gotten
of the words Othmani had used. What, indeed, would be Asad's welcome of
him on his return if he sailed into Algiers with nothing more to show
for that long voyage and the imperilling of the lives of two hundred
True-Believers than just those two captives whom he intended, moreover,
to retain for himself? What capital would not be made out of that
circumstance by his enemies in Algiers and by Asad's Sicilian wife who
hated him with all the bitterness of a hatred that had its roots in the
fertile soil of jealousy?

This may have spurred him in the cool dawn to a very daring and
desperate enterprise which Destiny sent his way in the shape of a
tall-masted Dutchman homeward bound. He gave chase, for all that he was
full conscious that the battle he invited was one of which his corsairs
had no experience, and one upon which they must have hesitated to
venture with another leader than himself. But the star of Sakr-el-Bahr
was a star that never led to aught but victory, and their belief in
him, the very javelin of Allah, overcame any doubts that may have
been begotten of finding themselves upon an unfamiliar craft and on a
rolling, unfamiliar sea.

This fight is given in great detail by my Lord Henry from the
particulars afforded him by Jasper Leigh. But it differs in no great
particular from other sea-fights, and it is none of my purpose to
surfeit you with such recitals. Enough to say that it was stern and
fierce, entailing great loss to both combatants; that cannon played
little part in it, for knowing the quality of his men Sakr-el-Bahr made
haste to run in and grapple. He prevailed of course as he must ever
pre-vail by the very force of his personality and the might of his
example. He was the first to leap aboard the Dutchman, clad in mail and
whirling his great scimitar, and his men poured after him shouting his
name and that of Allah in a breath.

Such was ever his fury in an engagement that it infected and inspired
his followers. It did so now, and the shrewd Dutchmen came to perceive
that this heathen horde was as a body to which he supplied the brain
and soul. They attacked him fiercely in groups, intent at all costs upon
cutting him down, convinced almost by instinct that were he felled the
victory would easily be theirs. And in the end they succeeded. A Dutch
pike broke some links of his mail and dealt him a flesh wound which went
unheeded by him in his fury; a Dutch rapier found the breach thus made
in