Anon, when her mind recovered from the shock she turned it to the consideration of what at first had seemed a trivial detail in Othmani’s tale as reported by Marzak.
“It is most singularly odd that he should have undertaken that long voyage to England to wrest9 thence just those two captives; that being there he should not have raided in true corsair fashion and packed his ship with slaves. Most singularly odd!”
They were alone behind the green lattices through which filtered the perfumes of the garden and the throbbing10 of a nightingale’s voice laden11 with the tale of its love for the rose. Fenzileh reclined upon a divan12 that was spread with silken Turkey carpets, and one of her gold-embroidered slippers13 had dropped from her henna-stained toes. Her lovely arms were raised to support her head, and she stared up at the lamp of many colours that hung from the fretted14 ceiling.
Marzak paced the length of the chamber15 back and forth16, and there was silence save for the soft swish of his slippers along the floor.
“Well?” she asked him impatiently at last. “Does it not seem odd to thee?”
“Odd, indeed, O my mother,” the youth replied, coming to a halt before her.
“And canst think of naught17 that was the cause of it?”
“The cause of it?” quoth he, his lovely young face, so closely modelled upon her own, looking blank and vacant.
“Ay, the cause of it,” she cried impatiently. “Canst do naught but stare? Am I the mother of a fool? Wilt18 thou simper and gape19 and trifle away thy days whilst that dog-descended Frank tramples21 thee underfoot, using thee but as a stepping-stone to the power that should be thine own? And that be so, Marzak, I would thou hadst been strangled in my womb.”
He recoiled22 before the Italian fury of her, was dully resentful even, suspecting that in such words from a woman were she twenty times his mother, there was something dishonouring23 to his manhood.
“What can I do?” he cried.
“Dost ask me? Art thou not a man to think and act? I tell thee that misbegotten son of a Christian24 and a Jew will trample20 thee in the dust. He is greedy as the locust25, wily as the serpent, and ferocious26 as the panther. By Allah! I would I had never borne a son. Rather might men point at me the finger of scorn and call me mother of the wind than that I should have brought forth a man who knows not how to be a man.”
“Show me the way,” he cried. “Set me a task; tell me what to do and thou shalt not find me lacking, O my mother. Until then spare me these insults, or I come no more to thee.”
At this threat that strange woman heaved herself up from her soft couch. She ran to him and flung her arms about his neck, set her cheek against his own. Not eighteen years in the Basha’s hareem had stifled27 the European mother in her, the passionate28 Sicilian woman, fierce as a tiger in her maternal29 love.
“O my child, my lovely boy,” she almost sobbed30. “It is my fear for thee that makes me harsh. If I am angry it is but my love that speaks, my rage for thee to see another come usurping31 the place beside thy father that should be thine. Ah! but we will prevail, sweet son of mine. I shall find a way to return that foreign offal to the dung-heap whence it sprang. Trust me, O Marzak! Sh! Thy father comes. Away! Leave me alone with him.”
She was wise in that, for she knew that alone Asad was more easily controlled by her, since the pride was absent which must compel him to turn and rend32 her did she speak so before others. Marzak vanished behind the screen of fretted sandalwood that masked one doorway33 even as Asad loomed34 in the other.
He came forward smiling, his slender brown fingers combing his long beard, his white djellaba trailing behind him along the ground.
“Thou hast heard, not a doubt, O Fenzileh,” said he. “Art thou answered enough?”
She sank down again upon her cushions and idly considered herself in a steel mirror set in silver.
“Answered?” she echoed lazily, with infinite scorn and a hint of rippling35 contemptuous laughter running through the word. “Answered indeed. Sakr-el-Bahr risks the lives of two hundred children of Islam and a ship that being taken was become the property of the State upon a voyage to England that has no object but the capturing of two slaves — two slaves, when had his purpose been sincere, it might have been two hundred.”
“Ha! And is that all that thou hast heard?” he asked her mocking in his turn.
“All that signifies,” she replied, still mirroring herself. “I heard as a matter of lesser36 import that on his return, meeting fortuitously a Frankish ship that chanced to be richly laden, he seized it in thy name.”
“Fortuitously, sayest thou?”
“What else?” She lowered the mirror, and her bold, insolent37 eyes met his own quite fearlessly. “Thou’lt not tell me that it was any part of his design when he went forth?”
He frowned; his head sank slowly in thought. Observing the advantage gained she thrust it home. “It was a lucky wind that blew that Dutchman into his path, and luckier still her being so richly fraught38 that he may dazzle thine eyes with the sight of gold and gems39, and so blind thee to the real purpose of his voyage.”
“Its real purpose?” he asked dully. “What was its real purpose?” She smiled a smile of infinite knowledge to hide her utter ignorance, her inability to supply even a reason that should wear an air of truth.
“Dost ask me, O perspicuous Asad? Are not thine eyes as sharp, thy wits as keen at least as mine, that what is clear to me should be hidden from thee? Or hath this Sakr-el-Bahr bewitched thee with enchantments40 of Babyl?”
He strode to her and caught her wrist in a cruelly rough grip of his sinewy41 old hand.
“His purpose, thou jade42! Pour out the foulness43 of thy mind. Speak!”
She sat up, flushed and defiant44.
“I will not speak,” said she.
“Thou wilt not? Now, by the Head of Allah! dost dare to stand before my face and defy me, thy Lord? I’ll have thee whipped, Fenzileh. I have been too tender of thee these many years — so tender that thou hast forgot the rods that await the disobedient wife. Speak then ere thy flesh is bruised45 or speak thereafter, at thy pleasure.”
“I will not,” she repeated. “Though I be flung to the hooks, not another word will I say of Sakr-el-Bahr. Shall I unveil the truth to be spurned46 and scorned and dubbed47 a liar48 and the mother of lies?” Then abruptly49 changing she fell to weeping. “O source of my life!” she cried to him, “how cruelly unjust to me thou art!” She was grovelling50 now, a thing of supplest51 grace, her lovely arms entwining his knees. “When my love for thee drives me to utter what I see, I earn but thy anger, which is more than I can endure. I swoon beneath the weight of it.”
He flung her off impatiently. “What a weariness is a woman’s tongue!” he cried, and stalked out again, convinced from past experiences that did he linger he would be whelmed in a torrent52 of words.
But her poison was shrewdly administered, and slowly did its work. It abode53 in his mind to torture him with the doubts that were its very essence. No reason, however well founded, that she might have urged for Sakr-el-Bahr’s strange conduct could have been half so insidious54 as her suggestion that there was a reason. It gave him something vague and intangible to consider. Something that he could not repel55 since it had no substance he could grapple with. Impatiently he awaited the morning and the coming of Sakr-el-Bahr himself, but he no longer awaited it with the ardent56 whole-hearted eagerness as of a father awaiting the coming of a beloved son.
Sakr-el-Bahr himself paced the poop deck of the carack and watched the lights perish one by one in the little town that straggled up the hillside before him. The moon came up and bathed it in a white hard light, throwing sharp inky shadows of rustling57 date palm and spearlike minaret58, and flinging shafts59 of silver athwart the peaceful bay.
His wound was healed and he was fully60 himself once more. Two days ago he had come on deck for the first time since the fight with the Dutchman, and he had spent there the greater portion of the time since then. Once only had he visited his captives. He had risen from his couch to repair straight to the cabin in the poop where Rosamund was confined. He had found her pale and very wistful, but with her courage entirely61 unbroken. The Godolphins were a stiff-necked race, and Rosamund bore in her frail62 body the spirit of a man. She looked up when he entered, started a little in surprise to see him at last, for it was the first time he stood before her since he had carried her off from Arwenack some four weeks ago. Then she had averted63 her eyes, and sat there, elbows on the table, as if carved of wood, as if blind to his presence and deaf to his words.
To the expressions of regret — and they were sincere, for already he repented64 him his unpremeditated act so far as she was concerned — she returned no slightest answer, gave no sign indeed that she heard a word of it. Baffled, he stood gnawing65 his lip a moment, and gradually, unreasonably66 perhaps, anger welled up from his heart. He turned and went out again. Next he had visited his brother, to consider in silence a moment the haggard, wild-eyed, unshorn wretch67 who shrank and cowered68 before him in the consciousness of guilt69. At last he returned to the deck, and there, as I have said, he spent the greater portion of the last three days of that strange voyage, reclining for the most part in the sun and gathering70 strength from its ardour.
To-night as he paced under the moon a stealthy shadow crept up the companion to call him gently by his English name —
“Sir Oliver!”
He started as if a ghost had suddenly leapt up to greet him. It was Jasper Leigh who hailed him thus.
“Come up,” he said. And when the fellow stood before him on the poop —“I have told you already that here is no Sir Oliver. I am Oliver–Reis or Sakr-el-Bahr, as you please, one of the Faithful of the Prophet’s House. And now what is your will?”
“Have I not served you faithfully and well?” quoth Captain Leigh.
“Who has denied it?”
“None. But neither has any acknowledged it. When you lay wounded below it had been an easy thing for me to ha’ played the traitor71. I might ha’ sailed these ships into the mouth of Tagus. I might so by God!”
“You’ld have been carved in pieces on the spot,” said Sakr-el-Bahr.
“I might have hugged the land and run the risk of capture and then claimed my liberation from captivity72.”
“And found yourself back on the galleys73 of his Catholic Majesty75. But there! I grant that you have dealt loyally by me. You have kept your part of the bond. I shall keep mine, never doubt it.”
“I do not. But your part of the bond was to send me home again.”
“Well?”
“The hell of it is that I know not where to find a home, I know not where home may be after all these years. If ye send me forth, I shall become a wanderer of no account.”
“What else am I to do with you?”
“Faith now I am as full weary of Christians76 and Christendom as you was yourself when the Muslims took the galley74 on which you toiled77. I am a man of parts, Sir Ol–Sakr-el-Bahr. No better navigator ever sailed a ship from an English port, and I ha’ seen a mort o’ fighting and know the art of it upon the sea. Can ye make naught of me here?”
“You would become a renegade like me?” His tone was bitter.
“I ha’ been thinking that ‘renegade’ is a word that depends upon which side you’re on. I’d prefer to say that I’ve a wish to be converted to the faith of Mahound.”
“Converted to the faith of piracy78 and plunder79 and robbery upon the seas is what you mean,” said Sakr-el-Bahr.
“Nay, now. To that I should need no converting, for all that I were afore,” Captain Leigh admitted frankly80. “I ask but to sail under another flag than the Jolly Roger.”
“You’ll need to abjure81 strong drink,” said Sakr-el-Bahr.
“There be compensations,” said Master Leigh.
Sakr-el-Bahr considered. The rogue’s appeal smote82 a responsive chord in his heart. It would be good to have a man of his own race beside him, even though it were but such a rascal83 as this.
“Be it as you will,” he said at last. “You deserve to be hanged in spite of what promises I made you. But no matter for that. So that you become a Muslim I will take you to serve beside me, one of my own lieutenants84 to begin with, and so long as you are loyal to me, Jasper, all will be well. But at the first sign of faithlessness, a rope and the yard-arm, my friend, and an airy dance into hell for you.”
The rascally85 skipper stooped in his emotion, caught up Sakr-el-Bahr’s hand and bore it to his lips. “It is agreed,” he said. “Ye have shown me mercy who have little deserved it from you. Never fear for my loyalty86. My life belongs to you, and worthless thing though it may be, ye may do with it as ye please.”
Despite himself Sakr-el-Bahr tightened87 his grip upon the rogue’s hand, and Jasper shuffled88 off and down the companion again, touched to the heart for once in his rough villainous life by a clemency89 that he knew to be undeserved, but which he swore should be deserved ere all was done.
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收听单词发音
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1
gall
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| v.使烦恼，使焦躁，难堪；n.磨难 | |
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fervent
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| adj.热的，热烈的，热情的 | |
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3
foundering
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| v.创始人( founder的现在分词 ) | |
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forefathers
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| n.祖先，先人；祖先，祖宗( forefather的名词复数 )；列祖列宗；前人 | |
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adoption
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| n.采用，采纳，通过；收养 | |
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exalt
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| v.赞扬，歌颂，晋升，提升 | |
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esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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8
bereft
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| adj.被剥夺的 | |
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wrest
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| n.扭，拧，猛夺；v.夺取，猛扭，歪曲 | |
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throbbing
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| a. 跳动的,悸动的 | |
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laden
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| adj.装满了的；充满了的；负了重担的；苦恼的 | |
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divan
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| n.长沙发；（波斯或其他东方诗人的）诗集 | |
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slippers
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| n. 拖鞋 | |
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fretted
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| 焦躁的，附有弦马的，腐蚀的 | |
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chamber
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| n.房间，寝室；会议厅；议院；会所 | |
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forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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naught
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| n.无，零 [=nought] | |
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wilt
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| v.(使)植物凋谢或枯萎；(指人)疲倦，衰弱 | |
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19
gape
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| v.张口，打呵欠，目瞪口呆地凝视 | |
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20
trample
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| vt.踩，践踏；无视，伤害，侵犯 | |
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tramples
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| 踩( trample的第三人称单数 )； 践踏； 无视； 侵犯 | |
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22
recoiled
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| v.畏缩( recoil的过去式和过去分词 )；退缩；报应；返回 | |
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23
dishonouring
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| 使（人、家族等）丧失名誉（dishonour的现在分词形式） | |
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24
Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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25
locust
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| n.蝗虫；洋槐，刺槐 | |
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ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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27
stifled
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| （使）窒息， （使）窒闷( stifle的过去式和过去分词 )； 镇压，遏制； 堵 | |
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28
passionate
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的 | |
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29
maternal
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| adj.母亲的，母亲般的，母系的，母方的 | |
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30
sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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31
usurping
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| 篡夺，霸占( usurp的现在分词 )； 盗用； 篡夺，篡权 | |
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32
rend
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| vt.把…撕开，割裂；把…揪下来，强行夺取 | |
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33
doorway
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| n.门口，(喻)入门；门路，途径 | |
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34
loomed
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| v.隐约出现，阴森地逼近( loom的过去式和过去分词 )；隐约出现，阴森地逼近 | |
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35
rippling
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| 起涟漪的，潺潺流水般声音的 | |
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36
lesser
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| adj.次要的，较小的；adv.较小地，较少地 | |
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insolent
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| adj.傲慢的，无理的 | |
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38
fraught
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| adj.充满…的，伴有(危险等)的；忧虑的 | |
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39
gems
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| growth； economy； management； and customer satisfaction 增长 | |
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40
enchantments
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| n.魅力( enchantment的名词复数 )；迷人之处；施魔法；着魔 | |
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41
sinewy
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| adj.多腱的，强壮有力的 | |
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42
jade
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| n.玉石；碧玉；翡翠 | |
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43
foulness
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| n. 纠缠, 卑鄙 | |
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44
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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45
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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46
spurned
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| v.一脚踢开，拒绝接受( spurn的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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47
dubbed
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| v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制 | |
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48
liar
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| n.说谎的人 | |
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49
abruptly
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| adv.突然地，出其不意地 | |
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50
grovelling
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| adj.卑下的，奴颜婢膝的v.卑躬屈节，奴颜婢膝( grovel的现在分词 )；趴 | |
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51
supplest
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| （身体）柔软的( supple的最高级 )； 灵活的； 易弯曲的； 柔韧的 | |
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52
torrent
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| n.激流，洪流；爆发，(话语等的)连发 | |
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53
abode
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| n.住处，住所 | |
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54
insidious
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| adj.阴险的，隐匿的，暗中为害的，（疾病）不知不觉之间加剧 | |
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55
repel
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| v.击退，抵制，拒绝，排斥 | |
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56
ardent
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| adj.热情的，热烈的，强烈的，烈性的 | |
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57
rustling
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| n. 瑟瑟声，沙沙声 adj. 发沙沙声的 | |
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58
minaret
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| n.（回教寺院的）尖塔 | |
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59
shafts
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| n.轴( shaft的名词复数 )；（箭、高尔夫球棒等的）杆；通风井；一阵（疼痛、害怕等） | |
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60
fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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61
entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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62
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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63
averted
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| 防止，避免( avert的过去式和过去分词 )； 转移 | |
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64
repented
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| 对（自己的所为）感到懊悔或忏悔( repent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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65
gnawing
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| a.痛苦的，折磨人的 | |
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66
unreasonably
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| adv. 不合理地 | |
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67
wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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68
cowered
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| v.畏缩，抖缩( cower的过去式 ) | |
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69
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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70
gathering
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| n.集会，聚会，聚集 | |
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71
traitor
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| n.叛徒，卖国贼 | |
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72
captivity
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| n.囚禁；被俘；束缚 | |
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73
galleys
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| n.平底大船，战舰( galley的名词复数 )；（船上或航空器上的）厨房 | |
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74
galley
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| n.（飞机或船上的）厨房单层甲板大帆船；军舰舰长用的大划艇； | |
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75
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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76
Christians
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| n.基督教徒( Christian的名词复数 ) | |
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77
toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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78
piracy
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| n.海盗行为，剽窃，著作权侵害 | |
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79
plunder
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| vt.劫掠财物，掠夺；n.劫掠物，赃物；劫掠 | |
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80
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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81
abjure
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| v.发誓放弃 | |
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82
smote
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| v.猛打，重击，打击( smite的过去式 ) | |
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83
rascal
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| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
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84
lieutenants
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| n.陆军中尉( lieutenant的名词复数 )；副职官员；空军；仅低于…官阶的官员 | |
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85
rascally
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| adj. 无赖的，恶棍的 adv. 无赖地，卑鄙地 | |
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86
loyalty
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| n.忠诚，忠心 | |
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87
tightened
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| 收紧( tighten的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）变紧； （使）绷紧； 加紧 | |
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88
shuffled
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| v.洗（纸牌）( shuffle的过去式和过去分词 )；拖着脚步走；粗心地做；摆脱尘世的烦恼 | |
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89
clemency
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| n.温和，仁慈，宽厚 | |
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