Read Ebook: The Stampeder by White Samuel Alexander

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Ebook has 1542 lines and 54886 words, and 31 pages

Snarling like an enraged animal, Rex leaped in front of them.

Crack! sounded his stanchion on the foremost head. Crack! crack! He pierced their ranks and dragged out the luckless woman. Shielding her with one arm, he was carried back against the ship's side by the pressure of the frantic throng.

"Are you hurt?" he found time to whisper.

"No-only frightened," she sobbed. The nervous strain was too much for her.

Britton made her kneel down under the rail behind him, and, with his legs protecting her from the trampling, he faced the angry Arabs again.

They had hesitated a little, daunted by the impetuosity of his attack. The Englishman's blood was now thoroughly aroused. Away back in his line of ancestors there had been knights of the old regime; there were soldiers of the empire among the later generations; and his grandfather had fallen at Waterloo. The fighting, bulldog strain was in him, and only sufficient baiting was required to bring it into evidence!

"They're coming!" exclaimed Britton, triumphantly. "You pack of fools, have you no sense?"

A growl was the reply. Whether fear had driven out their understanding, or whether the rough fellows were actuated by a desire of revenge for the blows inflicted by the Englishman, they rushed upon him once more.

"Ah! you will have it, will you?" he cried, exulting in the mere thrill of battle. "Then lay on, you rabble!"

He stood in the central focus of the steam-yacht's searchlight, with muscle action unhampered and with bare feet gripping the deck firmly, while his enemies strove to reach him. His stanchion rose and fell like a flash as he circled in and out, avoiding the blows of his adversaries, and every time he struck a man went down. Once a sinewed Moroccan locked with him, and he felt the sting of steel in his shoulder, but a jolt on the fellow's neck from Britton's other arm stretched him senseless, while the knife clattered over the rail into the sea.

Crack! crack! The sound of his club grew monotonous; the soft, warm trickle of something down his left shoulder filled him with a strange disgust for the combat; he felt ashamed of himself standing in pyjamas on the lighted deck of another ship and striking down Berbers with a stanchion.

Since it was wholly necessary, the Englishman wondered at the sense of shame. Perhaps it was an odd trick which the wounded nerves in his arm were playing him.

Only three or four Arabs opposed Britton now. He ran at them with hands placed wide on his stanchion, like a wand, and swept them aside. The captain of the steamer stepped through into the cleared space on the after-deck.

"Give your orders," said Britton, with a sigh of relief.

He turned to the woman by the rail and raised her up as the feminine contingent was passed to the side and lowered into the harbor boats which were already alongside.

"You may enter one of them now," he said, marvelling vaguely at her perfect face. She touched his arm with a movement of gratitude, but her fingers came away wet and sticky.

"Someone slashed you!" she exclaimed in concern. "Let me see. Oh, let me bandage it. And I was the cause of your wound!"

"It is only a flesh wound-" began Britton.

"Madam, the boat!" interrupted the anxious captain.

"I'll wait," answered the woman. "This man is wounded-the man who saved all of us. Can't you do something? See! he's weak!"

She gave an alarmed cry as the Englishman staggered. He saved himself by clutching the rail.

"It must-have been those-those circles I cut among the rascals," he laughed unsteadily. "They make me dizzy."

"You're evading," she said quickly; "it's the Berber's knife."

With a strong effort Britton summoned his will-power to control his weakened nerves, and roughly dashed a hand across his eyes. It was with a great sensation of relief that he felt his returning steadiness of muscle, and he glanced at the rope ladders which filled the waiting boats with fleeing people.

"We had better be getting down," he advised. "The steamer will not float long."

Even as he spoke, the coaster lurched alarmingly. Rex grasped the woman's arm and drew her quickly to the rail.

A thrown rope whipped his cheek, and he caught it skilfully, peering below at a small boat which swayed to the roll of the steamer.

"For God's sake, Britton, come off that old hulk," shouted someone. "She's sinking fast!"

Rex looked downward with the pleased expression on his own face contrasting strangely with the anxious countenances of the two occupants of the launch.

"It's my friends, Ainsworth and Trascott, from the yacht," he explained to the woman at his side.

"I was beginning to wonder why they hadn't showed up. You see they must have been out before I awakened, for they had taken the launch to the rescue."

"Come off!" commanded Ainsworth, peremptorily. "Can't you see you're last, you two mooning fools? The old coffin will drop in a minute."

They could hear Trascott's mild protest at Ainsworth's trenchant phrasing of the situation, and Britton laughed.

"Trascott's a curate," he said, disengaging a rope ladder for their own use, "a very orthodox, English curate! Sometimes he doesn't approve of his friend's strenuous speech. You'll have to overlook it, though. Ainsworth is a lawyer, and he thinks he has us in the witness-box."

They were descending the rope-ladder as he spoke, the lady going first, and Cyril Ainsworth heard the last part of his host's comment.

"It's no witness-box you're in, Britton," he growled. "It's a bally old tub, and you needn't think because you're dressed in beautiful, silk pyjamas that you must stay there till you have to swim. If I were the lady, I would vigorously object to getting wet."

Britton pulled an overcoat and a pair of sea-boots from a locker and put them on.

"That's better," grunted the lawyer. "You don't look so much like a posing matinee idol in crimson jersey and biceps!"

"There's the end of incompetence," rasped Ainsworth, while the lady beside Britton gave a sympathetic cry, and the fleet of boats flying from the vortex peril with their human cargoes echoed in choruses of dismay.

"Had you friends?" Britton asked of the woman.

"No,-only my maid and baggage," she answered. "My name is Morris, Maud Morris-and I was travelling alone."

"To Algiers?"

"Yes, to Algiers-at least temporarily."

"Then the inconvenience is not considerable," Britton said. "We will go on board the yacht, and I can find your maid in the morning."

"Ah! you are too generous," murmured the lady. "You have already done more than a woman can repay, and I have not even attended to your wound. Does it pain much?"

"Very little," replied Britton, lightly. "I believe I shall hold you to your promise to bandage it, and I believe it will get well very soon."

She laughed a low, sweet laugh which harmonized with her pale beauty, and Britton felt some unexplained fascination as her green-blue eyes held his.

"What the deuce will the Honorable Oliver Britton say when he finds his nephew has smashed up his floating palace?" asked Ainsworth, meditatively.

"What a legal beacon you might have been!" sighed Cyril, generously. "But this pin-scratch they gave you in the arm!--who pays the doctor-bill?"

"That is my affair," said the lady of the adventure, very sweetly, "and it is time it was given attention." She took Britton's sleeve and drew him to the companionway. There Rex paused and hailed the bridge.

"Daniels, get us in close to the eastern jetty at once and anchor there. We don't know how badly we're damaged, so moor right under it."

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