you've stayed there four-and-twenty hours."
"Well, you see I didn't want it talked over beforehand. If the newspapers got hold of the yarn, and made a lot of fuss about it, they might upset a certain marriage that I've very much set my heart upon."
Captain Kettle looked puzzled. "I don't seem to quite follow you, sir."
"You shall hear the tale from the beginning. We have plenty of time ahead of us just now. You remember the wreck of the Rangoon?"
"She was coming home from East Indian ports, wasn't she, and got on fire somewhere off Cape Guardafui? But that'll have been twenty years back, in the old overland days, before the Ditch was opened. Only about ten of her people saved, if I remember."
"That's about right," said Wenlock, "though it's twenty years ago now. She was full of Anglo-Indians, and their loss made a great sensation at the time. Amongst others was a Colonel Anderson, and his wife, and their child Teresa, aged nine; and what made their deaths all the more sad was the fact that Anderson's elder brother died just a week before, and he would have come home to find a peerage and large estates waiting for him."
"I can feel for that man," said Kettle.
"I can feel most for the daughter," said Wenlock.
"How do you mean, sir?"
"Well, Colonel Anderson's dead, and his wife's dead, but the daughter isn't, or at any rate she was very much alive twelve months ago, that's all. The whole lot of them, with others, got into one of the Rangoon's boats, and after frizzling about at sea till they were nearly starved, got chucked on that South Arabian coast (which you say is so rocky and dangerous), and were drowned in the process. All barring Teresa, that is. She was pulled out of the water by the local niggers, and was brought up by them, and I've absolutely certain information that not a year ago she was living in Dunkhot as quite a big personage in her way."
"And she's 'My Lady' now, if she only knew?"
"Well, not that. The title doesn't descend in the female line, but Colonel Anderson made a will in her favor after she was born, and the present earl, who's got the estates, would have to shell out if she turned up again."
"My owners, in their letter, mentioned that you were a solicitor. Then you are employed by his lordship, sir?"
Mr. Wenlock laughed. "Not much," he said. "I'm on my own hook. Why, hang it all, Captain, you must see that no man of his own free will would be idiot enough to resurrect a long-forgotten niece just to make himself into a beggar."
"I don't see why not, sir, if he got to know she was alive. Some men have consciences, and even a lord, I suppose, is a man."
"The present earl has far too good a time of it to worry about running a conscience. No, I bet he fights like a thief for the plunder, however clear a case we have to show him. And as he's the man in possession and has plenty of ready cash for law expenses, the odds are he'll turn out too big to worry at through all the courts, and we shall compromise. I'd like that best myself. Cash down has a desirable feel about it."
"It has, sir," said Kettle with a reminiscent sigh. "Even to pocket a tenth of what is rightfully yours is better than getting mixed up with that beastly law. But will the other relatives of the young lady, those that are employing you, I mean, agree to that?"
"Don't I tell you, Captain, I'm on my own hook? There are no other relatives—or at least none that would take a ha'porth of interest in Teresa's getting the estates. I've gone into the thing on sheer spec, and for what I can make out of it, and that, if all's well, will be the whole lump."
"But how? The young lady may give you something in her gratitude, of course, but you can't expect it all."
"I do, though, and I tell you how I'm going to get it. I shall marry the fair Teresa. Simple as tumbling off a house."
Kettle drew himself up stiffly and walked to the other end of the bridge, and began ostentatiously to look with a professional eye over his vessel.
Wenlock was quick to see the change. "Come, what is it now, Captain?" he asked with some surprise.
"I don't like the idea of those sort of marriages," said the little sailor, acidly.
Wenlock shrugged his shoulders good-humoredly.
"Neither do I, and if I were a rich man, I wouldn't have dreamed of it. Just think of what the girl probably is: she's been with those niggers since she was quite a kid; she'll be quite uneducated; I'm in hopes she's good-looking and has a decent figure; but at the best she'll be quite unpresentable till I've had her in hand for at least a couple of years, if then. Of course you'll say there's 'romance' about the thing. But then I don't care tuppence about romance, and anyway it's beastly uncomfortable to live with."
"I was not looking at that point of view."
"Let me tell you how I was fixed," said Wenlock with a burst of confidence. "I'd a small capital. So I qualified as a solicitor, and put up a door-plate, and waited for a practice. It didn't come. Not a client drifted near me from month's end to month's end. And meanwhile the capital was dribbling away. I felt I was getting on my back legs; it was either a case of the Colonies or the workhouse, and I'd no taste for either; and when the news of this girl Teresa came, I tell you I just jumped at the chance. I don't want to marry her, of course; there are ten other girls I'd rather have as wife; but there was no other way out of the difficulty, so I just swallowed my squeamishness for good and always. See?"
"It was Miss Teresa Anderson I was pitying," said Kettle pointedly.
"Good Lord, man, why? Isn't it the finest thing in the world for her?"
"It might be fine to get away from where she is, and land home to find a nice property waiting. But I don't care to see a woman have a husband forced on her. It would be nobler of you, Mr. Wenlock, to let the young lady get to England, and look round her for a while, and make her own choice."
"I'm too hard up to be noble," said Wenlock drily. "I've not come here on philanthropy, and marrying that girl is part of my business. Besides, hang it all, man, think of what she is, and think of what I am." He looked himself up and down with a half humorous smile—"I know nice people at home who would be civil to her, and after all, hang it, I'm not unmarriageable personally."
"Still," said Kettle doggedly, "I don't like the idea of it."
"Then let me give you an inducement. I said I was not down here on philanthropy, and I don't suppose you are either. You'll have my passage money?"
"Two and a-half per cent of it is my commission. The rest goes to the owners, of course."
"Very well, then. In addition to that, if you'll help this marriage on in the way I ask, I'll give you £50."
"There's no man living who could do more usefully with £50 if I saw my way of fingering it."
"I think I see what you mean. No, you won't have to wait for it. I've got the money here in hard cash in my pocket ready for you to take over the minute it's earned."
"I was wondering, sir, if I could earn it honorably. You must give me time to think this out. I'll try and give you an answer after tea. And for the present I shall have to leave you. I've got to go through the ship's papers: I have to be my own clerk on board here just now, though the Company did certainly promise me a much better ship if I beat up plenty of cargo, and made a good voyage of it with this."
The Parakeet worked her way along down the Red Sea at her steady nine knots, and Mr. Hugh Wenlock put a couple of bunk pillows on a canvas boat-cover under the bridge deck awnings, and lay there and amused himself with cigarettes and a magazine. Captain Owen Kettle sat before a table in the chart-house with his head on one side, and a pen in his fingers, and went through accounts. But though Wenlock, when he had finished his magazine, quickly went off to sleep, Captain Kettle's struggles with arithmetic were violent enough to keep him very thoroughly awake, and when a due proportion of the figures had been checked, he put the papers in a drawer, and was quite ready to tackle the next subject.
Mr. Hugh Wenlock lay there and amused
himself with cigarettes and a magazine.
He had not seen necessary to mention the fact to Mr. Wenlock, but while that young man was talking of the Miss Teresa Anderson, who at present was "quite a big personage in her way" at Dunkhot, a memory had come to him that he had heard of the lady before in somewhat less prosaic terms. All sailormen who have done business on the great sea highway between West and East during recent years have had the yarn given to them at one time or another, and most of them have regarded it as gratuitous legend. Kettle was one of these. But he was beginning to think there was something more in it than a mere sailor's yarn, and he was anxious to see if there was any new variation in the telling.
So he sent for Murray, his mate, a smart young sailor of the newer school, who preferred to be called "chief officer," made him sit, and commenced talk of a purely professional nature. Finally he said: "And since I saw you last, the schedule's changed. We call in at Dunkhot, for that passenger Mr. Wenlock to do some private business ashore, before we go on to our Persian Gulf ports."
Murray repeated the name thoughtfully. "Dunkhot? Let's see, that's on the South Arabian coast, about a day's steam from Aden, and a beast of a place to get at, so I've heard. Oh, and of course, that's the place where the She-Sultan, or Queen, or whatever she calls herself, is boss."
"So there is really a woman of that kind there, is there? I'd heard of her, like everybody else has, but I thought she was only a yarn."
"No, she's there in the flesh, sir, right enough; lots of flesh, according to what I've gathered. A serang of one of the B. and I. boats, who'd been in Dunkhot, told me about her only last year. She makes war, leads her troops, cuts off heads, and does the Eastern potentate up to the mark. The serang said she was English, too, though I don't believe much in that. One-tenth English would probably be more near the truth. The odds are she'll be Eurasian, and those snuff-and-butter colored ladies, when they get amongst people blacker than themselves, always try to ignore their own lick of the tar-brush."
"Fat, is she?"
"The serang said she-was a big buffalo bull of a woman, with a terror of a temper. I don't know what's Mr. Wenlock's business, sir; but whether he wants to start a dry-goods agency, or merely to arrange for smuggling in some rifles, he'd better make up his mind to square her first and foremost. She will have a finger in every pie. She's as curious as a monkey, too, and there's no doing anything without letting her know. And when she says a thing, it's got to be done."
"Is she the head chief's favorite wife, then?"
"That's the funny part of it: she isn't married. These Orientals always get husbands early as a general thing, and you'd have thought that in her juvenile days, before she got power, they'd have married her to some one about the town, whether she liked it or not. But it seems they didn't, because she said she'd certainly poison any man if they sent her into his zenana. And later on, when she came to be boss, she still kept to spinsterhood. Guess there wasn't any man about the place white enough to suit her taste."
"H'm. What you've told me seems to let daylight on to things."
"Beg pardon, sir?"
Captain Kettle put his hand kindly on Murray's shoulder. "Don't ask me to explain now, my lad, but when the joke comes you shall share the laugh. There's a young man on this ship (I don't mind telling you in confidence) whose ways I don't quite like, and I think he's going to get a lesson."
He went out then under the awnings of the bridge deck, and told Wenlock that he would probably be able to earn his fee for helping on the marriage, and Wenlock confidently thought that he quite understood the situation.
"Skipper's a bit of a methody," thought Mr. Hugh Wenlock, "but his principles don't go very deep when there are fifty sovereigns to be earned. Well, he's a useful man, and if he gets me snugly married to that little girl, he'll be cheap at the price."
The Parakeet's voyage to Dunkhot was not swift. Eight-and-a-half knots was her most economical pace for coal consumption, and at that gait she steamed. With a reputation to make with his new owners, and two and a-half per cent, commission on all profits, Kettle had developed into a regular glutton for cargo; and the knowledge of men and places which he had so laboriously acquired in former days served him finely. Three times he got doles of cargo at good stiff freights at points where few other men would have dreamed of looking. He was an ideal man for the master of an ocean tramp. He was exactly honest; he had a world of misfortunes behind to spur him on; he was quick of decision; and he had developed a nose for cargo, and a knack of extorting it from merchants, that were little short of miraculous. And, in fact, if things went on as they had started, he stood a very good chance of making 50 per cent, on the Parakeet's capital for the voyage, and so earning promotion to one of the firm's better ships.
But though in the many days of his adversity Captain Kettle had never shunned any risks which came in his way, with this new prosperity fresh and pleasant at his feet, he was beginning to tell himself that risks were foolish things. He arrived off Dunkhot and rang off his engines, and frowned angrily at the shore.
The town stood on an eminence, snugly walled, and filled with cool, square houses. At one side, the high minaret of a mosque stood up like a bayonet, and at the other, standing in a ring of garden, was a larger building, which seemed to call itself palace. There was a small fringe of cultivation beside the walls of the town, and beyond was arid desert, which danced and shimmered under the violent sun.
But all this lay small and far off, like a tiny picture in some huge frame, and showing only through the glass. A maze of reefs guarded the shore, and tore up the sleek Indian Ocean swells into spouting breakers; and though there was anchorage inside, tenanted indeed by a score of sailing craft, the way to it was openly perilous. And so for the present the Parakeet lay to, rolling outside the entrance, flying a pilot jack, and waiting developments.
Captain Kettle might have his disquieting thoughts, still outwardly he was cool. But Mr. Hugh Wenlock was on deck in the sprucest of his apparel, and was visibly anxious and fidgety, as befitted a man who shortly expected to enter into the bonds of matrimony.
A double-ended boat came off presently, manned by naked Arabs, and steered by a man in a white burnous. She swept up alongside, caught a rope and made fast, and the man in white introduced himself as a pilot. They are all good Mohammedans down there, or nominally, and so of course there was no question of a clean bill of health. Islam is not impious enough to check the spread of any disease which Allah may see good to send for its chastening.
The pilot wanted to take them in at once. He spoke some English, and carried an air of confidence. He could guide them through the reefs in the most complete of safety, and he could guarantee fine openings for trade, once inside.
"I dare say," grunted Kettle under his breath, "but you're a heap too uncertificated for my taste. Why, you don't even offer a book of forged logs to try and work off your humbug with some look of truth. No, I know the kind of pilot you are. You'd pile up the steamboat on the first convenient reef, and then be one of the first to come and loot her."—He turned to Murray: "Now, look here, Mr. Mate. I'll leave you in charge, and see you keep steam up and don't leave the deck. Don't let any of these niggers come on board on any pretence whatever, and if they try it on, steam out to sea. I'll get through Mr. Wenlock's business ashore as quick as lean, and perhaps pick up a ton or two of cargo for ourselves."
Below, in the dancing boat which ground against the steamer's side, the pilot clamored that a ladder might be thrown to him so that he might come on board and take the Parakeet forthwith into the anchorage; and to him again Kettle turned, and temporized. He must go ashore himself first, he said, and see what offer there was of trade, before he took the steamer in. To which the pilot, though visibly disappointed, saw fit to agree, as no better offer was forthcoming.
"Now, sir," said Kettle to Wenlock, "into the boat with you. The less time that's wasted, the better I shall be pleased."
"All right," said Wenlock, pointing to a big package on the deck. "Just tell some of your men to shove that case down into the boat, and I'm ready."
Kettle eyed the bulky box with disfavor. "What's in it?" he asked.
"A present or a bribe; whichever you care to call it. If you want to know precisely, it's rifles. I thought they would be most acceptable."
"Rifles are liked hereabouts. Is it for a sort of introductory present?"
"Well, if you must know, Captain, it's occurred to me that Teresa is probably an occupant of somebody's harem, and that I shall have to buy her off from her husband. Hence the case of rifles."
A queer look came over Captain Kettle's face. "And you'd still marry this woman if she had another husband living?"
"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 passed between a cluster of ragged shipping 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 balls; 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 passed 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 brass 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 niggers 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 passed 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."
Kettle glanced coolly round
"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 nigger 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 pronounced 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 cushions, and in front of her was a huge water-pipe at which she occasionally took a meditative pull. She was dressed quite in Oriental fashion, 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.
She was seated on a raised divan.
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 Ladyship," 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 passenger 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 attitude 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 cushions were brought, on which Captain Kettle bestowed himself tailor-fashion (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.
A negro slave knelt before him and offered sweet sticky sherbet.
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 anticipated 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."
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?"
"I'm a British subject," Wenlock shouted. "I've a Foreign Office passport in—"
"I'm a British subject," Wenlock shouted.
"My lad," said Kettle, "you won't have time to appeal. The lady isn't being funny. She means square biz. If you don't be sensible, and see things in the same way she does, it'll be one che-opp, and what happens afterward won't interest you."
"Those spikes," said Wenlock faintly.
"Above the water-gate?" said Kettle. "Queer, but the same thing occurred to me, too. You'd feel a bit lonely stuck up there getting sun-dried."
"I'll marry her."
"You'd better spread a bit more politeness about," Kettle advised. "It will be all the more comfortable for you afterward if you do." And so Wenlock, with desperation nerving him, poured out all the pretty speeches which he had in store, and which he had looked to use to this very woman under such very different circumstances. But he did not even suggest taking his future spouse back to England.
She, too, when she graciously pardoned his previous outburst, mentioned her decision on this matter also.
"I am Emir here," she said, "and I could not be Emir in your England without many fights. So here I shall stay, and you with me. When there is war, you shall ride at my side; in peace I will give you a governorship over a ward of this town, from which you can get your taxes. And if there are children, you shall bring them up."
The mullah, who knew better than to keep his ruler waiting, had come in, and they were forthwith married, solemnly and irrevocably, according to the rites and ceremonies of the Mohammedan Church, as practised in the kingdom of Dunkhot. And in witness thereof, Captain Kettle wrote his name from left to right, in contradistinction to all the other signatories, who wrote from right to left, except the bridegroom.
"And now, Mr. Wenlock, if you please," said Kettle, "as you're comfortably tied to the lady of your choice, I'll trouble you for that fee you promised."
"I'll see you in somewhere hotter than Arabia," said the bridegroom, mopping his pale face.
"Now look," said Kettle, "I'm not going to scrap with you here, and I don't want to break up this happy home with domestic unpleasantness; but if you don't hand me over that £50, I shall ask your good lady to get it for me."
Wenlock sullenly handed out a note.
"Thank you. I know you feel injured, but I'm earning this money exactly according to promise, and of you don't quite like what's been done, you must remember that it's your own fault for not wording the agreement a bit more carefully. And now, as I seem to have got through my business here, if it's agreeable to all parties, I'll be going. Good-by, Mrs. Wenlock, madam. Let me call you by your name for the first time."
The Lady Emir set back her great shoulders. "That is not my name," she said. "I am Emir. My name does not change."
"Beg pardon," said Kettle, "he takes yours, does he? Didn't know that was the custom of this country. Well, good-afternoon."
"But do you want," said the lady, "no present?"
"Thank you," said Kettle, with a cock of the head, "but I take presents from no one. What bit of a living I get, your ladyship, I earn."
"I do not onderstand. But you are sailor. You have ship. You wish cargo?"
Captain Kettle snapped his fingers ecstatically. "Now, ma'am, there you've hit it. Cargo's what I do want. I'll have to tell you that freights are up a good deal just now, and you'll have to pay for accommodation, but my ship's a good one, and my firm's reliable, and will see that you are dealt by honest at the other end."
"I do not onderstand."
"Of course you don't, your Majesty; of course you don't. Ladies like you don't have to bother with the shipping trade. But just you give me a line to the principal merchants in the town saying that you'd like me to have a few tons of their stuff, and that'll do. I guess that what your ladyship likes round here is usually done."
"You wish me write. I will write. Now we will wash hands, and there is banquet."
And so it came to pass that, some twenty-four hours later, Captain Kettle returned to the Parakeet sun-scorched, and flushed with success, and relieved the anxious Murray from his watch. The mate was naturally curious to know what happened ashore.
"Let me get a glass of Christian beer to wash all their sticky nastinesses from my neck, and I'll tell you," said Kettle, and he did with fine detail and circumstance.
"Well, Wenlock's got his heiress anyway," said Murray, with a sigh, when the tale was over. "I suppose we may as well get under way now, sir."
"Not much," said Kettle jubilantly. "Why, man, I've squeezed every ton of cargo they have in the place, and stuck them for freights in a way that would surprise you. Here's the tally: 270 bags of coffee, 700 packets of dates, 350 baskets of figs, and all for London. And, mark you," said Kettle, hitting the table, "that or more'll be waiting for me there every time I come, and no other skipper need apply."
"H'm," said the mate thoughtfully; "but will Wenlock be as civil and limp next time you call, sir?"
Captain Kettle winked pleasantly, and put a fifty-pound note in his lock-up drawer. "That's all right, my lad. No fear of Master Wenlock getting his tail up. If you'd seen the good lady, his wife, you'd know why. That's the man that went hunting an heiress, Mr. Murray; and by the holy James he's got her, and no error."
Captain Kettle winked pleasantly.
Roy Glashan's Library
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