the bulwarks.

"Yonder!" A man was pointing. Others had joined him and were peering
through the gathering gloom at the moving object that was Lionel's head
and the faintly visible swirl of water about it which indicated that he
swam.

"Out to sea!" cried Sakr-el-Bahr. "He'll not swim far in any case. But
we will shorten his road for him." He snatched a cross-bow from the rack
about the mainmast, fitted a shaft to it and took aim.

On the point of loosing the bolt he paused.

"Marzak!" he called. "Here, thou prince of marksmen, is a butt for
thee!"

From the poop-deck whence with his father he too was watching the
swimmer's head, which at every moment became more faint in the failing
light, Marzak looked with cold disdain upon his challenger, making no
reply. A titter ran through the crew.

"Come now," cried Sakr-el-Bahr. "Take up thy bow!"

"If thou delay much longer," put in Asad, "he will be beyond thine aim.
Already he is scarcely visible."

"The more difficult a butt, then," answered Sakr-el-B ahr, who was but
delaying to gain time. "The keener test. A hundred philips, Marzak, that
thou'lt not hit me that head in three shots, and that I'll sink him at
the first! Wilt take the wager?"

"The unbeliever is for ever peeping forth from thee," was Marzak's
dignified reply. "Games of chance are forbidden by the Prophet."

"Make haste, man!" cried Asad. "Already I can scarce discern him. Loose
thy quarrel."

"Pooh," was the disdainful answer. "A fair mark still for such an eye as
mine. I never miss--not even in the dark."

"Vain boaster," said Marzak.

"Am I so?" Sakr-el-Bahr loosed his shaft at last into the gloom, and
peered after it following its flight, which was wide of the direction of
the swimmer's head. "A hit!" he cried brazenly. "He's gone!"

"I think I see him still," said one.

"Thine eyes deceive thee in this light. No man was ever known to swim
with an arrow through his brain."

"Ay," put in Jasper, who stood behind Sakr-el-Bahr. "He has vanished."

"'Tis too dark to see," said Vigitello.

And then Asad turned from the vessel's side. "Well, well--shot or
drowned, he's gone," he said, and there the matter ended.

Sakr-el-Bahr replaced the cross-bow in the rack, and came slowly up to
the poop.

In the gloom he found himself confronted by Rosamund's white face
between the two dusky countenances of his Nubians. She drew back before
him as he approached, and he, intent upon imparting his