The mizzen yard was lowered, so that the Tarvezid again lay dead in the water. Captain Farrá, with a worried look, came to where Mjipa and Alicia, the latter now wearing Khostavorn's sword, stood by the rail. He said:
"Master Mjipa, here's a puzzle. These knaves be rogues of dye as deep as Dupulán's; that I'll allow. Yet 'twere clean against the code of the sea to leave them to perish amid the waste of waters. The mate and I have spoken on the matter and decided to put the choice to you. How say ye?"
Mjipa hesitated, then said: "I'd rescue them, but with precautions."
"Percy!" cried Alicia. "Are you out of your mind? Or are you having another of your idiotic attacks of chivalry?"
"I shouldn't feel right about leaving them," said Mjipa.
"I can kill them with a clear conscience when they attack me, but this—no."
"You 're stark, raving mad!" shrilled Alicia."The minute they get a chance, they'll cut off both our heads!"
"They shan't have a chance. I didn't say to take them aboard. Leave them on the raft, and we'll tow them. I'll also see to it that they have nothing to cut off heads with."
Captain Farrá accepted Mjipa's decision without demur. Through his speaking trumpet he bellowed to the Khaldonians to paddle, with their hands if need be, close enough to seize a line.
As the raft, bobbing on the swells, inched near to the Tarvezid's stern, Mjipa said: "Before we throw you a line, drop all your weapons into the sea. I said all—swords, knives, everything."
Three of the dozen raft riders wore swords; the others had knives or dirks. They expostulated:"How shall we cut up our meat?"
"How shall we defend ourselves?"
"Mean ye to slay us once we're disarmed?"
Mjipa waited silently until, at last, the weapons were dropped over the side of the raft. Then Mjipa threw the rope, which a Khaldonian secured to the raft. The Tarvezid's mizzen yard was hoisted again, and the ship got under way. Between the reduction in her sail area and the drag of the raft, she moved sluggishly. Mjipa said:
"Captain, if I may be an interfering busybody again, I suggest you post a couple of sailors with pikes aft to watch the raft. If it got close enough, they might try to climb aboard and rush us."
"Ohé! For a Terran and a landlubber," said the captain, "ye be not altogether wanting in sense." Soon the sailors were posted as Mjipa had proposed.
When Mjipa went to the cabin, he found Isayin bemoaning the ruin by the rain of his notes on the fish, and Alicia spoiling for a fight. She shouted:
"My God, don't you ever learn? Even a flatworm can learn; but once you get one of your silly notions of honor, you'll die before you change it, and probably take me with you. Anybody who knows psychology can see that Verar's a fanatic about obeying his king's commands. He'll get you yet or die trying.
"Those bastards were all born to be hanged anyway. So what's the harm in advancing the date a bit? What would they do to you if they had you? For a grown man, you have the craziest lot of small-boy attitudes ..."
After several minutes of this tirade, Mjipa snarled: "Oh, shut up, you bloodthirsty bitch!" He left the cabin and spent the rest of the day morosely leaning on the rail, watching the waves and the Khaldonians on the raft and enjoying the ruby, golden, and emerald glory of the Krishnan sunset.
As Roqir neared the horizon, the consul stood by the two sailors on watch on the fantail. The twelve rescuees, huddled miserably on their tossing raft astern, stared sullenly up at him. He called:
"O Master Verar!"
"Aye?" said one of the twelve. "What wouldst?"
"I want news.
"Why should I give you any, ye insolent princox?"
"Because if you don't, I shall cut this rope." Mjipa placed the edge of his dirk against the tow rope where it was looped around the rail. At once the other Khaldonians set up an outcry, urging their leader not to send them to certain death.
"Very well, ask your questions," grumbled Verar.
"Who are the men with you?"
"This one and this one and this one are all that be left of those who came from Mejvorosh with me. The others are local lads, mostly former pirates of the Sunqar, who escaped the Phathvum's purge. We had an equal number more, but they perished when the ship overset."
"Where's the rest of your gang?"
"Some dead in the fighting in the tower; some too sorely hurt to travel; some captured by Vuzhov's gendarmes. 'Twas a cruel, merciless scathe ye dealt my poor men, the sort of thing to be expected of a vile alien."
"Where are Kuimaj and his Mutabwcians?" asked Mjipa.
"Most dead or in Vuzhov's prisons, I ween. One, now drowned, shifted allegiance from Kuimaj to me. For the rest, I know not. We saw them not when we bought the ship and fitted her for this voyage."
"How came you by the ship?"
"I know a dealer in goods got by not altogether honest means, clept Stipvuv, in Kalwm City. He advanced the money for the ship and bought it from the government in's own name, trusting my mighty master to repay him with a profit. We swinked day and night to fit her for sea and cast off but little more man a day after ye did."
"You forgot ballast, which is why you capsized."
"Aye, even as ye forgot to bar the door in the tower against our entry."
"There was no bar. Why didn't the Kalwmian government send a ship after us?"
"I know not for certain. But Stipvuv avouched that the Phathvum persuaded the Heshvavu that, with ye Terrans and the heretic gone from the kingdom, ye were as good as dead to Kalwm, and 'twere folly to squander gold in vain pursuit. When may we have food and water?"
"Ask the captain." Mjipa walked away to lean on the rail and puff smoke into the easterly wind. The Khaldonians at last persuaded the captain to have a loaf and a jar of water lowered to them on cords. Mjipa asked:
"Captain Farrá, what's your plan now? Do you expect to sail to Majbur with this rig?"
"Nay; 'twould take a fiftnight or more, wherefor we 're not provisioned. It will be quicker to anchor off Fossanderan, cut a tree, and make a new mast. Methought I saw a crack in the old stick, but my astrologer assured me 'twould hold for one more voyage. At least, Bandur answered my prayer to cripple the Yur.
"I'll not, howsomever, tow those villains beyond the island. If we struck a calm, they'd eat up our reserve of aliment ere we raised our home port."
"You don't fear the tailed men of Fossanderan? They're very primitive."
"Methought they'd been pacified by some Terran."
"Yes; I was that Terran. After slavers had raided them, they took to killing and eating any strangers who landed. The problem is to get them to distinguish between slavers and honest traders."
"Slavers are honest traders!" said the captain. "To say otherwise were brutish prejudice. At least, they're as honest as other merchants, provided they pass not a sickly slave off on you as hale."
Mjipa turned away. The idea that slavery was wrong had not yet achieved much currency on Krishna. It was merely a speculation by a few of the more radical philosophers, whom few Krishnans had heard of and fewer still took seriously. Although as vigorously opposed to slavery as any Terran, Mjipa did not consider it expedient to press his views upon the Krishnans. He found enough risk and hardship in the ordinary discharge of his consular duties without arousing more antagonism than he had to.
When Mjipa went to the cabin, he found Alicia and Isayin already in their bunks. He stretched out on his own—or rather tried to, because it was centimeters shorter than he. Then he heard a sniffle from Alicia's bunk. After a while a small voice said: "Percy?"
"Yes."