r waved him contemptuously
away.

"For your profanity and want of courtesy we will make the ransom a
thousand philips, then," said he. And to his followers--"Away with him!
Let him have courteous entertainment against the coming of his ransom."

He was borne away cursing.

Of the others Sakr-el-Bahr made short work. He offered the privilege
of ransoming himself to any who might claim it, and the privilege was
claimed by three. The rest he consigned to the care of Biskaine, who
acted as his Kayla, or lieutenant. But before doing so he bade the
ship's bo'sun stand forward, and demanded to know what slaves there
might be on board. There were, he learnt, but a dozen, employed
upon menial duties on the ship--three Jews, seven Muslimeen and two
heretics--and they had been driven under the hatches when the peril
threatened.

By Sakr-el-Bahr's orders these were dragged forth from the blackness
into which they had been flung. The Muslimeen upon discovering that they
had fallen into the hands of their own people and that their slavery was
at an end, broke into cries of delight, and fervent praise of Allah than
whom they swore there was no other God. The three Jews, lithe, stalwart
young men in black tunics that fell to their knees and black skull-caps
upon their curly black locks, smiled ingratiatingly, hoping for the best
since they were fallen into the hands of people who were nearer akin to
them than Christians and allied to them, at least, by the bond of common
enmity to Spain and common suffering at the hands of Spaniards. The two
heretics stood in stolid apathy, realizing that with them it was but a
case of passing from Charybdis to Scylla, and that they had as little
to hope for from heathen as from Christian. One of these was a sturdy
bowlegged fellow, whose garments were little better than rags; his
weather-beaten face was of the colour of mahogany and his eyes of a dark
blue under tufted eyebrows that once had been red--like his hair and
beard--but were now thickly intermingled with grey. He was spotted like
a leopard on the hands by enormous dark brown freckles.

Of the entire dozen he was the only one that drew the attention of
Sakr-el-Bahr. He stood despondently before the corsair, with bowed head
and his eyes upon the deck, a weary, dejected, spiritless slave who
would as soon die as live. Thus some few moments during which the
stalwart Muslim stood regarding him; then as if drawn by that persistent
scrutiny h