In the cabin of the captured Spaniard, Jasper Leigh found himself that evening face to face with Sakr-el-Bahr, haled thither by the corsair’s gigantic Nubians.

Sakr-el-Bahr had not yet pronounced his intentions concerning the piratical little skipper, and Master Leigh, full conscious that he was a villain, feared the worst, and had spent some miserable hours in the fore-castle awaiting a doom which he accounted foregone.

“Our positions have changed, Master Leigh, since last we talked in a ship’s cabin,” was the renegade’s inscrutable greeting.

“Indeed,” Master Leigh agreed. “But I hope ye’ll remember that on that occasion I was your friend.”

“At a price,” Sakr-el-Bahr reminded him. “And at a price you may find me your friend to-day.”

The rascally skipper’s heart leapt with hope.

“Name it, Sir Oliver,” he answered eagerly. “And so that it ties within my wretched power I swear I’ll never boggle at it. I’ve had enough of slavery,” he ran on in a plaintive whine. “Five years of it, and four of them spent aboard the galleys of Spain, and no day in all of them but that I prayed for death. Did you but know what I ha’ suffered.”

“Never was suffering more merited, never punishment more fitting, never justice more poetic,” said Sakr-el-Bahr in a voice that made the skipper’s blood run cold. “You would have sold me, a man who did you no hurt, indeed a man who once befriended you — you would have sold me into slavery for a matter of two hundred pounds. . . . ”

“Nay, nay,” cried the other fearfully, “as God’s my witness, ’twas never part of my intent. Ye’ll never ha’ forgot the words I spoke to you, the offer that I made to carry you back home again.”

“Ay, at a price, ’tis true,” Sakr-el-Bahr repeated. “And it is fortunate for you that you are to-day in a position to pay a price that should postpone your dirty neck’s acquaintance with a rope. I need a navigator,” he added in explanation, “and what five years ago you would have done for two hundred pounds, you shall do to-day for your life. How say you: will you navigate this ship for me?”

“Sir,” cried Jasper Leigh, who could scarce believe that this was all that was required of him, “I’ll sail it to hell at your bidding.”

“I am not for Spain this voyage,” answered Sakr-el-Bahr. “You shall sail me precisely as you would have done five years ago, back to the mouth of the Fal, and set me ashore there. Is that agreed?”

“Ay, and gladly,” replied Master Leigh without a second’s pause.

“The conditions are that you shall have your life and your liberty,” Sakr-el-Bahr explained. “But do not suppose that arrived in England you are to be permitted to depart. You must sail us back again, though once you have done that I shall find a way to send you home if you so desire it, and perhaps there will be some measure of reward for you if you serve me faithfully throughout. Follow the habits of a lifetime by playing me false and there’s an end to you. You shall have for constant bodyguard these two lilies of the desert,” and he pointed to the colossal Nubians who stood there invisible almost in the shadow but for the flash of teeth and eyeballs. “They shall watch over you, and see that no harm befalls you so long as you are honest with me, and they shall strangle you at the first sign of treachery. You may go. You have the freedom of the ship, but you are not to leave it here or elsewhere save at my express command.”

Jasper Leigh stumbled out counting himself fortunate beyond his expectations or deserts, and the Nubians followed him and hung behind him ever after like some vast twin shadow.

To Sakr-el-Bahr entered now Biskaine with a report of ............