was no cause to mistrust Sakr-el-Bahr. Marsak came
to revive that drooping mistrust. But the moment was ill-chosen, and at
the first words he uttered on the subject, he was growled into silence
by his sire.

"Thou dost but voice thine own malice," Asad rebuked him. "And I am
proven a fool in that I have permitted the malice of others to urge me
in this matter. No more, I say."

Thereupon Marzak fell silent and sulking, his eyes ever following
Sakr-el-Bahr, who had descended the three steps from the poop to the
gangway and was pacing slowly down between the rowers' benches.

The corsair was supremely ill at ease, as a man must be who has
something to conceal, and who begins to fear that he may have been
betrayed. Yet who was there could have betrayed him? But three men
aboard that vessel knew his secret--Ali, his lieutenant, Jasper, and
the Italian Vigitello. And Sakr-el-Bahr would have staked all his
possessions that neither Ali nor Vigitello would have betrayed him,
whilst he was fairly confident that in his own interests Jasper also
must have kept faith. Yet Marzak's allusion to that palmetto bale had
filled him with an uneasiness that sent him now in quest of his Italian
boatswain whom he trusted above all others.

"Vigitello," said he, "is it possible that I have been betrayed to the
Basha?"

Vigitello looked up sharply at the question, then smiled with
confidence. They were standing alone by the bulwarks on the waist-deck.

"Touching what we carry yonder?" quoth he, his glance shifting to the
bale. "Impossible. If Asad had knowledge he would have betrayed it
before we left Algiers, or else he would never have sailed without a
stouter bodyguard of his own.

"What need of bodyguard for him?" returned Sakr-el-Bahr. "If it
should come to grips between us--as well it may if what I suspect be
true--there is no doubt as to the side upon which the corsairs would
range themselves."

"Is there not?" quoth Vigitello, a smile upon his swarthy face. "Be
not so sure. These men have most of them followed thee into a score of
fights. To them thou art the Basha, their natural leader."

"Maybe. But their allegiance belongs to Asad-ed-Din, the exalted of
Allah. Did it come to a choice between us, their faith would urge them
to stand beside him in spite of any past bonds that may have existed
between them and me."

"Yet there were some who murmured when thou wert superseded in the
command of this expedition," Vigitello in