Adventure, December 1914 — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

94 VIII SINCE the storm still raged and nobody expected him or anybody else by water, and since he beached the five gunboats outside the bay, Dick landed in Persia again unseen; and he took the precaution of sending half his forces in front of him before blowing up the ships. They pounced on men who were busy try- ing to repair the wires cut by Dick’s orders. Not a shot was fired; the men threw their hands up and surrendered. So, news of his coming was reported in Astrabad by the roar of five explosions, and by that time Dick had, in all, nearly two hundred prisoners. He marched them to the row of wagons on the hillside and then sent a mounted man to the city with a flag of truce and word that he was willing to exchange. “Exchange what?” asked the Princess, crumpling in her fist the note that Dick had sent her. She had kept it because she meant to make him eat it before he died. _ “Your sailors and telegraphists against our forty-three!” the man said. ‘Deek bahadur says our forty-three have had punishment enough!” She hesitated. For a moment the thought flashed across her mind to have the man seized and beaten before being sent back; but second thoughts seemed better and she smiled, seeming to the man far fairer than the hourts he had heard about who wait for good Moslems in Mohammed’s paradise. “Tell him I will treat with him direct!” she answered. ‘Tell him I will ride out with my maid and no other escort to meet him half-way; let him bring one, and I will talk with him. If he refuses, I will not exchange!”’ The man rode back with her message, and Dick frowned. He wanted to be off— to hurry away to the aid of Usbeg Ali—to help the Afghan finish the siege and to bring him the news of Russia’s worsting on the Caspian. He did not want two hun- dred prisoners to tire his men and keep the horses at a walk; and he did want his forty- three back. He had no love for them; in his opinion they were murderers who richly deserved punishment; but it seemed to him that if he could get hold of them again they would serve for a good warning to the rest. Mercy, too, had more than a little to do with his decision; his shoulders tingled as Adventure he thought of what the Russians might be doing to them. “Ride back!” he ordered. “Tell her I will come and meet her half-way, with one man, provided she shows my forty-three alive outside the wall first. Wait! Takea Russian with you. Make her a present of him! He will tell his version of the sit- uation! Go!” | So with a Russian up behind him, the man cantered back, and for the second time the Princess Olga Karageorgovich met him at the gate and parleyed. The Russian talked loud of what had happened, and he was overheard by Russians inside the gate who were in no mood to stomach any more feminine mismanagement. It was they who brought the forty-three, and they who insisted on sending them to Dick whether he exchanged or not. They argued they were lucky if Dick did not sack the town. So the Princess made a virtue of neces- sity and rode out with her maid, followed at a distance by Dick’s forty-three. Dick called Andry and rode out to meet her; the huge man chose to walk, but the horse went none too fast for him. Andry’s eyes were on a dark blue dress, that never was fash- ioned in Russia, and the wearer of it, whose seat on a horse was not so very much supe- rior to his own. He hurried. Dick did not dismount; nor did he notice Andry. He touched his forehead, since he wore no hat, and then met the Princess eye to eye. Hers were deep violet, and they glowed; but nobody ever knew what color his were. She lowered her eyes first. “Ts this a decent note to send to a lady?” she asked in French, holding out the piece of paper from Dick’s memorandum book, that he had given to the gunner-major. “I never wrote an indecent line in my life to anybody,” answered Dick. ‘“Decent to send to me?” Dick’s eyes were looking beyond her now, at something that was happening behind her horse. “Decent to send to me who befriended you in spite of every outrage until this last one—until you turned your back on me and left me to deal with a rabble single-handed— is any of your conduct ever decent, Dick?” Dick smiled. He was still looking past her,and she was growing conscious of the fact. ‘* “These men are murderers,’ ”’ she read, “ “and this officer has done his best to kill me. I can imagine no worse fate for either conmicloool< C@