Adventure Magazine Cover — page 102: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

=. _ Cheeks. __ $6k; but when at last I learned that he had _.. failed to purchase her as I commanded I - ould have wept for very grief. I feared __ at first that some merchant from the Sus might have bought her and departed; but when I heard—blessed be Allah—that thou wert the buyer I was comforted again. For thou’lt yield her up to me, my son.’ He spoke with such. confidence that Oliver had a difficulty in choosihg the words that were to disillusion him. Therefore he stood in hesitancy a moment. “T will make good thy loss,” Asad ran on. “Thou shalt have the sixteen hundred philips paid and another five hundred to console thee. Say that will content thee; ___ for I boil with impatience.” Sakr-el-Bahr smiled grimly. “It is an impatience well known to me, my lord, where she is concerned,” he an- swered slowly. “T boiled with it myself for five interminable years. To make an end of it I went a distant perilous voyage to England in a captured Frankish vessel. Thou didst not know, O Asad, else thou wouldst———”’__-- “Bah!” broke in the Basha. “Thou’rt a huckster born. There is none like thee, Sakr-el-Bahr, in any game of wits. Well, well, name thine own price, strike thine own | profit out of my impatience and let us have done.” “My lord,” he said quietly, “it is not the — that is in question. She is not for e 2 . Asad blinked at him, scncblees. and slowly a faint color crept into his sallow “‘Not—not for sale?” he echoed, faltering in his amazement. “Not if thou offered me thy Bashalik as the price of her,’’ was the solemn answer, “Ask anything else that is mine,” he continued, “and gladly will I lay it at thy feet in earnest of my loyalty and love for thee.”’ | “But I want nothing else.” Asad’s tone __ was impatient, petulant almost. “I want this slave.” “Then,” replied Oliver, “I cast myself upon thy mercy and beseech thee to turn thine eyes elsewhere.” Asad scowled upon him. ‘Dost thou deny me?” he demanded, = — throwing back his head. “Alas!” said Sakr-el-Bahr. . There fell a pause. Darker and darker _ Adventure grew the countenance of Asad, fiercer glowed the eyes he bent upon his lieutenant. “T see,” he said at last, with a calm so | oddly at variance with his looks as to be sinister. ‘I see. It seems that there is more truth in Fenzileh than I suspected. S ol!” ‘He considered the corsair a moment with his sunken smoldering eyes. : Then he addressed him in a tone that vibrated with his suppressed anger: “Bethink thee, Sakr-el-Bahr, of what thou art, of what I have made thee. Bethink thee of all the bounty these hands have lavished on thee. Thou art miy own lieu- tenant, and mayest one day be more. In Algiers there is none above thee save my- self. Art, then, so thankless as to deny me the first thing I ask of thee? Truly is it written ‘Ungrateful is Man.’ ” “Didst thou know,” began Sakr-el-Bahr, “all that is involved for me in this——” “TI neither know nor care,”’ Asad cut in. “Whatever it may be it should be as naught when set against my will.” Then he discarded anger for cajolery. He set a hand upon Sakr-el-Bahr’s stalwart shoulder. “Come, my son. I will deal generously with thee out of my love, and I will put thy refusal from my mind.” “Be generous, my lord, to the point of for- getting that ever thou didst ask me for her.” “Dost still refuse?” The voice, honeyed an instant ago, rang harsh again. ‘Take care how far thou strain my patience. Even as I have raised thee from the dirt, so at a word can I cast thee down again. Even as I broke the shackles that chained thee to the rower Ss bench, so can I rivet them on thee anew.’ “All this: canst thou do,” Sakr-el-Bahr agreed. ‘And since, knowing it, I still hold to what is doubly mine—by right of cap- ture and of purchase—thou mayest con- ceive how mighty are my reasons. Be merciful then, Asad———” “Must I take her by force in spite of thee?” roared the Basha. Sakr-el-Bahr stiffened. He threw back his head and looked the Basha squarely in the eyes. “Whilst I live not even that mayest thou do,”’ he answered. “Disloyal,mutinous dog! Wilt thou re- sist me—me?”’ “It is my prayer that thou’lt not be so. AME (EO) JOOKS com