red density and colour, Sakr-el-Bahr and Vigitello met again on the
waist-deck, and they exchanged some few words in passing.

"It is difficult to say exactly," the boatswain murmured, "but from what
I gather I think the odds would be very evenly balanced, and it were
rash in thee to precipitate a quarrel."

"I am not like to do so," replied Sakr-el-Bahr. "I should not be like to
do so in any case. I but desired to know how I stand in case a quarrel
should be forced upon me." And he passed on.

Yet his uneasiness was no whit allayed; his difficulties were very far
from solved. He had undertaken to carry Rosamund to France or Italy; he
had pledged her his word to land her upon one or the other shore, and
should he fail, she might even come to conclude that such had never
been his real intention. Yet how was he to succeed, now, since Asad was
aboard the galeasse? Must he be constrained to carry her back to Algiers
as secretly as he had brought her thence, and to keep her there until
another opportunity of setting her ashore upon a Christian country
should present itself? That was clearly impracticable and fraught with
too much risk of detection. Indeed, the risk of detection was very
imminent now. At any moment her presence in that pannier might be
betrayed. He could think of no way in which to redeem his pledged word.
He could but wait and hope, trusting to his luck and to some opportunity
which it was impossible to foresee.

And so for a long hour and more he paced there moodily to and fro, his
hands clasped behind him, his turbaned head bowed in thought, his heart
very heavy within him. He was taken in the toils of the evil web which
he had spun; and it seemed very clear to him now that nothing short of
his life itself would be demanded as the price of it. That, however, was
the least part of his concern. All things had miscarried with him and
his life was wrecked. If at the price of it he could ensure safety to
Rosamund, that price he would gladly pay. But his dismay and uneasiness
all sprang from his inability to discover a way of achieving that most
desired of objects even at such a sacrifice. And so he paced on alone
and very lonely, waiting and praying for a miracle.

CHAPTER XVI. THE PANNIER

He was still pacing there when an hour or so before sunset--some fifteen
hours after setting out--they stood before the entrance of a long
bottle-necked cove under the shadow of the cliffs of Aquila Point on
th