d voice. "Hold your hand until you have
heard me! Call your men back and let none others come aboard! Hold until
you have heard me, I say, then wreak your will."

Sir John, perceiving him by the mainmast with Rosamund at his side, and
leaping at the most inevitable conclusion that he meant to threaten
her life, perhaps to destroy her if they continued their advance, flung
himself before his men, to check them.

Thus almost as suddenly as it had been joined the combat paused

"What have you to say, you renegade dog?" Sir John demanded.

"This, Sir John, that unless you order your men back aboard your ship,
and make oath to desist from this encounter, I'll take you straight down
to hell with us at once. I'll heave this lantern into the powder here,
and we sink and you come down with us held by your own grappling hooks.
Obey me and you shall have all that you have come to seek aboard this
vessel. Mistress Rosamund shall be delivered up to you."

Sir John glowered upon him a moment from the poop, considering. Then--

"Though not prepared to make terms with you," he announced, "yet I will
accept the conditions you impose, but only provided that I have all
indeed that I am come to seek. There is aboard this galley an infamous
renegade hound whom I am bound by my knightly oath to take and hang. He,
too, must be delivered up to me. His name was Oliver Tressilian."

Instantly, unhesitatingly, came the answer--"Him, too, will I surrender
to you upon your sworn oath that you will then depart and do here no
further hurt."

Rosamund caught her breath, and clutched Sakr-el-Bahr's arm, the arm
that held the lantern.

"Have a care, mistress," he bade her sharply, "or you will destroy us
all."

"Better that!" she answered him.

And then Sir John pledged him his word that upon his own surrender and
that of Rosamund he would withdraw nor offer hurt to any there.

Sakr-el-Bahr turned to his waiting corsairs, and briefly told them what
the terms he had made.

He called upon Asad to pledge his word that these terms would be
respected, and no blood shed on his behalf, and Asad answered him,
voicing the anger of all against him for his betrayal.

"Since he wants thee that he may hang thee, he may have thee and so
spare us the trouble, for 'tis no less than thy treachery deserves from
us."

"Thus, then, I surrender," he announced to Sir John, and flung the
lantern overboard.

One voice only was raised in his defence, and tha