He felt the strong hand, looked into the Gypsy eyes, above the savage scar and the devilishly forked beard of the heathen-loving apostate, then he felt himself fall…
…Douglas had the sense of some days and nights passed within the spacious airy tent. Eventually he gained his strength as if by a miracle, drinking some wonderful concoction of wine and who knew what else.
It was night when he woke, looking past a candle from his hammock into the blazing eyes of he who many accused of favoring the savage races of the world as nearly equal to their rightful British masters. He managed to croak, even as he failed to sit up, “How long?”
Burton’s voice was as piercing as his eyes; he molested the language of Albion like a schoolteacher buggering a boarding school boy, with the liberal and flamboyant accent of vowels, “Douglaas, what brings you from the arms of Redskin Sparta in such a state? Surely you could have arranged safe passage. You were advising their coming to reasonable terms, were you not?”
His eyes lit up and he fairly spat, “The Game, Dick, The Game!”
Burton’s eyes narrowed and his voice drawled, “Douglaaas, we are far from Russia’s doorstep. No one here cares who rules the approaches to the Khyber Pass. Are you maad maan?”
He looked for and found, bundled on the seat of a wicker chair, the pilfered black robe, a 150 year old relic of a sacred garment left by the recalled Jesuits with their abandoned flocks of redskin Catholics. Burton followed his gaze and puffed on his pipe, an arching of the eyebrow and a sparkle of his Gypsy eyes indicating much more than his words, as they rolled from his undoubtedly forked tongue accented with notes of acrimony, “I have known one such robe-wearer. That leaves but some twenty of them at most, to carry on their hopeless crusade. How did you come by it?”
He felt himself being judged and rose to his own defense. “It was no dastardly deed. I dueled him outright for it and that which it obscures.”
Burton’s eyes shown with disgust—and fire—as he leaned forward.
“Had you dueled another, perhaps Redskin Sparta might have had a small measure of justice in this war. You were his guest, his advisor. You, an English swordsman from youth, a good six feet in height, thought it fair that you run though some squat priest for whatever you desired in the name of our good Queen? Is that how you sanctioned murder in your heart?”
“Dick, it was no murder—but by my orders that I did this thing. I have long been made to understand that this treasure is of the utmost importance to The Game. For country, a man must sometimes put aside his genteel sentiments.”
Burton seemed to consider this last statement with some shade of agreement, permitting himself a knowing, if not affirmative, nod.
Douglas pressed his case, the case for urgency, “The relic was once of Samarkand, brought to this godforsaken outpost by a Jesuit, who had it from a yogi, who, it was said, had it from the hand of Akbar himself! Draw aside the robe Dick and you shall see. You would have—Dick the Rogue and all that! You stole into Mecca, Medina and Herat—besides they are Catholics for God’s sake, Dick!”
The deep-chested explorer, so unfit for the role of diplomat, rose with the grace of a cat and snarled, “My dear wife is a Catholic, maan—the most Christian soul in this unchristian world! Let it be known in that pea brain that I am not only a reader of the Quran but a sufi and scholar as well. I took no false liberties with another’s sacred places or trust. I merely investigated the seat of my own faith for my Christian country. If you were well I would cross swords with you, maan! It is baad enough that we abuse the colored races, but to murder them for their sacred things! You are no better than Corteez or Pizarroo!”
He managed to sit before the man who hovered above him and hissed defiantly, “So the niցցer-lover you happen to be, aye, Dick! You would forsake a white man for the savages that dog him! They can be but a day behind—they will not quit, I tell you. I am to make the coast and the consulate at Montevideo with your help. Then we are to share the glory. Your expertise shall be required to ascertain the cultic—and, it is thought—possibly scientific value, of the thing in my possession—please, Dick, don’t be a niցցer—not now, man!”
He had risen on unsteady legs in desperation as the man turned away, a man of his own good height, but much broader, and of a certain menace. With his last insulting plea Captain Burton turned on him with eyes of ice, and extended his right hand for a shake.
Yes, so I have appealed to the beastly colored-fawning explorer’s boundless ego. It is a deal after all.
When they clasped hands he felt the inhuman strength of the man he had just insulted, the man who now spoke calmly in his face, “Yaas, Douglaas, I know these black robes, know them to favor the sword, and I see that you have discarded your own, or lost it in your cowardly flight. My man here will provide you with a nice footman’s saber, a hanger that won’t get in the way over much across the savannah you will be travelling once he ferries you across the river to Uruguay.”
This cannot be. I am not well.
“But, Dick we are British—”
“And I am a man of honor and gnosis—mean, sissy, Douglaaas!”
The vice-like grip of the older man closed and continued to squeeze as the Captain’s two mսlatto attendants stood by. He felt his hand giving, folding in upon itself, “Dick, My God, we are Captains—oh God, please, sir!”
To his embarrassment he heard himself squeal like a girl under the night-shrouded tent as the bones in his hand began to snap, and he took first to one knee then to both—“Oh God, Dick no!”
He passed out for a moment. He then shortly found himself being dressed: hung with an artillery officer’s sword, supplied with a hiking pack complete with water skins, and a wine skin of the medicinal stuff he had been drinking. This was all accomplished by the two man servants as the demonic Captain Burton looked on.
When he was outfitted, and the two men had gathered their things to escort him to the ferry, Dick had a final word, “If, my good officer of the Queen, you find yourself someday soon crossing swords with a priest who has never had the benefit of fencing instruction, I trust you will revel in the imperialistic irony of facing him left-handed. Certainly no right hand borne of the savage races could be equal to a good British left!”
With that he was slapped mercilessly on the shoulder and turned about and ushered out of the tent toward the lantern-lit ferry.
He cannot surely—explorer that he is—have no curiosity concerning the relic.
Did the savage bastard look—take a peek while I recovered?
How could a fellow Englishman betray me so?
They say he is an evil sort—and don’t I know it!
His fever seemed to be breaking at least. He had witnessed the placing of the distinctively shaped spiral relic, wrapped as it was in the ancient Jesuit robe, in his hiking pack. He noted also that one of the Captain’s attendants had donated his own shoes, lacing them on his sore feet expertly.
Do they clothe me with such expert care out of hope, remorse—or sport?
Blasted Dick has probably made a wager of this thing—will probably be awaiting me at the consulate, with his boots up on the desk he has no right to even sit at!
He found himself bemoaning his plight in his mind. But instead he resolved—cursed as he seemed to be, and forsaken by his own—to hurl a curse at his vile countryman, “Dick, if I win through it shall be known how I was treated this day. I will survive, Dick!”
The man’s deep voice sounded behind him, “Yaas you should, Douglaas. You are an Officer of The Queen. Good fortune to you saa, and good fortune to our world-straddling Mistress Britannia...”
“…Oh, and Douglaaas…only an oaf slashes at a squat foe—do not neglect the point, my good maan!”
“We shall meet again, Dick!”
The evil man’s voice now seemed oddly haunted, “Yaas, Douglaas, we shall, I think.”
