it is fitting that I should here at the outset acknowledge my
extreme indebtedness to those chronicles. Without them, indeed, it were
impossible to reconstruct the life of that Cornish gentleman who
became a renegade and a Barbary Corsair and might have become Basha of
Algiers--or Argire, as his lordship terms it--but for certain matters
which are to be set forth.

Lord Henry wrote with knowledge and authority, and the tale he has to
tell is very complete and full of precious detail. He was, himself, an
eyewitness of much that happened; he pursued a personal acquaintance
with many of those who were connected with Sir Oliver's affairs that he
might amplify his chronicles, and he considered no scrap of gossip that
was to be gleaned along the countryside too trivial to be recorded. I
suspect him also of having received no little assistance from Jasper
Leigh in the matter of those events that happened out of England, which
seem to me to constitute by far the most interesting portion of his
narrative.

R. S.

CONTENTS

PART ONE

SIR OLIVER TRESSILIAN

CHAPTER

I. THE HUCKSTER

II. ROSAMUND

III. THE FORGE

IV. THE INTERVENER

V. THE BUCKLER

VI. JASPER LEIGH

VII. TREPANNED

VIII. THE SPANIARD

PART TWO

SAKR-EL-BAHR

I. THE CAPTIVE

II. THE RENEGADE

III. HOMEWARD BOUND

IV. THE RAID

V. THE LION OF THE FAITH

VI. THE CONVERT

VII. MARZAK-BEN-ASAD

VIII. MOTHER AND SON

IX. COMPETITORS

X. THE SLAVE-MARKET

XI. THE TRUTH

XII. THE SUBTLETY OF FENZILEH

XIII. IN THE SIGHT OF ALLAH

XIV. THE SIGN

XV. THE VOYAGE

XVI. THE PANNIER

XVII. THE DUPE

XVIII. SHEIK MAT

XIX. THE MUTINEERS

XX. THE MESSENGER

XXI. MORITURUS

XXII. THE SURRENDER

XXIII. THE HEATHEN CREED

XXIV. THE JUDGES

XXV. THE ADVOCATE

XXVI. THE JUDGMENT

PART I. SIR OLIVER TRESSILIAN

CHAPTER I. THE HUCKSTER

Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the
handsome house of Penarrow, which he owed to the enterprise of his
father of lamented and lamentable memory and to the skill and invention
of an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to England half a
century ago as one of the assistants of the famous Torrigiani.

This house of such a startlingly singular and Ita