e truth of what you have learnt. Be yours the task of clearing
my honour of this stain upon it, proclaiming the truth of what drove
me to the infamy of becoming a renegade and a corsair." He started from
her. "Hark! What's that?"

From without had come a sudden cry, "Afoot! To arms! To arms! Hola!
Balak! Balak!"

"It is the hour," he said, and turning from her suddenly sprang to the
entrance and plucked aside the curtain.

CHAPTER XXII. THE SURRENDER

Up the gangway between the lines of slumbering slaves came a quick
patter of feet. Ali, who since sunset had been replacing Larocque on the
heights, sprang suddenly upon the poop still shouting.

"Captain! Captain! My lord! Afoot! Up! or we are taken!"

Throughout the vessel's length came the rustle and stir of waking men. A
voice clamoured somewhere on the forecastle. Then the flap of the awning
was suddenly whisked aside and Asad himself appeared with Marzak at his
elbow.

From the starboard side as suddenly came Biskaine and Othmani, and
from the waist Vigitello, Jasper--that latest renegade--and a group of
alarmed corsairs.

"What now?" quoth the Basha.

Ali delivered his message breathlessly. "The galleon has weighed anchor.
She is moving out of the bay."

Asad clutched his beard, and scowled. "Now what may that portend? Can
knowledge of our presence have reached them?"

"Why else should she move from her anchorage thus in the dead of night?"
said Biskaine.

"Why else, indeed?" returned Asad, and then he swung upon Oliver
standing there in the entrance of the poop-house. "What sayest thou,
Sakr-el-Bahr?" he appealed to him.

Sakr-el-Bahr stepped forward, shrugging. "What is there to say? What is
there to do?" he asked. "We can but wait. If our presence is known to
them we are finely trapped, and there's an end to all of us this night."

His voice was cool as ice, contemptuous almost, and whilst it struck
anxiety into more than one it awoke terror in Marzak.

"May thy bones rot, thou ill-omened prophet!" he screamed, and would
have added more but that Sakr-el-Bahr silenced him.

"What is written is written!" said he in a voice of thunder and reproof.

"Indeed, indeed," Asad agreed, grasping at the fatalist's consolation.
"If we are ripe for the gardeners hand, the gardener will pluck us."

Less fatalistic and more practical was the counsel of Biskaine.

"It were well to act upon the assumption that we are indeed discovered,
and make for