The Sea Hawk

CONTENTS



PART ONE

SIR OLIVER TRESSILIAN


CHAPTER

I. THE HUCKSTER

II. ROSAMUND

III. THE FORGE

IV. THE INTERVENER

V. THE BUCKLER

VI. JASPER LEIGH

VII. TREPANNED

VIII. THE SPANIARD



PART TWO

SAKR-EL-BAHR

I. THE CAPTIVE

II. THE RENEGADE

III. HOMEWARD BOUND

IV. THE RAID

V. THE LION OF THE FAITH

VI. THE CONVERT

VII. MARZAK-BEN-ASAD

VIII. MOTHER AND SON

IX. COMPETITORS

X. THE SLAVE-MARKET

XI. THE TRUTH

XII. THE SUBTLETY OF FENZILEH

XIII. IN THE SIGHT OF ALLAH

XIV. THE SIGN

XV. THE VOYAGE

XVI. THE PANNIER

XVII. THE DUPE

XVIII. SHEIK MAT

XIX. THE MUTINEERS

XX. THE MESSENGER

XXI. MORITURUS

XXII. THE SURRENDER

XXIII. THE HEATHEN CREED

XXIV. THE JUDGES

XXV. THE ADVOCATE

XXVI. THE JUDGMENT





PART I. SIR OLIVER TRESSILIAN



CHAPTER I. THE HUCKSTER


Sir Oliver Tressilian sat at his ease in the lofty dining-room of the
handsome house of Penarrow, which he owed to the enterprise of his
father of lamented and lamentable memory and to the skill and invention
of an Italian engineer named Bagnolo who had come to England half a
century ago as one of the assistants of the famous Torrigiani.

This house of such a startlingly singular and Italianate grace for so
remote a corner of Cornwall deserves, together with the story of its
construction, a word in passing.

The Italian Bagnolo who combined with his salient artistic talents a
quarrelsome, volcanic humour had the mischance to kill a man in a brawl
in a Southwark tavern. As a result he fled the town, nor paused in his
headlong flight from the consequences of that murderous deed until he
had all but reached the very ends of England. Under what circumstances
he became acquainted with Tressilian the elder I do not know. But
certain it is that the meeting was a very timely one for both of them.
To the fugitive, Ralph Tressilian--who appears to have been inveterately
partial to the company of rascals of all denominations--afforded
shelter; and Bagnolo repaid the service by offering to rebuild the
decaying half-timbered house of Penarrow. Having taken the task in
hand he went about it with all the enthusiasm of your true artist, and
achieved for his protector a residence that was a marvel of grace
in that crude age and outlandish district. There arose under the
supervision of the gifted engineer, worthy associate of Messer
Torrigiani, a noble two-storied mansion of mellow red brick, flooded
with light and sunshine by the enormously tall mullioned windows that
rose almost from base to summit of each pilastered facade. The main
doorway was set in a projecting wing and was overhung by a massive
balcony, the whole surmounted by a pillared pediment of extraordinary
grace, now partly clad in a green mantle of creepers. Above the burnt
red tiles of the roof soared massive twisted chimneys in lofty majesty.

But the glory of Penarrow--that is, of the new Penarrow begotten of the
fertile brain of Bagnolo--was the garden fashioned out of the tangled
wilderness about the old house that had crowned the heights above
Penarrow point. To the labours of Bagnolo, Time and Nature had added
their own. Bagnolo had cut those handsome esplanades, had built
those noble balustrades bordering the three terraces with their fine
connecting flights of steps; himself he had planned the fountain, and
with his own hands had carved the granite faun presiding over it and the
dozen other statues of nymphs and sylvan gods in a marble that gleamed
in white brilliance amid the dusky green. But Time and Nature had
smoothed the lawns to a velvet surface, had thickened the handsome
boxwood hedges, and thrust up those black spear-like poplars that
completed the very Italianate appearance of that Cornish demesne.

Sir Oliver took his ease in his dining-room considering all this as it
was displayed before him in the mellowing September sunshine, and found
it all very good to see, and life very good to live. Now no man has ever
been known so to find life without some immediate cause, other than that
of his environment, for his optimism. Sir Oliver had several causes.