e raised his dull, weary eyes. At once they quickened, the
dulness passed out of them; they were bright and keen as of old. He
thrust his head forward, staring in his turn; then, in a bewildered way
he looked about him at the ocean of swarthy faces under turbans of all
colours, and back again at Sakr-el-Bahr.

"God's light!" he said at last, in English, to vent his infinite
amazement. Then reverting to the cynical manner that he had ever
affected, and effacing all surprise--

"Good day to you, Sir Oliver," said he. "I suppose ye'll give yourself
the pleasure of hanging me."

"Allah is great!" said Sakr-el-Bahr impassively.

CHAPTER II. THE RENEGADE

How it came to happen that Sakr-el-Bahr, the Hawk of the Sea, the Muslim
rover, the scourge of the Mediterranean, the terror of Christians, and
the beloved of Asad-ed-Din, Basha of Algiers, would be one and the same
as Sir Oliver Tressilian, the Cornish gentleman of Penarrow, is at long
length set forth in the chronicles of Lord Henry Goade. His lordship
conveys to us some notion of how utterly overwhelming he found that
fact by the tedious minuteness with which he follows step by step this
extraordinary metamorphosis. He devotes to it two entire volumes of
those eighteen which he has left us. The whole, however, may with
advantage be summarized into one short chapter.

Sir Oliver was one of a score of men who were rescued from the sea by
the crew of the Spanish vessel that had sunk the Swallow; another was
Jasper Leigh, the skipper. All of them were carried to Lisbon, and there
handed over to the Court of the Holy Office. Since they were heretics
all--or nearly all--it was fit and proper that the Brethren of St.
Dominic should undertake their conversion in the first place. Sir Oliver
came of a family that never had been famed for rigidity in religious
matters, and he was certainly not going to burn alive if the adoption of
other men's opinions upon an extremely hypothetical future state would
suffice to save him from the stake. He accepted Catholic baptism with
an almost contemptuous indifference. As for Jasper Leigh, it will be
conceived that the elasticity of the skipper's conscience was no less
than Sir Oliver's, and he was certainly not the man to be roasted for a
trifle of faith.

No doubt there would be great rejoicings in the Holy House over the
rescue of these two unfortunate souls from the certain perdition that
had awaited them. It followed that as