Ortho’s head sank in his hands. All over now, all gone. . . . Something flapped in the shadows by the orange trees, flapped and hopped out into the central moonlight and posed there stretching its crippled wings.
It was the old eagle disgustingly bloated.
That alone remained, that and the loathly beggar, left alone in the dead city to their carrion orgy. A shock of revulsion shook Ortho. Ugh!
He sprang up and, without looking round, strode out of the house and down the street to where his horse was standing.
A puff of hot wind followed him, a furnace blast, foul with the stench of half-buried corpses in the big Mussulman cemetery outside the walls. Ugh!
He kicked sharp stirrups into his horse and rode through the Ksiba Gate.
“Fleeing from the sickness—eh?” sneered a mokaddem of Sudanese who could not fly.
“No—ghosts,” said Ortho and turned his beast onto the western road.
“Perish me! Rot and wither my soul and eyes if it ain’t Saïd!” exclaimed Captain Benjamin MacBride, hopping across the court, his square hand extended.
“I’m on the bodyguard at Rabat. The Sultan’s building there now. Skalas all round and seven new mosques are the order, I hear—we’ll all be carrying bricks soon. I rode over to see you.”
“You ain’t looking too proud,” said MacBride; “sort of wasted-like, and God ha’ mercy. Flux?”
Ortho shook his head. “No, but I’ve had my troubles, and”—indicating the sailor’s bandaged eye and his crutch—“so have you, it seems.”
“Curse me, yes! Fell in with a fat Spanisher off Ortegal and mauled him down to a sheer hulk when up romps a brace of American ‘thirties’ and serves me cruel. If it hadn’t been for nightfall and a shift of wind I should have been a holy angel by now. Bad times, boy, bad times. Too many warships about, and all merchantmen sailing in convoy. I tell you I shall be glad when there’s a bit of peace and good-will on earth again. Just now everybody’s armed and it’s plaguy hard to pick up an honest living.”
“Governor here, aren’t you?” Ortho inquired.
“Aye. Soft lie-abed shore berth till my wounds heal and we can get back to business. Fog in the river?”
“It’s lying on the sea like a blanket,” said MacBride. “I’ve been watching it from my tower. Come along and see the girls. They’re all here save Tama; she runned away with a Gharb sheik when I was cruising—deceitful slut!—but I’ve got three new ones.”
