Barbary Gold by H. Bedford-Jones

Author:H. Bedford-Jones [Bedford-Jones, H.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fiction Hunter Press
Published: 2014-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII.

MARIE.

THE mad mix-up on the shore, the jumble of darkness and rushing figures and dim voices, was a vaguely confused memory to me. It was incoherent, without explanation.

I wakened first to the consciousness of a sore head, followed by the warmth of sunlight and a feeling of hunger and thirst. I realized very quickly all that had happened, and I also realized that I was not aboard the Barbary Loot. In fact, when I discovered where I was, my realization was a rather sad affair.

I was in an open camp, presumably on the cliffs over the water. Watching me with a morose air, sitting across a small fire where coffee was boiling, was Diego Garbilay. Close to us, beneath an overhang of the rocks, was pitched a small closed tent.

“Be quiet!” said the Manchegan when I stirred, and menaced me with my own automatic.

“Give me a drink,” I demanded, sitting up and clasping my aching head.

In surly fashion, he poured out some black coffee, shoved a hunk of bread at me, and watched me while I ate. Presently there was a sound of voices from the tent, whereat Diego Garbilay got up and called something in Spanish.

A moment afterward, Eva de Mendoza left the tent and stood looking at me. I knew who she was without asking.

What a woman! She wore hip boots of soft red morocco leather, trousers and coat of black velvet studded with gold beadwork, a cap and shirt of some deep green stuff embroidered heavily. Inclosed within this barbaric costume was the woman herself. And she had the beauty of the devil.

Yes, despite all I knew of her, her beauty astounded me! It held nothing of the base criminality I had anticipated. Blue eyes, deep yellow hair, features magnificent in their exquisite lines; a lively, ardent merriment in her eyes; in her whole manner a vivid personality, a character so strongly feminine that I was amazed, disturbed.

“So this is Monsieur Cartright, the American of whom I have heard so much!” She spoke in French, advancing toward me with hand outstretched. “I am glad to meet you, monsieur. I am the Princess Brusinskuoy—masquerading, for the purpose of this expedition, under the name of my poor husband.”

I struggled to my feet and managed a bow. But I could not take her hand.

“I congratulate you, madame,” I said, “upon your servitors. This Manchegan devil came very near poisoning us all the other day.”

She turned to Garbilay and said a few words in Spanish. He turned, scowling, and vanished among the rocks.

The princess came to me swiftly, her hands outstretched, and seized me by the arms. Standing thus, she looked intently into my eyes.

“Oh, they have lied to you and you have believed everything!” she said softly. All the force of her character was flung out against me—her womanhood was exerted in a direct appeal, a shameless but masked appeal.

“Would you prejudge me,” she went on, her voice so exquisitely attuned that it fairly wakened harmonics within me, “before

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