But this did not trouble Captain Antifer. While his two companions went cruising about the town he hardly left the superb beach, which has been transformed into a promenade. He knew he was watched, it is true. Sometimes it was Nazim, sometimes it was Ben Omar, who never lost sight of him, while keeping at a distance. He pretended to take no notice of this. Taking his ease on a seat, absorbed, meditative, he gazed at the horizon out in the Red Sea. And occasionally, so much was he possessed with the one fixed idea, he would fancy he saw the island, his island, emerge from the mists of the south—by an effect of mirage which is frequently produced on the extremities of these sandy beaches, a marvellous phenomenon by which the eye is always deceived.
On the morning of the 11th of March, the mail-steamer Oxus had finished its preparations for departure, and taken in the coal necessary for the voyage across the Indian Ocean, and the stoppages at the regulation ports. We need not be surprised to find that Antifer, Tregomain and Juhel were on board at daybreak, and that Ben Omar and Saouk had taken passage with them. The large steamer was really a cargo-boat, but she had accommodation for a few passengers, most of them bound to Bombay, some of them to Aden and Muscat.
The Oxus was under way at eleven o’clock. A fresh breeze was blowing from the north-north-west with a tendency to work round to the westward. As the voyage would last a fortnight, owing to the numerous stoppages, Juhel had secured a cabin with three berths, which could be arranged either for the day’s siesta or the night’s repose. Saouk and Ben Omar occupied another cabin, from which the notary would probably make but few and short appearances. Antifer, determined to have as little intercourse as possible with them, had begun by saying to the unfortunate notary, with the delicacy of a sea-bear which characterized him,—
“Mr. Ben Omar, we have to travel together it is true, but let us keep our places. I will go my way, you will go yours. It will be enough for you to be present to witness my taking possession, and when that matter is over, I hope we shall have the pleasure of never meeting again either in this world or the next.”
As long as the Oxus was running down the Gulf, sheltered by the heights of the Isthmus, the navigation was as tranquil as if on the surface of a lake. But when they got out into the Red Sea, the fresh breezes from the plains of Arabia gave her a roughish reception. The consequence was a good deal of heavy rolling, which many of the passengers found discomforting. Nazim did not mind it much—neither did Antifer, nor his nephew, nor Tregomain, freshwater sailor though he might be. But the notary’s condition it is impossible to describe. He never appeared either on deck or in the saloon, or in the dining-room. In the depths of his cabin his groans were heard throughout the voyage. Better for him if he could have travelled as a mummy! The worthy bargeman, taking pity on the poor fellow, visited him several times, as might be expected from his good nature; but when he tried to get Antifer to sympathize with him, all he received was a shrug of the shoulders. Antifer could never forgive Ben Omar for having attempted to steal his latitude.
“Well, bargeman,” he would say, “Mr. Omar is empty? eh?”
“Almost.”
“My compliments.”
“My friend, will you not go and see him, if it were only once?”
“Yes, bargeman, yes! I will go, when there is nothing left of him but his skin.”
What could be said to a man who answered like that, with a burst of laughter at his own wit?
But if Antifer suffered no annoyance from the notary during the voyage, his clerk Nazim was several times the cause of his almost justifiable irritation. It was not that Nazim thrust his presence on him. No! Besides, what could he do, for as they did not speak the same language, conversation was impossible. But the so-called clerk was always there, keeping close watch on Antifer, as if he had received orders to do so from his master. Great would have been Antifer’s delight at pitching him overboard, supposing that the Egyptian had been the man to submit to such treatment.
The descent of the Red Sea was anything but pleasant, although it was not made during the intolerable heat of summer. Then it is that the care of the boilers can only be entrusted to Arab stokers, for they alone will not cook where eggs will cook in a few minutes.
On the 15th of March, the Oxus was running through the narrowest portion of the Straits of Bab-el-Mandeb. Leaving Perim on the left, and Obock, on the African coast, on the right, the steamer entered the Gulf of Aden, and headed for the port of that name, where several of her passengers were to be landed.
Aden, yet another key of the Red Sea, hanging from the belt of Great Britain—that good housekeeper, always at work! With the Isle of Perim, of which she has made another Gibraltar, she holds the entrance of this corridor, eighteen hundred miles long, opening out into the Indian Ocean. The port of Aden may be partially silted up, but it at least possesses a vast and commodious anchorage to the east, and in the west a harbour where quite a fleet might find shelter. The English have been installed there since 1823. The town itself, which was a flourishing one in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, was evidently designed as the emporium of commerce with the furthest east.
Captain Antifer did not think it worth while to go ashore, but spent the time railing at the delay, one of the most serious inconveniences of which was to permit the notary to appear on deck. But in what a state! He had hardly strength enough to drag himself along.
“Eh! Mr. Ben Omar, is that you,” asked Antifer, ironically. “Really I should never have recognized you! You will never get to the end of the voyage! If I were in your place, I should remain at Aden.”
“I should like to,” replied the notary, in a voice that was hardly above a whisper. “A few days might pull me round, and if you could manage to wait for the next steamer—”
“I am sorry, Mr. Ben Omar. I am in such a hurry to pour into your hands the splendid commission that is to come to you, that I cannot possibly stop on the way!”
“Is it much farther?”
“More than farther!” answered Antifer, sweeping his hand round so as to indicate a curve of enormous diameter. And thereupon Ben Omar regained his cabin, dragging himself along like a lobster, and having derived but little comfort from this brief conversation.
The following afternoon the Oxus was off again, and found the Indian Amphitrite anything but kind. The goddess was ill-tempered, capricious, nervous, as those on board could testify. Better not seek to know what happened in Ben Omar’s cabin. He might have been brought up on deck in a cloth and dropped into the bosom of the above-mentioned goddess with a round shot at his feet, and he would not have had strength to protest against the funeral ceremony.
The bad weather lasted until the third day, when the wind hauled to the north-eastward, so as to bring the steamer under the shelter of the coast of Hadramaut.
Saouk might stand the ups and downs of the voyage without being inconvenienced; but if his body did not suffer, his mind could not help doing so. To be at the mercy of this abominable Frenchman, to be unable to get out of him the mystery of this island, to be compelled to follow him to—to where? to Muscat, to Surat, to Bombay, at all of which the Oxus was to call. Would they have to land at Muscat and cross the Straits of Ormuz? Was it on one of the hundreds of islands in the Persian Gulf that Kamylk had buried his treasure?
This ignorance, this uncertainty, kept Saouk in a state of perpetual exasperation. He would have dragged the secret from Antifer’s very vitals—if he could. Often would he catch a few words exchanged between Antifer and his companions! As he was supposed not to know French, there was no reason for their being careful when he was by. But it had all ended in nothing. The pretended clerk was justly regarded with suspicion, even with aversion. It was with repulsion that he inspired them; and the instinctive, unreasonable sentiment was felt as much by his companions