The Pirate City: An Algerine Tale by R. M. Ballantyne (best novels ever .txt) 📕

it was sufficiently clear to her sharp intelligence to enable her to follow the drift of his meaning; she blushed, as she turned away her head with a queen-like grace peculiarly Italian, and said—

“When yoo go hoff—to seek?”

“This werry minit,” answered the sailor. “In fact I was just castin’ about in my mind w’en you came up how I could best throw Ally Babby off the scent as to w’ere I was goin’.”

“Me manages dat for yoo,” said Angela, with a bright significant smile, as she turned and called to the interpreter.

Ali, who was rather fond of female society, at once advanced with a bow of gracious orientality.

“Com here, Ali; yoo most ’xplain de flowers me bring hom yiserday.”

The polite Moor at once followed the pretty Italian, leaving Ted Flaggan with her sister.

“You’ll excuse me, ma’am, if I bids you raither an abrup’ good marnin’. It’s business I have on me hands that won’t kape nohow.”

Leaving Paulina in some surprise, the blunt seaman put his hands in his pockets, and went off whistling in the direction of Algiers. Turning aside before reaching the town, he ascended the Frais Vallon some distance, meeting with a few Arabs and one or two soldiers, none of whom, however, took much notice of him, as his stalwart figure and eccentric bearing and behaviour had become by that time familiar to most of the inhabitants of the town. It was known, moreover, that he was at the time under the protection of the British consul, and that he possessed another powerful protector in the shape of a short, heavy bludgeon, which he always carried unobtrusively with its head in the ample pouch of his pea-jacket.

As he proceeded up the valley, and, gradually passing from the broad road which had been formed by Christian slaves, to the narrow path at its somewhat rugged head, which had been made by goats, he grew more careless in his walk and rollicking in his air. At last he began to smile benignantly, and to address to himself a running commentary on things in general.

“You’ve got a fine time of it here all to yersilf, Mister Flaggan. Ah, it’s little the Dey knows what yer after, me boy, or it’s the last day ye’d have to call yer own. Well, now, it’s more like a drame than anything I knows on. What wid Turks an’ Moors an’ Jews, an’ white slaves of every lingo under the sun, I can’t rightly make out to remimber which it is—Europe, Asia, Afriky, or Ameriky—that I’m livin’ in! Never mind, yer all right wid that blissid cownsl at yer back, an’ this purty little thing in yer pokit.”

He became silent, and seemed a little perplexed at this point, looking about as if in search of something.

“Coorious; I thought it was here I left it; but I niver had a good mimory for locality. Och! the number of times I was used to miss the way to school in Ould Ireland, though I thravelled it so often and knowed it so well! Surely an’ it worn’t under this rock I putt it, it must have bin under a relation. Faix, an’ it was. Here ye are, me hearty, come along—hoop!”

Saying this, he gave a powerful tug at something under the rock in question, and drew forth a canvas bag or wallet, which had the appearance of being well filled.

Slinging this across his shoulder, Ted Flaggan pursued his way, moralising as he went, until he came to a rugged hollow among the hills, in which was a chaos of large stones, mingled with scrubby bushes. Here he paused again, and the wrinkles of perplexity returned to his brow, as he peered hither and thither.

Presently he observed a sharp-edged rock, which, projecting upwards, touched, as it were, the sky-line behind it. Moving to the right until he brought this rock exactly in line with another prominent boulder that lay beyond it, he advanced for about fifty yards, and then, stopping, looked cautiously round among the bushes.

“It must be hereabouts,” he muttered, “for the Jew was werry partikler, an’ bid me be partikler likewise, seein’ that the hole is well hid, an’ wan is apt to come on it raither—hah!”

Suddenly poor Ted fell headlong into the very hole in question, and would infallibly have broken his neck, if he had not happened to descend on the shoulders of a man who, crouched at the bottom of the hole, had been listening intently to the sound of his approach, and who now seized his throat in a grip that was obviously not that of a child!

The British tar was not slow to return the compliment with a grasp that was still less childlike—at the same time he gasped in much anxiety—

“Howld on, ye spalpeen, it’s after yersilf I’ve come, sure; what, won’t ye let go—eh?”

It was quite evident, from the tightening of the grip, that Mariano had no intention of letting go, for the good reason that, not understanding a word of what was said, he regarded the seaman as an enemy. Feeling rather than seeing this, for the hole was deep and dark, Flaggan was under the necessity of showing fight in earnest, and there is no saying what would have been the result had not Lucien suddenly appeared from the interior of a subterranean cavern with which the hole communicated.

Lucien understood English well and spoke it fluently. One or two of Flaggan’s exclamations enlightened him as to the true character of their unexpected visitor.

“Hold, Mariano!” he cried; “the man is evidently a friend.”

“What’s that ye’re saying?” cried Flaggan, looking up, for he was still busy attempting to throttle Mariano.

“I tell my brother that you are a friend,” said Lucien, scarce able to restrain laughter.

“Faix, then, it don’t look like it from the tratement I resaive at yer hands.—Howsoever,” said the seaman, relaxing his grip and rising, while Mariano did the same, “it’s well for you that I am. Bacri sent me wid a few words o’ comfort to ’ee, an’ some purvisions, which I raither fear we’ve bin tramplin’ about in the dirt; but—no, here it is,” he added, picking up the wallet, which had come off in the struggle, “all right, an’ I make no doubt it’ll be of use to ’ee. But it’s a poor sort o’ lodgin’ ye’ve got here: wouldn’t it be better for all parties if we was to go on deck?”

“Not so,” said Lucien, with a smile, as he fell in with the seaman’s humour. “’Twere better to come to our cabin; this is only the hold of our ship.—Follow me.”

So saying he went down on his hands and knees and disappeared in an impenetrably dark hole, not three feet high, which opened off the hole in which they stood.

Mariano pointed to it and motioned to the sailor to follow.

“Arter you, sir,” said Ted, bowing politely.

Mariano laughed and followed his brother, and Ted Flaggan, muttering something about its being the “most strornar companion hatch he’d ever entered,” followed suit.

A creep of two or three yards brought him into a cavern which was just high enough to admit of a man standing erect, and about eight or ten feet wide. At the farther extremity of it there was a small stone lamp, the dim light of which revealed the figure of stout Francisco Rimini sound asleep on a bundle of straw, wrapped negligently in his burnous, and with a stone for his pillow. Beside him stood an empty tin dish and a stone jar of the picturesque form peculiar to the inhabitants of the Atlas Mountains; the sword given to him by Bacri lay within reach of his half-open hand.

Neither the scuffle outside nor the entrance of the party had disturbed the old man.

“My father is worn out with a fruitless search for food!” said Lucien, sitting down on a piece of rock and motioning to the seaman to do likewise. “We can venture out in search of food only at night, and last night was so intensely dark as well as stormy that we failed to procure anything. Our water jar and platter are empty.”

“Then I’ve just come in the nick of time,” said Flaggan, proceeding to unfasten his wallet and display its much-needed contents.