A rush of air jerked his attention back to the Ras Faleen, now falling astern. The concussion of her stern chasers and the after guns of her port broadside struck at the Terror. Firing on the downroll, the Ras Faleen missed the decks of the retreating buckaroon. But the shots smashed greedily into her counter just as it lifted in the waves. TheTerror reeled soggily. Then she carried beyond accurate range of the Ras Faleen.
A carpenter shouted to Tiger on the quarterdeck. “Three feet of water in the well! She’s heavy damaged under the water aft!”
Tiger glanced over the starboard rail. He saw as she lifted that her hull was open to the sea. He looked ahead and saw the reefs and island toward which Muddy had been steering. He scanned the sea about for his quarry. He did not instantly see the cutter but he saw something else: they had cut the mizzen sail spar from the Ras Faleen, a thing which would not begin to cripple her. The rudder of the frigate had received a greater impact than the sails, for the broadside had been too low. The Ras Faleen’s officers were hastening a jury rig already but for a little while she would not steer. Her sails were being furled for she was turning into the trough, out of control. But she would swiftly be in action again if the haste on her quarterdeck meant anything. Already she was dropping a cutter to capsize it and use it for a rudder.
Then he saw Muddy McCoy. In a frantic rush the thief was trying to put into effect something of the same trick Tiger had played on the Tarbutón fleet. Muddy was reaching swiftly for the reefs.
“Bring the helm down! Steer for that cutter!” shouted Tiger.
He turned, beckoned to two buckaroons and rushed below. Down there Tombo was in water up to his waist, locked solidly in the brig and certain of dying.
Tiger and the buckaroons half waded, half swam to the brig door. The roll and lunge of the ship, running now with the wind off the port quarter but soggy already in the sea, caused her interior water to rush and roar with a deafening din. The impact of it hurled Tiger and the mates about. They reached the door.
“You want to be saved?” shouted Tiger above the thunder of water.
Tombo, terrified, looked numbly at a man who could ask such an unnecessary question.
“Tell me the power of that diamond!” shouted Tiger.
“Let me out! Let me out! I’m caught, I’m trapped!” howled Tombo. “I’m caught! I’m trapped! Let me out!”
Tiger stared at him, stared at his fangs, stared at his claws. An ifrit, yes. But in another world, all unknowing—
Gripping the Jinni’s throat through the bars, Tiger yanked him close. “Tell me the power of that diamond! What can it do?”
“Let me out! I’m caught! I’m trapped!” screamed Tombo. “Anything, anything! But let me out! He’s a maniac! I’m caught, I’m trapped!”
The phrase about the maniac completed the identification for Tiger. For a moment he had thought this might be the prefrontal case, but that was not so. Tombo was Dyhard in another world! A Jinni!
But there was greater urgency here. “Tell me the power of that diamond!” shouted Tiger, shaking the terrified ifrit, battered by the rising water within the hold.
“Only the jinn know it. I can’t tell, I can’t!”
“You’re caught! You’re trapped!” said Tiger, pushing his buttons.
That did it. Tombo clawed wildly at the bars, his great orbs of eyes staring in terror. He saw the water surging, he felt the ship staggering, ready to sink. The overhead was a crushing weight to him above.
“Used with the banishing sign, point down, it sends any of the jinn anywhere! It accompanies only the human soul. Humans cannot move with it. It moves between the worlds only when it is in human hands! Save me!”
“More!” said Tiger. “Tell me more!”
“I’m betraying the jinn!” wailed Tombo. But a wave in the hold surged over him and almost drowned him and he screamed, “With the point of the seal up, it will invoke the spirit of Sulayman himself from the world of the dead! Spare me! I’ve told! That is why we stole it! So long as we have it our enslaver cannot return from the dead! I’m a traitor! I’m a traitor!” He was staggered off his feet by a stronger rush of black water. “I’m caught!” he screamed. “I’m caught! I’m trapped! There’s no incantation. Just tell it what you want! Oh, let me out! Let me out! I’m caught!”
Tiger struck at the lock and the door swung wide. But as he started to fall back to the ladder there was a leaping crunch of keel on reef and the Terror, driven full aground only minutes before she sank, reeled crazily like a stricken horse, twisted down, rose and fell back, pierced in fifty places by the jagged coral fangs. She lunged drunkenly as the breaking waves struck her. She rose and fell back, driven further on, pierced anew. There was a crash on the stricken deck as a hail of yards and canvas came down.
Battered by the waves within the hold, Tiger fought through the black water and grasped the ladder. He reached back and yanked his shipmates up and then seized Tombo and thrust him on ahead.
Tiger sprang from the hold, sidestepped a late-falling block and a tangle of running rigging and looked at a vista of breaking sea and ruined ship.
Cannon, loose from their tackles, bright-spotted with glistening spray, were breaking away from the higher side and smashing across to splinter through the bulwarks on the other side of the deck. In the blazing sunlight and fresh wind, the Terror was dying and dying hard.
A new comber hit her, lifted her and thrust her further aground. She staggered and slipped, heeled the other way. The cannon on the side now high, loosened by the shocks, sprang away like things alive and, carrying all before them, raced and spun across the decks to crash through the down rail and overboard.
The ship’s company was crowded on her forecastle and diving, one after another, into the lagoon which was quiet, guarded by the reef the Terror spanned.
Wanna stood holding hard to a belaying pin rail on the quarterdeck, supported by Mister Luck. They were being swept by the breaking combers. Tiger fought towards them. A larger wave lifted the wreck again and drove it further across the reef.
Ryan was suddenly at Tiger’s side. They dodged a spinning cannon, sidestepped a falling spar and reached the quarterdeck. Tiger swept up Wanna. Ryan grabbed Mister Luck and they staggered across the crazily shuddering deck. There was a groan throughout the timbers and the sound of rending wood. The wreck was breaking in half.
They reached the lowering bows, almost in the water now, and stepped into the lagoon. Swimming the few yards which took them to shallower water, they staggered to their feet. Tiger set Wanna down in a depth which came only to her waist and stared about.
The wreck of the cutter drifted in the lagoon a few hundred yards away. A battered Muddy McCoy was seeking to make all speed away from there floundering to land. Tiger dived forward. Using a fast crawl stroke much swifter than walking, he had, in the space of minutes, the throat of McCoy in his aching hands.
But it was not Muddy McCoy’s throat he wanted. It was the lump in Muddy’s sash. With eager fingers Tiger took unto himself the Two-World Diamond.
Seaward, the Ras Faleen was standing in as close as she dared, gun ports open, the black mouths of grape-stuffed cannon hungry to cut down the Terror’s crew as it struggled toward the far beach.
Chapter Fourteen
Together Again
The diamond blazed in the sunlight, bluer than the deep, whiter than the spray which flew above the reef. In its depths lay the three-dimensional Seal of Sulayman, the monarch who had conquered once all the tribes of jinn.
The fleets of Zongri and Arif-Emir stood high on the near horizon like clouds. The Ras Faleen, clumsily steered but adventuring revenge just the same, steadied on her course to give a maximum sweep of the luckless buckaroons. The captain on her quarterdeck raised his claws to command commence firing.
Tiger gazed into the depths of the stone and pointed the seal down in the banishing sign.
“ifrits and marids of the Ras Faleen! To the center of the Withered Desert all! Go!”
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The Ras Faleen pursued her course. The din of the surf was such that no sounds reached the lagoon. But Tiger had eyes to see. And he saw a blur where her ifrit officers had stood and the officers were not there anymore. And he saw where the green-coated marids had stood in her shrouds. And those spots were empty. And he saw, like dolls at this distance, the human gunners’ mates staring toward the quarterdeck, waiting for command, and then start aft in an amazed walk.
For the Ras Faleen was without commander or officers or marines and had left but her human crew. And if one cared, that moment, to go to the Withered Desert he would have found a stunned group of ifrits staring about, naval coats unfitting for that scenery of desolation and sand.
Tiger floundered into the shallows and reached the beach. Ahead there was an inlet where the reef broke and the surf, calmed by the constricted entrance, purred down upon the strand. He stopped there and thrust the diamond, still in his hand, beneath a flat but easily recognizable stone.
“By the Seal of Sulayman!” he said, “I wish I were the most commanding fellow on the Ras Faleen!”
He jerked back his hand, the diamond out of sight, but almost before the gesture was done—
Whirrr! Zzzzt!
He stood upon the quarterdeck of the Ras Faleen, finding himself to be a black-bearded, huge-chested human wearing a gunner’s striped shirt.
The crew was still stunned but gathering aft with wondering looks, peering under things and into boats to find out what had happened to their enslavers, the ifrits.
“Avast, you swabs!” roared Tiger in his new identity, discovering his voice to be somewhat more resounding than a bull’s. “I’m taking command here and if there’s argument, speak up so I can feed you to the sharks! Launch the cutter and the gig! Lively now. Shorten sail. Easy with that helm, you farmer.”
“What the hell’s got into you, Pete?” said a gunner’s mate.
Tiger as Pete took one swipe at the gunner’s mate and knocked him halfway the length of the waist. “Lively now!” he roared at the men.
They blinked, bewildered, and because of that bewilderment, obeyed. The Ras Faleen fell off into the trough, giving them a lee in which to put over cutter and gig.
“Shove off,” Tiger as Pete roared at the coxswain of the cutter. “Take her through that opening in the reef and load her with pirates. I’m following you!” He turned to a gunner’s mate who seemed partial to him. “Take command while I’m gone. Obey him, you swabs!” he challenged the crew. “Stand off and on here and take the buckaroons aboard as they arrive. They’re not prisoners. They’re free men, naval seamen most, like yourselves.”
They nodded at him dazedly and Tiger as Pete dropped down a line into the waiting gig. His oarsmen laid on with a will, making the light-pulling boat leap swiftly ahead at each stroke. They passed the cutter before they were in and Tiger was first on the sand.
Tiger as Pete raced up to a bewildered human being standing by a rock and watching first the ship and then the boats. Tiger was interested to see how well his body looked despite the sea stains. Tiger as Pete reached under the rock, grasped the diamond and said, “I wish I were you!”
Whirrr! Zzzzt!
Tiger, as himself, was looking at an even further dazed Pete.
“I’m Tiger,” said Tiger. “You’ve heard of me. I’m taking command of the Ras Faleen from you as of now.”
“But I don’t command her. Sabud—”
“I’m taking command anyway,” said Tiger. “We’ve a lot of Tarbutón navy men here mixed up with these buckaroons. We’re going to save the lot. You understand?”
Pete didn’t and scratched his black beard in an effort to think. And while he was doing that, Tiger hailed the first of the buckaroons and Tombo’s men he had taken from the fleet and began a transport to the Ras Faleen.
Two hours later the frigate was crammed with men and the last of the Terror’s people were aboard. The main fleets were almost arriving now, the first of the men-o’-war but two miles off.
Having made a clinical test with Tombo, Tiger had determined that ifrits, when commanded by the diamond, sailed very nicely far away. Tombo was part of a bewildered group of naval men in the Withered Desert now.
Standing beside the signalman of the Ras Faleen, Tiger scanned the oncoming ships. “Hoist a signal,” he ordered, “to the effect that all vessels are to proceed to Tarbutón harbor.”
“What?” blinked the signalman. “But—”
“Sign it ‘Tiger.’ They’ll understand soon enough.”
The signalman grinned and Tiger sped below. In the privacy of the cabin he took out the diamond. He pointed the seal downward.
“By the Seal of Sulayman,” he said, “all officers and marids in all the nearby fleet to the Withered Desert, go!”
Two hours later, Tiger, cheered by the liberated human crews on ship after ship as he passed, reached the Magnificent and to that mighty first-rater transferred his flag.
The naval vessels which had drifted aimlessly, merely avoiding each other when they came close to ram ever since their officers and naval police had so strangely vanished, gladly accepted Tiger’s command. In the first place they knew or knew of Tiger. In the second place they had no other choice. Electing from their numbers officers of their own and expecting new and hopeful things, the human fleet took formation and made their way toward home.
The ships of the fleet cast anchor in a strangely quiet harbor. No shipping moved in the bay at Tarbutón. Instead the shore was lined with human beings in all conditions of misery but in a mood of uncertainty.
Yesterday their masters, the ifrits, and the guards, the marids, had vanished from the land in some strange fashion and there were tales going around that people had seen them fly away, though for what purpose none knew.
A dozen pulling boats filled with armed men approached the docks from the fleet. The crowd on the shore, increasing now by numbers from the white and scarlet minaretted town, expected ifrits to land. Some were for mutiny against their masters. Others preached caution. Others were actually hauling up cannon in a feeble attempt to make a fight of it, in a despairing effort to escape the slavery to which they had, it seemed, forever been condemned.
Then somebody with sharper eyes than the others saw no ifrits in the boats. Then he saw something else.
“It’s Tiger!” he shouted.
There was a murmur. Several cheered. Others were afraid. Tiger was a source of grief to ifrits and the following of his banner might mean trouble.
The crowd parted as Tiger came up the quay. The humans watched him and said nothing.
The sailors landed, fully armed and burdened with boarding nets and chains. They had their instructions. They spread out the nets on the wharf and made ready the chains.
Tiger waved them all back. Sailors took hold of the corners of the nets. Tiger reached into his sash and touched and adjusted the diamond without showing it.
“I command,” he cried, “that Zongri, the ruler of this land, that Arif-Emir, the ruler of Balou, and Tombo, admiral of the fleet, appear upon this netting! Come!”
There was a rush of air and a swirl. Dazed and staggering and much unkempt despite their gorgeous robes and jewels, the three named ifrits came.
The sailors, with a seamanlike dexterity with hemp, lifted the boarding nets high and dropped them swiftly over the ifrits. Other sailors ran in and wove the nets about with chains and straps.
“By Ahriman!” screamed Zongri, age-old enemy of Tiger, “I demand—”
“Pipe down!” said Tiger. “You demand nothing! By virtue of a power I hold and which you know, I give you your choice between exile and a swift voyage to hell. Before these witnesses assembled, Zongri, declare to me the lordship of your lands or else, by Ahriman, you’ll roast!”
Arif-Emir, understanding suddenly, gave Zongri a hoarse caution. “The Two-World Diamond!” he said.
Zongri opened his fanged mouth to deny it but his eyes held upon the bulge in Tiger’s sash. Zong
ri closed his mouth with a frightened snap. “I have no choice!”
“Choose!” and Tiger’s hand in the sash moved a trifle.
“I declare you ruler of these lands!” cried Zongri anxiously.
“And you, Arif-Emir, am I the undisputed ruler of Balou? You have the same chance.”
“Don’t!” said Arif-Emir. “I’ll say it. Don’t! Before any witness you’ll produce, before everyone, I declare you ruler of Balou and all my lands, successor without dispute to the kingdom!”
“Then by my authority,” said Tiger before the bulging eyes of the multitude, “as soon as you are released, back with you to the Withered Desert, Zongri and Arif!”
The sailors let go the straps and chains and spread the nets and almost before the last fold was away, with a swish of air, Zongri and Arif were gone.
Tombo stood, shivering, alone upon the netting. “They’ll kill me if they know! I pray you, Tiger, do not send me with them. Give me some lighter thing! I beg you!”
Tiger looked at him. He knew him for what he was, a Jinni that haunted in human form another world and wore the name of Dyhard.
“All I care to do to you,” said Tiger, “is to curse you with eternal wakefulness and memory, in another world, of this! Except for that, you are free. Come lads, pass the word to the fleet to organize their ships and send me in a palace guard.”
He pushed through the crush of madly cheering humans who knew at last they were free and made his way to the palace of Ramus.
Alone in the great hall at length, he dared pull forth the diamond.
“Sulayman! Sulayman!” he said. “By virtue of this diamond hear me where you are in the world of the dead. The ifrits who rebelled against you stand in the wastes of the Withered Desert. Bewitch them there so they can trouble man no more.”
There was a rumbling sound above him as though the sky was laughing with pleasure at the deed.
Jan sat in a hospital bed, a strong and forthright Jan. He seemed bigger than he had and no wonder, for he held as well the power of his other self in another world. He was much besieged by callers.