The Island of Enchantment

"It is the princess herself!" cried the lieutenant. "It is Yaga!" and fell into a chattering, hysterical laugh.

"It is not – true," whispered Zuan Gradenigo, across the little room. "Say it is not true!" His voice rose to a sharp, agonized appeal, but there was no conviction in his tone. He knew.

At the name the girl had cried out suddenly, and to smother the cry she caught her two hands up to her mouth. Even then her eyes went from one man to the other, swift and keen.

"Say it is not true!" pleaded Zuan Gradenigo, but the lieutenant babbled on, stammering in his excitement.

"See, Messer Zuan! We have her! We have her fast! Why not set sail at once with her on board – at once, before they in the city know she is taken? Why not? See! they are helpless without her. We can force them to give up Arbe for her. She is worth fifty Arbes to them – all of Dalmatia, perhaps. Why not do that? Messer Lupo's galley has not come, nor the other. We can do nothing alone. Take her on board, lord, before it is too late, and set sail. Leave Arbe to itself for a little. The Huns will give it up to us. Come, come!"

It is doubtful if young Zuan even heard. His eyes, stricken and hopeless, were upon the girl across the room, and he whispered over and over again:

"Say it is not true! Say it is not true!" But the woman's eyes were upon the floor, and her hands dropped to her breast, and then to her side with a little forlorn gesture, and she bent her head.

"It is true, lord," she said. "I am the princess Yaga."

The lieutenant gave a great shout and dashed out to his fellows. Young Zuan dropped down upon the near-by bench, covering his face.

Then the woman came to him, crossing the room swiftly, and dropped upon her knees on the floor beside him.

"Lord!" she said, touching his arm with her two hands – "lord, it would have been of no avail to deny it. You would have found me out in time. I am that – dreadful woman, lord; perhaps not so dreadful as you have thought; perhaps men have lied about me – made things worse than they truly are. Still – lord – " She crept closer to him on her knees, and her hands pressed eagerly at his arm. "Lord, it was wise, very wise, what your officer begged you to do. You have me fast – the ban's Yaga. Will you not set sail with me and leave Arbe? Will you not hold me hostage for your island? The ban will give it up to you in exchange for me. Lord, will you not do this?" She pleaded with him in an odd tone of eager anxiety which might have aroused his suspicions had the man been less overwhelmed in his misery. I do not think he heard more than the pleading voice. I do not think he followed her words at all.

"Lord!" she cried again, shaking his arm with her two hands, "will you not do this? It will be best for you. Oh, far best! Listen, lord! You have been kind to me, gentle and pitiful. You saved me from – from great shame at the hands of those men. You saved me when you knew that I must be an enemy – even though you did not know how great an enemy – and now I am trying to save you. You are in great danger, lord, you and your men. Will you not listen to me?"

Young Zuan raised a white face, and his eyes looked bitterly into the woman's eyes that burned so near.

"Danger?" he said, dully, under his breath. It seemed as if he did not care. "What danger?"

And then, as if his gaze held for her some of the strange sorcery which hers had laid upon him, the woman faltered in her swift speech, and she gave a little sob.

"Oh!" she cried. "Why did I not know? Why did I not know?"

"What danger?" repeated Zuan Gradenigo, as if the words meant nothing to him.

"They know that you are here, lord," she said. "We knew, in the city, that you were coming. The fishing-boat which passed you this morning at sea brought us news of three galleys from Venice. Now two of your galleys have been blown away by the sirocco. You are but a few men, a handful, and you will be overwhelmed. Oh, lord, we whom your men took to-night were spying upon you, but there were three more who escaped – three more men. They will have reached the city before this time, and you may be attacked at any moment. Lord, why do you sit there silent? Why will you not take me on board your ship and sail away?"

It came dully to Gradenigo's mind, through the stress and whirl which obscured it, that the maid showed a strange eagerness, out of reason.

"Why do you tell me this?" he asked, suddenly. "Why not let your barbarians capture us – put us to death? Why do you wish to defeat your own cause? There's trickery here." He rose to his feet, frowning, but the woman was before him.

"If you – cannot see – lord," she said, and a bit of bright color came into her cheeks, "then I cannot tell you." Suddenly she put out her two hands upon his breast and fell to sobbing.

"I will not have you killed!" she cried. "Oh, lord, I will not have you taken or slain! For your men I care nothing. They may die where they stand and it will be nothing to me, but you– lord, I cannot bear to have you taken!" There was no trickery in that. It came from the woman's soul, shaking her sorely.

Zuan looked at her, this slim, pale girl shaken with her sobbing – this monster of vice and sin, at whose name men spat with derision – and again he felt the strange, paralyzing weakness creep over him. He could not hate her. He turned his eyes away and shook himself into attention.

"Come!" he said, "we will go. You cannot be lying to me. We will go."

But before he could take a step there arose in the night without a babel of cries and screams and the clashing of steel. Above it all the same strange, barbaric chant which those devils leaping about the fire in the landing-place of the city had sung together.

"Too late!" cried the girl. "Oh, too late! They are here already!"

Zuan Gradenigo sprang silently for his sword, which he had laid aside in a far corner of the room, but as he did so the woman threw herself upon the half-open door of the hut and crashed it to, swinging the great bar into place.

"You shall not go!" she said, in a gasping whisper. "You shall not go out there to be slain!"

"Out of my way!" cried Zuan, sword in hand. "Out of my way, or by Heaven I'll run you through! Would you have me skulk here while my men are fighting? Get out of my way!" He ran at her and caught her by the arm, swinging her aside from the door, but the woman was back again, on hands and knees, before he could recover his balance. She caught him about the knees with her arms, and she was as strong as a young animal and as lithe. He could not move.

He raised the Venetian dagger which he held in his left hand. His eyes were on fire.

"Once more," said he, "will you stand out of my way and let me go?" Outside, in the night, the cries and clash of arms clamored on, and that barbaric chant, broken sometimes, sometimes swelling loud and triumphant, rang over all.

"You shall not go through this door!" gasped the woman, clinging fast to young Zuan's knees. "They are four to one out there. They would kill you the moment you stepped beyond the door."

Strategy came to her, and she shot out a bare arm towards the single window.

"Go by the window!" she cried. "It opens upon a thicket. They will not see you there." She loosed him and he sprang for the window, swinging away the bar and pushing open the heavy wooden shutters.

The woman was upon his heels as he leaped into the night, but he did not know or care. Through the tangle of shrubbery and vine in which he found himself he could see the battle raging in the clear space of the beach beyond, and towards it he fought his way. A heavy creeper laid hold upon his ankles, and, cursing savagely, he slashed at it with his sword. A little rise of ground was before him. He mounted it in a single leap, and from its crest leaped again.

Then he fell a long way, crashing first through the mask of thicket which covered a narrow ravine, striking thence upon the earth of the farther side and rolling down that. Once or twice he threw out his hands to catch himself, but as he slipped and fell again his head struck upon something hard – a stone, probably – and that was the last he knew.

II

The Woman of Abomination

When young Zuan Gradenigo came once more to his senses after the fall in the dark, it was like a peaceful awakening from sweet sleep. Indeed, literally it was just that, for from the unconsciousness following upon the injury to his head he had drifted easily into slumber, so that when he waked he had, by way of souvenir of his mishap, scarcely even a headache.

That his eyes opened upon blue sky instead of upon painted or carved ceiling roused in him no astonishment. In service against the Turks and against the Genoese he had often slept in the open, waking when the morning light became strong enough to force its way through his eyelids. He lay awhile, conscious of great comfort and bodily well-being, coming slowly and lazily into full possession of his faculties. The air was fresh and warm, with a scent of thyme in it, and from somewhere in the near distance sea-birds mewed plaintively, after their kind. He dropped his eyes from the pale-blue sky and saw that though he lay upon turf – a hill it would seem, or the crest of a cliff – there was a stretch of tranquil sea before him, a narrow stretch, and beyond this a mountain range looming sheer and barren from the water's edge. The sun must be rising behind it, he said to himself, for the tips of the serrated peaks glowed golden, momentarily brighter, so that it hurt his eyes to watch them. He wondered what mountains these could be, and then, all in a flash, it came upon him where he was – that this was Arbe, and that ridge the Velebic mountains of the main-land.

His mind raced swiftly back to the preceding evening – to the scene in the fisherman's hut, to his dash through the window in an attempt to join his fighting-men, and – there he stopped. He had a confused recollection of falling in the dark, falling a long way, but he was not fully awake yet, and the effort to remember tired him. He turned upon his side – he had been lying on his back, with his head pillowed upon something soft and comfortable – and, childlike, put up an open hand under his cheek. But when his hand touched that upon which his head had been resting he cried out suddenly and struggled forthright to his feet.

The woman who had saved his life half knelt, half sat behind him, and upon her knees his head had lain. At this moment she was leaning back a little, with her head and shoulders against a small tree which stood there, and her eyes were closed as if she were asleep.

Young Zuan saw that she was very white, and that her closed eyelids were blue and had blue circles under them. The lids stirred after a moment and she opened her eyes – blank and wondering at first, a child's eyes, then swiftly intelligent.

"Lord!" she said, in a whisper, looking up to him – "lord, I must have – slept! I did not know. I am sorry – lord." She sat forward again and made as though she would rise to her feet, but with the first effort a spasm of agony went over her white face, and she gave a little scream and fell forward, prone, and so fainted quite away.

For a moment young Zuan did not understand. Then, as comprehension came to him, he dropped upon his knees beside the woman with an exclamation of pity.

"The child has come near to killing herself that I might sleep!" he cried. Then, before she should wake to further pain, he set skilfully to work. He straightened the bent and cramped knees and, with his strong hands, rubbed and chafed the stiffened muscles. They were cold as stone, he found, save where his head had lain; all feeling must long since have gone out of them. Then at last, just as he had the blood once more flowing redly under the skin, the woman stirred, moving her hands on the turf beside her, and presently came to her senses.

Her eyes opened – they were not black, as he had thought the night before, but curiously dark blue, almost purple – and she looked up into young Zuan's face as he knelt above her.

"I would not – have you think me, lord – a weakling," she said, whispering. "It was a – moment's pain. My knees were a little cramped. Will you forgive me, lord?"

"Forgive you?" said he. "You have saved my life. Whether that was worth the saving or not I do not know, but you have saved it, and you have borne great suffering that I might sleep in comfort. Forgive you?"

She lay quite still on the turf, looking up at him, and the old, paralyzing weakness began to creep upon Zuan's limbs, the old, strange shaking came to his heart.