earthenware bowl, leading the way for Sakr-el-Bahr
and Marzak, and as they ate he invited the corsair himself to recite the
tale of his adventure.

When he had done so, and again Asad had praised him in high and loving
terms, Marzak set him a question.

"Was it to obtain just these two English slaves that thou didst
undertake this perilous voyage to that distant land?"

"That was but a part of my design," was the calm reply. "I went to rove
the seas in the Prophet's service, as the result of my voyage gives
proof."

"Thou didst not know that this Dutch argosy would cross thy path," said
Marzak, in the very words his mother had prompted him.

"Did I not?" quoth Sakr-el-Bahr, and he smiled confidently, so
confidently that Asad scarce needed to hear the words that so cunningly
gave the lie to the innuendo. "Had I no trust in Allah the All-wise, the
All-knowing?

"Well answered, by the Koran!" Asad approved him heartily, the more
heartily since it rebutted insinuations which he desired above all to
hear rebutted.

But Marzak did not yet own himself defeated. He had been soundly
schooled by his guileful Sicilian mother.

"Yet there is something in all this I do not understand," he murmured,
with false gentleness.

"All things are possible to Allah!" said Sakr-el-Bahr, in tones of
incredulity, as if he suggested--not without a suspicion of irony--that
it was incredible there should be anything in all the world that could
elude the penetration of Marzak.

The youth bowed to him in acknowledgment. "Tell me, O mighty
Sakr-el-Bahr," he begged, "how it came to pass that having reached those
distant shores thou wert content to take thence but two poor slaves,
since with thy followers and the favour of the All-seeing thou might
easily have taken fifty times that number." And he looked ingenuously
into the corsair's swarthy, rugged face, whilst Asad frowned
thoughtfully, for the thought was one that had occurred to him already.

It became necessary that Sakr-el-Bahr should lie to clear himself.
Here no high-sounding phrase of Faith would answer. And explanation was
unavoidable, and he was conscious that he could not afford one that did
not go a little lame.

"Why, as to that," said he, "these prisoners were wrested from the
first house upon which we came, and their capture occasioned some alarm.
Moreover, it was night-time when we landed, and I dared not adventure
the lives of my followers by taking them further from