iving each to
drink a cup of vinegar and water in which floated a few drops of added
oil.

Then he pointed to a large palmetto bale that stood on the waist-deck
near the mainmast about which the powder barrels were stacked.

"That pannier," he said, "seems to me oddly in the way yonder. Were
it not better to bestow it in the hold, where it will cease to be an
encumbrance in case of action?"

Sakr-el-Bahr experienced a slight tightening at the heart. He knew that
Marzak had heard him command that bale to be borne into the poop-cabin,
and that anon he had ordered it to be fetched thence when Asad had
announced his intention of sailing with him. He realized that this in
itself might be a suspicious circumstance; or, rather, knowing what
the bale contained, he was too ready to fear suspicion. Nevertheless he
turned to Marzak with a smile of some disdain.

"I understood, Marzak, that thou art sailing with us as apprentice."

"What then?" quoth Marzak.

"Why merely that it might become thee better to be content to observe
and learn. Thou'lt soon be telling me how grapnels should be slung, and
how an action should be fought." Then he pointed ahead to what seemed
to be no more than a low cloud-bank towards which they were rapidly
skimming before that friendly wind. "Yonder," he said, "are the
Balearics. We are making good speed."

Although he said it without any object other than that of turning the
conversation, yet the fact itself was sufficiently remarkable to be
worth a comment. Whether rowed by her two hundred and fifty slaves, or
sailed under her enormous spread of canvas, there was no swifter vessel
upon the Mediterranean than the galeasse of Sakr-el-Bahr. Onward she
leapt now with bellying tateens, her well-greased keel slipping through
the wind-whipped water at a rate which perhaps could not have been
bettered by any ship that sailed.

"If this wind holds we shall be under the Point of Aguila before sunset,
which will be something to boast of hereafter," he promised.

Marzak, however, seemed but indifferently interested; his eyes continued
awhile to stray towards that palmetto bale by the mainmast. At length,
without another word to Sakr-el-Bahr, he made his way abaft, and flung
himself down under the awning, beside his father. Asad sat there in a
moody abstraction, already regretting that he should have lent an ear
to Fenzileh to the extent of coming upon this voyage, and assured by now
that at least there