“There’s a ship on our larboard stern,” I told him.
He peered a good ten seconds. “I don’t make her out,” he answered. “Are you sure she’s not a low-hanging skean of mist?”
“I’m sure. And her course is due east.”
Felix looked flabbergasted. “What kind of eyes have you, to make out a sail I can’t?”
Well, Mustapha Sheik had told me they were the sharpest he had ever seen on man, woman, or child.
“She’s close-reefed,” I told him, trying to get back part of the capital I had lost tonight. “From her lines, I’d call her a bireme.”
Meanwhile the light was clearing with that glorious rush of first spring dawns. Felix flung salt water from a draw bucket into his eyes, then rinsed it out with fresh water.
“I can see her now,” he told me. “But I couldn’t if you hadn’t showed me where to look.”
“I doubt if she can see us. We’re against the shore and she’s against the morning. If you hug a little more on a south’ard course we may give her the slip.”
He called orders to that effect. Meanwhile I got a spying tube—a hollow stick which, pressed against the eye socket and peered through, cut off all dazzling light and usually assisted vision.
“She’s a bireme of about forty benches,” I reported. That meant twenty on a side, each with two oarsmen. “Her high castle and long beak show she’s a fighter. If she isn’t a marine provost I’ll eat her pennant.”
“What would she be doing out here this time of day?” Felix asked, wide-eyed.
“She might be attending to her duty, chasing rovers and smugglers. On the other hand she might be looking for a heathen smuggled out of a lazar house.”
“By our Blessèd Mary, if someone saw us get off the gondola, our heads’ll roll in the Piazzetta before another tide!”
“That’s a lot of trouble for the state to go to for one Infidel leper,” I told my comrade when my head had cleared. “Still there’s no proof we’ve been seen. The provost marshal’s first thought would be that his own tribe stole him, on a holy venture, so he’d send out a galley to look for a zebec or a dhow. However, for lack of either, she might search every boat that journeys east.”
“She’s changed her course more southerly, and she’ll be sure to see us when the sunrise lights our oar blades.”
“Then we’d better be afishing, like honest men.”
So we heaved our two-hundred-pound hook to anchor in twenty fathoms. Two fellows ran out a short net as though to make a trial cast. Felix and I had already shelled the outer garments concealing our fishers’ dress, and with a grim look, he rolled up the foul rigs, fastened the bundle to a net weight, and tossed it overboard. The rest of us watched what might be a sea-dragon with eighty legs, who might come fishing for us.
From the hump on the dragon’s back there rose what looked like three stiff hairs. The number increased to a thick patch as more and more spyers mounted the galley’s castle.
“She’s seen us, but she’s keeping her course,” Felix muttered.
“Keep praying to San Pietro! If her master is an easy-going lubber, he’ll pass us by, but if he’s a veteran of Trepani——”
Then the color ran out of Felix’s face like red wine from a broken glass.
“God in Heaven, she’s veering this way!”
My face blanched the like, if the cold sweat beading there was any sign. My terror was quite likely greater because it spread further—it gave me eyes to see not only our arrest and ironing, but our behanding at Santa Croce, our dragging to the Piazzetta on the tails of horses, and our beheading between the pillars.[6] If our lifting of Haran-din would be counted only theft of first offense, we would get off with a flogging and being branded on the hand. But the same eyes searched desperately for hope, and for this—in my great need—they turned cold and sharp.
“We’d better cut the anchor rope and run for it,” Felix gasped. “There’s a little mist blowing and if it thickens, maybe we’ll fade out.”
That would betray our guilt, and the chance of hiding did not seem one in ten. Still, we must be ready to run if we were not able to gull the galley captain into letting us pass.
“Call to the fishers to haul in, but free the fish under water, so they won’t gleam in the sun.”
“That’ll take time. What’s the sense of it? Why not let the net go?”
“To make it look like a water haul, so we’ll have an excuse to change grounds.”
But this could be our last trick. If the galley veered to intercept us, there was no risk too desperate to run.
Five minutes crawled away before the net was stowed and the dinghy made fast. Although the galley’s oarsmen were stroking at half-speed—as if she were making toward us only for lack of a better object—she loomed larger and looked fiercer than before. Truly she had not gained three cable lengths against the brisk wind and heavy tide, and was still a good league distant.
Felix ordered oars out. I had thought to request an easy gait, so as not to show fear, but thereby I would show fear of his refusal, which was enough to make him refuse in his present quandary. So with a faintness of heart concealed in a strong voice, I made it my command.
Then we watched like wild geese watching a distant fowler. Every rower’s head was turned at exactly the same angle as he bent to his oar. The shape that the galley showed us shortened with terrible slowness. She might be only giving a little way to the head wind. . . . Suddenly I scorned such wishwash, and knew well we were under chase.
“Now is the time for speed,” I told Felix.
But before he could give the command to the cockswain, there rose from the deck a wild, frantic cry.
“Wait, wait, for the love of God!”
All hands heard terror in the yell, but only I understood the language, and I could not begin to see its sense. If there had been a mist cloud on the water big enough to hide a rowboat I would have paid it no attention. Instead the sun was sucking up what little haze there was, the only clouds were scattered and bright, and there was no sign anywhere but of fair weather. It looked to be foul enough for us, after two or so hours’ run at desperate speed. I believed it would take a miracle to deliver us from capture, and why should we expect it? We were serving a foul Infidel against the Christian law. In spite of Haran-din’s pitifulness, no reasonable man would believe in the saint’s intervention in his behalf.
“Bid the men keep the same stroke for a moment more,” I told Felix.
I saw no revolt in his face and instead the dim glimmer of a hope. Perhaps he thought this silvery Infidel might work a charm.
“What is it?” I asked Haran-din. “Speak quickly!”
“Is a provost galley bearing down on us? I think the rowers said so.”
“Yes, and we must run.”
“What good to run with twelve legs against a hundred? Can’t you hide me?”
“There’s no hope of that.”
“Then show mercy in Allah’s name, and don’t let them take me alive!”
Hearing that, my heart banged my rib bones.
“Do you mean, Haran-din, that you want us to throw you overboard?”
“What is the good of that? I’ll float, and they’ll see me shining like a fish, and pick me up, and bear me back to my cell! Don’t you know my bones are eaten away and my flesh is all dry rot, light as cork?”
Horror came down upon me like a cold fog.
“Won’t you drown?” I cried.
“No, I can’t drown!” he yelled. “If I breathe water instead of air, still I’ll live. That is the way of us lepers—we can’t die by our own hands—it’s the curse of Allah, the great, the glorious! You must kill me before you cast me forth. And even then they’ll take up my body and bury it in filth.”
I had run to Haran-din’s side to help save his breath, and now Felix ran to me.
“What does he want?”
“He wants me to put my dagger through his heart.”