r
himself.... Nothing lacking.... His eyes paused for a moment on his
desk. Wait! Where was the dagger? Prince Charles's dagger?

He gripped himself in fright. Was he going--had he gone--mad? He knew
where that was ... he knew ... he knew.... It was--

"Ogh!" A flash of horror went over him.... But he had done right ... of
course he had done right....

"All's ready, sir," the mate called in to his cabin.

"Yes?..."

"Man, you're no' ill?" the mate looked at him, queerly.

"Of course I'm not ill." He swung on deck. "All right? Let go aft, then,
and haul in. Tug a little westward: a little more westward. Hard a port,
Mr. McKinstry. All right! Let go all, for'a'd.... She's off...."

PART FOUR

THE WRESTLER FROM ALEPPO

Section 1

"_Ya Zan_," came his wife's slow grave voice, "O Shane, when your ship
is in trouble, or does not go fast, do the passengers beat you?"

"Of course not," Campbell laughed. "What put that in your little head?"

"When I went with my uncle, Arif Bey, on the pilgrimage to Mecca--Arif
was a Moslem that year"--she bit the thread of the embroidery she was
doing with her little sharp teeth, _tkk!_--"our ship anchored for the
night in _Birkat Faraun_--Pharaoh's Bay. In the morning it would not
move, so the Maghrabi pilgrims beat the captain terribly. And once at
Al-Akabah, when the captain lost sight of shores for one whole long day,
the Maghrabis beat him again. They said he should have known better.
Don't--don't they ever beat you, _ya Zan_?"

"Not yet, Fenzile. They only beat bad skippers."

"But our _Rais_ was a good sailor. He must have been a good sailor, Zan.
He was very old. He was very pious, too. He said the prayers. Do you
ever say the prayers, Zan, when the sea looks as if it were about to be
angry?"

"What sort of prayers, Fenzile?"

"Oh, prayers. Let me see." Her dark eyes had the look he loved, as if
she had turned around and were rummaging within herself, as a woman
seeks diligently and yet slowly in a chest. "Oh, like the Moslem's _Hizb
al-Bahr_. You ought to know that prayer, _ya Zan_. It will make you safe
at sea. I wonder you, a great _Rais_, do not know that prayer."

"What is the prayer, Fenzile?"

"'We pray Thee for safety in our goings forth and our standings
still.... Subject unto us this sea, even as Thou didst subject the deep
to Moses, and as Thou didst subject the fire to Abraham, and as Thou
didst subject the iron to David, and as Thou didst subj