Page:Ballantyne--The Pirate City.djvu/345

Rh "Stay. I will save you."

"How?" asked Ted, pausing with some impatience.

"Stay. Hold. Stop," cried the Moor, seizing the arm of his friend. "You be mad. Unposs'ble I say?—no, yes, poss'ble anuf for you 'scape without your body. But me save bof. Me knows hole in de rocks; come take you dere,"—here the Moor became emphatic, and lowered his voice to a whisper,—"no boddy do knows it. All dead w'at know'd it vonce. Me was a—what you call?—pirate vonce. Hah! nebber mind, come 'long. Queek, no time for d'liberazhun."

"Git along then, old feller," said Flaggan, thrusting his companion through the thicket very unceremoniously. "Don't palaver so much, but take the helm; an' wotiver ye do, clap on all sail—ivery stitch you can carry—for the case is desprit."

Rais Ali did "clap on all sail," steered his friend through the brightly-lighted grounds and laughing throng of revellers, through numerous lanes between hedges of aloes and prickly pear, over the Sahel hills, and away to the northward, until they reached the neighbourhood of Point Pescade, which lay about three and a half miles on the other side of the town.

"It's a purty big raigion hereaway," said Flaggan, during a brief halt to recover breath; "why