Atlanta Tri Weekly Journal

THE SEA HAWK
BY RAFAEL SABATINI
(Published by Arrangement With First National Pictures Inc. Copyrighted by Houghton-Mifflin Company.)
What has gone before—Sir Oliver Tressilian, renowned for his exploits on the Spanish Main, is betrothed to Rosamund Godolphin, but the marriage is opposed by Rosamund's brother, Peter, and her guardian, Sir John Killigrew. By repeated insults Peter finally provoked Oliver to threaten murder; and when Oliver's young half-brother, Lionel, kills Peter in a quarrel suspicion falls on Oliver. Even Rosamund believes him guilty, and asks him to explain the trail of blood found leading from the body to his doorway. Desiring to protect Lionel, Oliver can do nothing but protest his innocence. But he goes to the justices and asks them to draw up a document attesting to the fact that he bears on his body no mark of recent wound; that therefore the trail of blood, obviously that of the wounded murderer, was not his. This document he takes home to hold in readiness until needed.
A few weeks later Lionel learns from Jasper Leigh, a pirate sea captain, that the queen has been petitioned to command the justices to bring Oliver to trial. Half-crazed with fear that Oliver will reveal the truth, Lionel hires Leigh to abduct him and sell him as a galley-slave to the Barbary rovers. With Oliver's disappearance all doubt of his guilt is dispelled. The assumption is that he has fled to escape trial.—Now go on with the story.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SPANIARD
THE SWALLOW, having passed through a gale in the Bay of Biscay—a gale which she weathered like the surprisingly steady old tub she was—rounded Cape Finisterre and so emerged from tempest into peace, from leaden skies and mountainous seas into a sunny azure calm. It was like a sudden transition from Winter into Spring, and she ran along now, close hauled to the soft easterly breeze, with a gentle list to port.
It had never been Master Leigh's intent to have got so far as this without coming to an understanding with his prisoner. But the wind had been stronger than his intentions, and he had been compelled to run before it and to head to southward until its fury should abate. Thus it fell out that the skipper was forced to wait until they stood along the coast of Portugal—but well out to sea, for the coast of Portugal was none too healthy just then to English seamen—before commanding Sir Oliver to be haled into his presence.
In the cramped quarters of the cabin in the poop of the little vessel sat her captain at a greasy table, over which a lamp was swinging faintly to the gentle heave of the ship. He was smoking a foul pipe, whose fumes hung heavily upon the air of that little chamber, and there was a bottle of Nantes at his elbow. To him, sitting thus in state, was Sir Oliver introduced—his wrists still pinioned behind him. He was haggard and hollow-eyed, and he carried a week's growth of beard on his chin. Also his garments were still in dis-order from the struggle he had made when taken, and from the fact that he had been compelled to lie in them ever since.
Since his height was such that it was impossible for him to stand upright in that low-ceilinged cabin, a stool was thrust forward for him by one of the ruffians of Leigh's crew who had haled him from his confinement beneath the hatchway.
He sat down quite listlessly, and stared vacantly at the skipper. Master Leigh was somewhat discomposed by his odd calm when he had looked for angry outbursts. He dismissed the two seamen who had fetched Sir Oliver, and when they had departed and closed the cabin door he addressed his captive.
"Sir Oliver," he said, stroking his red beard, "ye've been most foully abused."
The sunshine filtered through one of the horn windows and beat full upon Sir Oliver's expressionless face.
"It was not necessary, you knave, to bring me hither to tell me so much," he answered.
"Quite so," said Master Leigh. "But I have something more to add. Ye'll be thinking that I ha' done you a disservice. There ye wrong me. Through me you are brought to know true friends from secret enemies; hence-forward ye'll know which to trust and which to mistrust."
Sir Oliver seemed to rouse himself a little from his passivity, stimulated despite himself by the impudence of this rogue. He stretched a leg and smiled sourly.
"You'll end by telling me that I am in your debt," said he.
"You'll end by saying so, yourself," the captain assured him. "D'ye know what I was bidden do with you?"
"Faith, I neither know nor care," was the surprising answer wearily delivered. "If it is for my entertainment that you purpose to tell me, I beg you'll spare yourself the trouble."
It was not an answer that helped the captain. He pulled at his pipe a moment.
"I was bidden," said he presently, "to carry you to Barbary and sell you there into the service of the Moors. That I might serve you, I made believe to accept this task."
"God's death!" swore Sir Oliver. "You carry makebelieve to an odd length."
"The weather has been against me. It were no intention o' mine to ha' come so far south with you. But we've been driven by the gale. That is overpast, and so that ye'll promise to bear no plaint against me, and to make good some of the loss I'll make by going out of my course, and missing a cargo that I wot of, I'll put about and fetch you home again within a week."
Sir Oliver looked at him and smiled grimly.
"Now what a rogue are you that can keep faith with none!" he cried. "First you take money to carry me off: and then you bid me pay you to carry me back again."
"Ye wrong me, sir, I vow ye do! I can keep faith when honest men employ me, and ye should know it, Sir Oliver. But who keeps faith with rogues is a fool—and that I am not, as ye should also know. I ha' done this thing that a rogue might be revealed to you and thwarted, as well as that I might make some little profit out of this ship o' mine. I am frank with ye, Sir Oliver. I ha' had some two hundred pound in money and trinkets from your brother. Give me the like and—"
But now of a sudden Sir Oliver's listlessness was all dispelled. It fell from him like a cloak, and he sat forward, wide awake and with some show of anger even.
"How do you say?" he cried, on a sharp, high note.
The captain stared at him, his pipe neglected.
"I say that if so be as ye'll pay me the same sum which your brother paid me to carry you off—"
"My brother?" roared the knight.
"Do you say my brother?"
"I said your brother."
"Master Lionel?" the other demanded still.
"What other brothers have you?" quoth Master Leigh.
There fell a pause and Sir Oliver looked straight before him, his head sunken a little between his shoulders.
"Let me understand," he said at length. "Do you say that my brother Lionel paid you money to carry me off—in short, that my presence aboard this foul hulk of yours is due to him?"
"Whom else had ye suspected?" Or did ye think that I did it for my own personal diversion?"
"Answer me!" bellowed Sir Oliver, writhing in his bonds.
"I ha' answered you more than once already. Still, I tell you once again, since ye are slow to understand it, that I was paid a matter of two hundred pound by your brother, Master Lionel Tressilian, to carry you off to Barbary and there sell you for a slave. Is that plain to you?"
"As plain as it is false. You lie, you dog!"
"Softly, softly!" quoth Master Leigh.
"I say you lie!"