Part 36 (2/2)
Clubbing my rifle, I dealt a vicious blow at the savage brute's head which s.h.i.+vered the spear wherewith he tried to guard it.
The rascal, though, was not discomfited; for, clutching hold of a tulwar he carried loosely in a sash of the old dressing-gown-like garment he wore, he almost slashed my nose off, the barrel of my Martini only just preventing me from losing all my good looks!
The shock sent me on my knees; and then, seeing a sword lying on the ground in front of me, I gripped hold of this more by instinct than anything else, and I rose to my feet again as quick as lightning.
Quick as I was, however, the brute of an Arab was quicker; and, aiming a terrible slas.h.i.+ng cut at me with the tulwar, which had it landed would have decapitated me as clean as a whistle, and the last word of my history been told for good and all--aye, but for a wonderful interposition just as I thought my end had come.
With a piercing yelp, that was succeeded by a deep, savage growl, a white dog bounded up from the ground beside the officer, who had not yet recovered from the effects of the blow that had struck him down.
Would you believe it, this dog was 'Gyp'!
Making a jump which no one could have imagined a dog of his size capable of doing, he clutched the Arab chief by the throat as he slashed at me, making him stumble back, thus causing the cut that would otherwise have sliced off my head like a carrot to be wasted in the air.
As the big murdering rascal stumbled back, I thrust forth my arm holding the officer's sword and sent the blade right through the beggar's stomach up to the hilt.
”Be the powers, me joker,” cried a voice behind me, as sheik and 'Gyp'
and I all fell together on the ground in one batch, ”ye did that well, alannah! Begorrah, it wor roight in his bri'd-basket, sure!”
”My goodness!” I exclaimed, recognising a voice that sounded as familiar to my ears as the bark of 'Gyp' just now. ”Who's that?”
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.
WARM GREETINGS.
”Tom, don't ye know me, owld chappie?” cried Mick, for, of course, it was him; though, what with my deadly struggle and rescue by 'Gyp,' whom I thought thousands of miles away, besides the fact of my old chum coming so unexpectedly on the scene, I felt perfectly bewildered, thinking that I must be in a dream. ”Begorrah, ye're starin' at me, sure, ez if I wor a ghost or a banshee, bedad!”
”Really, Mick,” said I, when I could at length speak and was convinced that it was himself in proper person and no phantom of my imagination, gripping his fist in a hearty grasp that expressed more than I could say and which he understood better than all the words in the world, ”you don't mean to say it's you! How did you come here?”
”Faith, on the sowl of me fat,” he answered, with his jolly laugh, speaking in that racy brogue which sounded like music, it being so long since I had heard it. ”Sure, Oi've marched oop from the coast the same ez yersilf, alannah!”
”But,” said I, still wondering at the unlooked-for sight of him there all of a sudden like that, ”I thought you were on the West Coast, cruising about the Bight of Benin, or up the Niger, or somewhere thereabouts?”
”So I wor,” he replied, with a grin at the stupefied look on my face; ”but you forgits, Tom, our squadron's coom round here with the admiral to give ye a hilping hand, sure, in yer s.h.i.+ndy with these blissid Arab thayves here. So, faith, Oi've coom along with the rest in the owld _Grampus_, bedad. But, Oi'm lookin' for our cap'en now. Have you sayn him, Tom, at all--he wor in the thick of the foightin' jist now summat about heres?”
”Your cap'en,” said I, trying to repress 'Gyp's' frantic joy at seeing me again; the faithful animal, who had stuck to the Arab chief with a tenacious grip, only releasing him when he was a.s.sured of his not being likely to trouble any of us any more, now coming up to me and springing up, trying to lick my face as he yelped and whined with delight. ”Who is your cap'en?”
”Why, Tom, I thought you knowed,” he replied, looking from me down at 'Gyp,' whose stumpy tail, and every hair on his white coat as well, seemed on the wag, his excited affections only finding outlet in this way. ”Faith, he's Cap'en Sackville, to be sure, be all the powers!”
”What--”
”Yis,” said Mick Donovan before I could get any further, answering my unasked question; ”the same ez we lied aboord with us in the owld _Saint Vincent_.”
I was dumbfounded.
”What an a.s.s I am!” I jerked out, shaking off poor 'Gyp,' and proceeding to where the officer lay on the ground a little way from us, stretched out face downwards. ”I ought to have known it was him from seeing the dog!”
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