d spent some miserable hours in the
fore-castle awaiting a doom which he accounted foregone.

"Our positions have changed, Master Leigh, since last we talked in a
ship's cabin," was the renegade's inscrutable greeting.

"Indeed," Master Leigh agreed. "But I hope ye'll remember that on that
occasion I was your friend."

"At a price," Sakr-el-Bahr reminded him. "And at a price you may find me
your friend to-day."

The rascally skipper's heart leapt with hope.

"Name it, Sir Oliver," he answered eagerly. "And so that it ties within
my wretched power I swear I'll never boggle at it. I've had enough of
slavery," he ran on in a plaintive whine. "Five years of it, and four
of them spent aboard the galleys of Spain, and no day in all of them but
that I prayed for death. Did you but know what I ha' suffered."

"Never was suffering more merited, never punishment more fitting,
never justice more poetic," said Sakr-el-Bahr in a voice that made the
skipper's blood run cold. "You would have sold me, a man who did you no
hurt, indeed a man who once befriended you--you would have sold me into
slavery for a matter of two hundred pounds...."

"Nay, nay," cried the other fearfully, "as God's my witness, 'twas never
part of my intent. Ye'll never ha' forgot the words I spoke to you, the
offer that I made to carry you back home again."

"Ay, at a price, 'tis true," Sakr-el-Bahr repeated. "And it is fortunate
for you that you are to-day in a position to pay a price that
should postpone your dirty neck's acquaintance with a rope. I need a
navigator," he added in explanation, "and what five years ago you would
have done for two hundred pounds, you shall do to-day for your life. How
say you: will you navigate this ship for me?"

"Sir," cried Jasper Leigh, who could scarce believe that this was all
that was required of him, "I'll sail it to hell at your bidding."

"I am not for Spain this voyage," answered Sakr-el-Bahr. "You shall sail
me precisely as you would have done five years ago, back to the mouth of
the Fal, and set me ashore there. Is that agreed?"

"Ay, and gladly," replied Master Leigh without a second's pause.

"The conditions are that you shall have your life and your liberty,"
Sakr-el-Bahr explained. "But do not suppose that arrived in England you
are to be permitted to depart. You must sail us back again, though once
you have done that I shall find a way to send you home if you so desire
it, and perhaps there will be