SIROCCO.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13493, 21 May 1907, Page 3

SIROCCO.

[PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT.]

BY KENNETH BROWN. [ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.] [COPYRIGHT.] SYNOPSIS OF PREVIOUS CHAPTERS. Chapter Duncan, an American trader, has reached the town of Kub-hubnol, the capital' of Sirocco, in North Africa. While walking along the street a note flutters to his feet, dropped from a tall building towering above him. It is fiiarked, "To any Englishman. Private." The trader notes ths_ building and passes on. '. ; Chapter ll.—The note contains an appeal from Datmera Grabame, who has been carried Off "By the Sultan a' year previously. She asks : " Why h»3 the admiral done nothing? Is Percy Cunningham dead?" Duncan decides to fathom the' mysi tery and asks a fruit _ vendor what the building is from whence the note was issued.' He is informed it is the seraglio of the Sultan. ] Later the i trader proceeds to the office of the English Consul and. is surprised to find he is the Percy Cunningham mentioned; also, that he is so drunk that it would be impossible to ask his assistance. Chapter lll.—Casting about for a means of communication with the imprisoned girl, Dunfcan decides to take a booth opposite her window and there, sets up a. blacksmith forge. In this trade he has had a little experience and attracts curiosity at first. : However, procuring - some cardboard, ;he : draws on it the letter A In large ; characters and hangs it over the booth's entrance. Then at minute intervals he strikes his anvil, making it ring like a bell. After awhile he ini scribes the letter B on the placard and taps the anvil twice at intervals. The letter C follows, j and the triple strokes to accompany it. Eventually the inscription, "Do you understand, is spelt out in this manner, Duncan hoping that the girl will comprehend that he can spell out anything he wishes to say, and if she drops notes I they may find a way of escape for her. Chapter IV.—One day Duncan is visited at his forge/ by the Sultan's Grand Vizier, .. who asks him'tho meaning of the'sign message -displayed over the building. Duncan thinks it wiser to 1 spealc. the truth and translated it literally. The visitor speaks English and Duncan further explains that the sign ,is a mascot, to -bring good fortune. The Vizier expresses a wish; to possess , a -similar sign, saying, "'I know Kerlistian Kerlistian boy. Will you make me a sign for her to wear about the neck in bag?" To this Duncan agrees', the further statement by the Grand Vizier that ,the " Kerlistian boy is an invalid—and dear to me," making him think that the imprisoned girl is referred to. So Duncan prints his phrase, " Do you understand?" in old English letters on the back of a part of the note he had picked up containing the words, " Why have my friends, rubbing out the girl's handwriting till it was only faintly legible, and stains the paper to make it appear of no account. He delivers the charm to the Grand Vizier, intimating that it is of great age and value. Chapter V. —Duncan again calls on Cunningham, but his visit proves of no avail. : Chapter Vl.—The amateur blacksmith goes through his process of spelling out the captive girl's name on his anvil next day, and later is visited by Abrack, the Sultan's physician, who is a forbidding-looking personage, with his features veiled. The visitor tells Duncan that the charm lie had given the Grand Vizier was of some use and wishes for others, and lie informs Duncan lie had better leave the city when he had prepared them. To show Duncan his power Abrack catches hold of a vagrant dog, and, closing; his hand upon it, immediately kills it. Angered -.at this Duncan strikes the physician's hand. ! wuli the handle of his' hammer, a ring falling'-from • Abrack's hand as he withdraws it.' Duncan - turns him and ilia attendant out. of'the forge and later examines the ring, whloh lie finds' to be or peculiar workmanship. Pressing a point. .it a. liquid exudes. This Duncan, injects ' into a, dog and it immediately die«. Duncan finds the-ring can be worn without danger t6 the wearer. Later the Sultan passes the booth,' and, leaning forth from his carriage, looks squarely,at •the American seated within. • \

CHAPTER VII. . ■ • ; THE TIME AITOIKTED/' .', ; ' Duncan felt the need of Air and action. He carefully secreted the ring in a crevice of his shop, and went out into the' hot sunshine. A scrap of white gleamed at him from across the deserted/ street. He had almost forgotten the English.girl, for whose sake lie was in his -present'position; but he saw the note almost without surprise, such confidence, had he felt that his plan was one to stand the test of practice. He turned back at sight of the letter. The caution that had deserted him in his interview with the physician returned with redoubled vigour now, because of the previous outbreak. The bazaar appeared dead, yet there might be eyes to see him pick up the note, : and to / have suspicion, aroused by the action. Quickly lie cut'a horseshoe nail in two and drove it into the heel of his shoe, leaving a half-inch projecting. Then he walked across the street and returned to his Wi-op with the note impaled on his heel.' " I understand, you blessed, mysterious blacksmith," so., read /the note, " but," oh, what elm we do? Yesterday I was ill tilt they brought me your ' amulet,' and wasted a day ; and to-morrow we go to the Sultan's Palace of Peace, among the hills—and there is less chance there than here. And I shall die if I have to live on, as I have lived last year,, without a word from anyone. What is to be done? .Can you attack us as we travel to the other palace? Or a strong man might work the lattices of the' windows loose — could, myself, once. They tell me that all my . friends think I am dead, and that if they try to" do anything I shall, "in 'truth,., be dead. ' But tell. 1 me what 'to do. ' I will dare anything," take any risks to escape. ' , .y,..; , Dalmera Grahams." Duncan stood up and drew a long breath,, stretching his arms above his head.." — him!" he said, and the muscles of. his mouth were tense. He felt exhilarated. It must all happen to-day. He forgot the heat; he forgot Abrack and his rings. The thought of. Cunningham came to him and was dismissed. The game would be' - won or lost before the' stuttering English consul could sober up. And Dalmera Grahame would be worth risking one's life for. There would plainly bo no hesitating on her part, no. hanging back" that would, endanger them both. ' Only one of her schemes was practicable, ' and nothing better, suggested itself to Duncan. - .With his small resources an attack on the guard of the harem, as it travelled to the Palace of Peace, was out of the question." A rescue that night, through one of the windows, whose lattices might be worked j loose, was the only chance. The room in-1 to which these windows opened he judged by the letter^to be deserted.at night." Picking up his hammer lie beat a preliminary' fanfare on the-anvil, and 'then spelled out:.- . ■ I " Shall rescue to-night. What time can I you drop string from window? Roll your | note into / ball, and dirty outside, sO it I won't be noticed. Drop it after I tap three j times." . ' ■/' . / ;/- I Slowly and carefully he spelled, out his message so that she might lose none of it. While waiting for her to write an answer he extracted the nail from his heel and set it in the end of his whangee stick. Her note, rolled into a ball, might be difficult to spear with his heel. V '/' In, fifteen minutes lie gave the signal, and walked, across the street. A pellet struck near him and rolled into the gutter. It was fortunate he was on the alert or he never would have found it, so well had the English, girl followed his instructions. "The largo hall whose windows are opposite the bazaar is deserted after ten o'clock at night. What is there for us to do but listen to the inyradjous, and eat and sleep? At midnight it would be as safe as at any time for you to come. I will let down a worsted thread from the window which seems the weakest. It is the only string I can get. Oh! can it be true that I shall be out of here to-morrow, even if I am only a fugitive, fleeing for my life? I will risk the desert— chance of being captured and killed—anything/to escape. D.G." CHAPTER VIII. ' IN THE BLACK NIGHT. When the light dies out of the.sky to the west off Kub-hub-nol, the city dies with it. There is none of the fascinating night life that blossoms under artificial light. Those persons that have homes curl up in them, with doors and windows close shut, and even the moon does not call them forth. And the moon above Kub-hub-nol shines with a brilliance that makes it half-sister to the sun, as the darkness of Kub-hub-nol is the blackness of the grave. Even the dogs slink into the crevices of the city, when no moon encourages them to come out and roam and howl. At eleven o'clock Duncan awakened his driver, Ben, and told him to make the two swiftest of his camels ready, with saddles and small parcels of food and drink on each. Ben granted at being disturbed at this unseemly hour, and waked the camels, who grunted in their turn. ' "Here are wages for one month from tonight," Duncan, said. "Stay: here till I come back. .-V . Duncan went, and Ben looked after him into the opaque night, and contemplated absconding with his month's wages. Then

he thought ci the other two camels- and lay down to rest between them. " A month!" Ho had known other men to go forth for a month and not to return. in a. year. If ; Duncan tl<d not come in a month, then would ' the s other camels be his ; who's else?—and lie "would be a rich man. Moreover,'lie liked master after a fashion, and feared him more; and finally, he had this life of hours and days to live; why would it be better to move swiftly from one place to another, rather than to stay in calm contemplation here'/ In Sirocco, with its heat, much travelling is done at night, and the camels, after their first protesting grunts at being disturbed, when sleep had seemed their portion, swung otf with the confidence of eyes that see better than man's. Fortunately for Duncan, the road from the caravansary to the bazaar was straight. As it was, he passed the palace without seeing, and when he discovered his mistake and turned about he only found his shop after much search. There he left the camels,and groped his way along the wall of the palace for the worsted string Dalmera Grahame had promised to let down. In the dark one loses the sense of proportion in distance and time, and to Duncan it seemed as if • the: morning would break before he found the j string. The touch of the worstedhe had; bared his arms that lie might have more j feeling surfaceencouraged him at last, i Evidently -nothing had gone wrong up! above. • , To the worsted he tied a piece of stout twine, and gave three light taps on the wall. He had neglected to arrange a signal with the girl, but she evidently guessed j what he meant, and the twine slipped ] rapidly aloft. Presently it stopped, and then was jerked twice, as if *for another j sign. ■ - ■ - ■ , i "Clever girl!" Duncan muttered, and he repeated the signal gently, in'order not to jerk the cord, from her hands. To this end was already attacked a rope, and finally that, too, ceased ascending, and a little later was agitated from above, in rope waves. Duncan tested it lightly, then more heavily, and finally with ' all his weight. It did not give, -.-arid he, began his climb into the black bowels 'of the sky. -/A - .-.'■ ; f . v ■ ■'/. He had thought of knotting the rope, but had decided against it. It would make {•lie rope considerably heavier, perhaps so heavy that the girl might not be able to pull it up; and besides, though the knots would help him to climb, they might be ini the way, if it became necessary to descend with speed. He had provided himself with a neavy pair of gloves, smeared with pitch ; and his light cotton trousers he had wound round and round his hips with strips of pitched cloth, to help him in climbing, and to protect him in the subsequent sliding down.

_l't was a nerve-trying task. In liis travels over the world Duncan had become good enough sailor to feel at home on ai ope ; but be bad never before climbed aj rope under the same conditions. After he had been ascending for some minutes, climbing slowly and resting frequently, ■with tiie lop© twined Ground one leg and pinched between his thighs to take the strain off his hands, he seemed to be in au immensity of void that made bis head : swim. On and on be climbed, all sens© of distance lost. He thought lie had gone lup a mile. The rope seemed stretching | into infinity. He had lost his head, and had the feeling that if he were to relax ' his hold ;he could slide down and down, and never reach the bottomthat he could fall from this height" and keep on . falling through all eternity. The world seemed to have resolved itself into nothingness. Still he toiled upward. ■ He could see no lights. None shone from the town. The overhanging eaves, or clouds, hid the stars. The distant ray of a candle would have afforded Duncan some comfort. There are degrees of blackness, as there are shades of black, and this was a degree that oppressed the brain, that sucked the substance cutof one, that left nothing but void within to match the void without, that resolved man into his original molecules. One of the camels in the street coughed, and the sound came up to Duncan as a faint roar from the demoniac chaos below. At last the rope ffi Duncan's hands quivered in rhythmic vibrations, as if someone were tapping it. This steadied him; it resolved .the chaos about him into component: parts, intelligible to the human brain. ' The. night became night, the rope, rope, and he was again an American trader trying to rescue an unfortunate English girMrom th§- harem of the. Sultan. •, Probably to Dalmera Grahaine, above, the time had, seemed even longer than it had to Duncan. He supported himself on his rope-twisted leg, and tapped encouragingly in reply,-"0.K." ' The distraction did him good, and he went at the remainder. of his climb with steadier nerves. ■■■■■■■:■ ■ From the way the rope hung, he could tell that he was near the .top. Presently it slanted in still more sharply towards the wall— little more shinning and a hand touched his, and a whisper in the darkness said: "I have worked' one of the slats loose before you came to-night... I.was afraid to try. any more while you ."were climbing, for fear you would think'' it was" someone else .up here." v " Bully • for you! We'll have you out of here in a jiffy, now," Duncan whispered back. 1 '"I have a piece of short rope with me, to tie around your waist when we slide down. Can you fasten it to three or four of the upper slats, so that I can on it while I work on the lower ones?" " Yes," came the soft answer in the dark. The girl showed him where to insert the ends of the rope, thrusting her arm through the aperture she had made. _ "Can you tie a square not?' Duncan asked. "I shouldn't want to sit on this rope .with only a granny knot to hold me up.". * • ..■ „, "Yes—it is tied. Oh, be quick! Duncan set swiftly to work. _ Ho had 'brought a pointed cold chisel in his pocket, but ev.e.n .'without it he would have had no great difficulty with the window. The slats were of iron, and the mortar in which they were imbedded had crumbled and worn from the fierce winds of the desert. No one, in the palace, probably, had ever thought their strength would' be tested, so far from the ground. The iron slats were more to protect the modesty of the wives, who, through curiosity, might be tempted to show their faces to the world below, than to guard against intruders. At first it seemed to Duncan that he made the noise of an earthquake in chipping away the mortar. He desisted every few seconds and listened for the approach of some avenging eunuch. None appeared, and with custom the noise come to sound more natural. He worked steadily and cautiously, freeing one slat and then another, which Dalmera took and laid down carefully inside. Enough slats had been removed to give space for her escape, when Duncan heard a smothered gasp from the girl, and a sword slipped keenly through his shirt and cut the rope he was sitting on. . . The sounds made in removing the * slats had wakened some eunuch after all; and with a little better luck, the sword-thrust would have sent a corpse hurtling to the ground. Had Duncan not had his right hand on the longer rope, and been in the act of taking his weight off the sling in which he was , sitting, the cutting of the latter would have been as efficacious as a deadlier thrust, and he would have fallen and been an agreeable sight for the Sultan in the morning. As it was, the cutting of the rope probably saved his life; for he swung down the length of his arm, and the thrusts that were being made from above did not reach him. For . one desperate instant, though, it seemed as if his grasp on the rope would be wrenched loose before he could get his other hand on it, too. . With that quick working of the instinct of self-preservation which saves the men that are destined to live, Duncan curled his legs around the rope and slid for the ground, with the speed with which firemen slide down their poles in the engine-house; and, like them, his hands did not touch the rope at all, and the friction of the descent was taken out on the putties with which he had wound his legs— found them scorched in the morning. In the darkness Duncan was unable to gauge the distance accurately, and came to the ground with a hard bump. . But .ho did not reach it an instant too soon ; for-as he struck it, the rope came coiling down on top of him, the keen-edged blade of the eunuch having stopped its futile thrusts at Dim and severed the rope a second too late for his destruction. ; '

Duncan's feet were numb from the force with which they struck the ground, and he was beaten over the head by the falling rope; but he picked himself , hp instantly and groped his way to the camels. Shouts.

came from aljovc. A light shone from the window, disarmed of its lattice, and helped Duncan to find one of his camels.. He mounted it and. started precipitately, up the street. He was still half-stunned, as much by the rapid and ..unexpected course of events as by the physical manifestations that had accompanied them. ; ' 'Luck, or the instinct of the camel, carried him straight to the nearest gate of the city. He was on.it before he knew, and through! nor did he pay attention to the faint shout that presently was borne on the wind after him. The gateways of the Sultan's capital are guarded by troops, but the •Siroccan soldier is fonder of lingering sleepily in the sentry-box than of standing guard. . The gentle night breeze cooled Duncan's head, and enabled him to think. There would be pursuit, and sentries questioned; but Duncan knew- that he could trust this sentry, for his own sake, to do some valiant lying.: He felt at the front of his-saddle for his holster, and as his hands came into 'contact only with the parcel of food, he | had the bitter disappointment of knowing that he was on the camel he had intended I for Dalmera, and was without firearms of any kind. i Out in the open the blackness ' was less !opaque. The clouds seemed partially to have rolled away, and the night was of j clear, translucent darkness, with a few ; stars overhead. Duncan thought of the girl | who ought to have been fleeing with him, and wondered what her fate would be. It could hardly be worse than before; ; and of course it was possible that her part in the escapade was undetected. The eunuch had come upon them entirely in the dark ; perhaps she had been able to return to her room without being recognised. Then suspicion might rest on her no more than on the rest of til© Sultan's wives. At any rate, Duncan would only have harmed her by staying; he could not possibly have done any good. ; '• The American scowled at himself as he followed out this line of reasoning. "Precious little I thought of her when that eunuch was jabbing at me with his toadsticker. I just slid for home, and that's the truth."s , - A bitter sense of failure came over him. Then' the muscles of his jaws tightened, and his brows lowered over his eyes: "All down!" he nedded grimly to an invisible audience. " Set 'em up in the other alley." -• \ , CHAPTER IX. THE SULTAN DISTURBED. ' The Sultan of Sirocco had an intense desire to capture Duncan in health, and with all his nerves in good working order. He spent hours pacing restlessly ' through - his palace, trying to decide whether it would be more satisfactory to peel his skin off in strips, • beginning by tearing out his finger and toe nails, or to suspend him over a cauldron of boiling oil, and lower him into it by nice gradations. From the outset he had dismissed'the idea of caging him and watching him. starve, day by day. He wanted more action for his money., The Sultan of Sirocco was fiercer than the fierce wind that bears the name of his kingdom, and starvation was too slow and smooth. He.'was " foaming in full body," and he desired Duncan to die, foaming in full body, before his eyes. Meanwhile Duncan,, leagues away, was speeding out into the desert as last-as his stout Miilaid camel the swift passenger Bisharin, alas! but the heavier freight beast—could carry him. Luckily for him -the Sultan's capital . deserved its name of Kub-hub-nol, "Edge of the forest," else had the Sultan made up his mind and begun'operations before now. Duncan made straight out into the desert. His chance of escape was one in a hundred . Were he to keep in on the fertile strip along the coast there would be no chance at all. Fifteen minutes out of Kub-hub-nol he stopped and listened. The stallion-mounted cavalry of the Sultan's Guard were chinking off in gallops to right and to left. Though he could not hear, them, some were also assuredly galloping straight away from him out of the other side of the town. None were coming into the desert. His immediate fears were lessened. He had reasoned rightly they had supposed' he would try to escape to the sea. ; ■ The American spoke to his camel and moved; farther away into the desert, which, , terrible , though it was, was yet less cruel than man, (To Id© continued dally.)