Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/361

Rh uneasily, "thou hast won the sword and me!"

The blade fell clattering on the stony floor, and the scabbard followed it.

"And thou!" For Ahab had been thinking of the pride of Ibrahim's daughter.

Elissa had seen the ships come in, and heard her father say how Ahab had brought another fortune home; so she went down to the garden's end and waited there. But ere she went she said to her maids, "Send boys to tell my lovers I am kind to-day," and they found them in the city drinking-places, where some made wagers on their luck in love. And they were seven in all—Jethro of the Bowmen, Ezra, Malachi, Bildad (son of Micah), Thitmu the Egyptian, Marcus Marius, renegade from the Roman legions, and Timon, the seventh,—all soldiers of the King, wearing their broad-bladed swords with long, sharp points, and some of them had mail upon their legs and breasts.

"We will pay our stakes from Ibrahim's fortune," said they, and hastened at the call to meet their lady in her father's garden.

And in a little time came a slave to her saying, "Ahab the Pilot is above and he would see thee." Whereat the lovers jested. But Elissa bade her send him down to her, seated among her soldiers.

They heard him striding on the garden walk, heard the sweep of his robe against the clinging brush; and then he entered where they were and stood there straight and tall, with his black head high, regarding them, but most of all Elissa, in the centre of the group. She half reclined upon the ivory bench set in its frame of stone, swinging her fan lazily. It was a fan with a staff of bone, a ram's head of gold for one end, and in the other were set feathers, like plumes, of white.

"Welcome, Ahab," she said. "Welcome home from Britain. Thou knowest all these friends?"

"My thanks," was all he said, and that most gravely.

"Wilt thou join us, Ahab?" she asked, with her coquettish smile. "We were speaking of sword-play when thy name was called just now."

"Little I know of sword-play," answered Ahab, "but I have brought a sword which thou mayst teach me how to wield. My weapon is the steering-oar, and not the steel."

"A sword!" cried Elissa, rising to her feet. "Dost say thou hast brought home a sword?"

"It is here!" said Ahab.

"In that case," smiled Elissa, sitting languidly down again, "thou mayst kiss my hands."

"My thanks," said Ahab; but he did not move.

"Didst hear me, Ahab?" asked Elissa, wondering that the mouse no longer courted the cat's claws.

"My thanks!" And Ahab did not move.

Three soldiers leaped off the stone seats with ugly eyes.

"Silence!" commanded Elissa; and then to Ahab, with a sneer, "Let us see thy sword, my Pilot."

Ahab turned and made a signal up the walk, and presently a woman came, bearing the great sword, and she was Bertha, the Viking's daughter. She wore a robe of lamb's-wool striped with scarlet and soft gray, and fastened at the neck by a giant star of Syrian amber; and a band of Greek gold, made in a twisted wire, held back her hair, and was lost in the yellow of it. And the blood of her sailor fathers, of a hundred Viking princes, gleamed in her brave blue eyes, which looked upon them all with no great fear, but longest on Elissa, and then to Ahab with unspeakable affection.

And when she would have offered him the sword he let it pass and put his arms about her and held her, and said:

"Elissa, daughter of Ibrahim, who stung me with thy pride, this is my sword and my love, which I yield to no man."

"Yellow hair!" was all Elissa said, but she gazed long at them, her chin upon her hands, and leaning on her knees. And the lovers began moving slowly, one after another, to surround the pair, for they coveted the sword, and each one wanted favor of his lady.

Now at the end of Ibrahim's garden was a gate letting through a high wall upon the city's outer streets; and leading up to it was a great stairway of hewn stone brought from Cythera and