The Sea-Hawk by Rafael Sabatini Read Free Book Online Page B

Godolphin," came the answer from lips that writhed in a curious smile.
    Never a word said Sir Oliver, but he set his teeth and clenched his hands until the nails cut into his palms. Then he put an arm about this lad he loved above all save one in the whole world, and with anguish in his mind he supported him forward to the fire. There Lionel dropped to the chair that Sir Oliver had lately occupied.
    "What is your hurt, lad? Has it gone deep?" he asked, in terror almost.
    "'Tis naught—a flesh wound; but I have lost a mort of blood. I thought I should have been drained or ever I got me home."
    With fearful speed Sir Oliver drew his dagger and ripped away doublet, vest, and shirt, laying bare the lad's white flesh. A moment's examination, and he breathed more freely.
    "Art a very babe, Lal," he cried in his relief. "To ride without thought to stanch so simple a wound, and so lose all this blood—bad Tressilian blood though it be." He laughed in the immensity of his reaction from that momentary terror. "Stay thou there whilst I call Nick to help us dress this scratch."
    "No, no!" There was note of sudden fear in the lad's voice, and his hand clutched at his brother's sleeve. "Nick must not know. None must know, or I am undone else."
    Sir Oliver stared, bewildered. Lionel smiled again that curious twisted, rather frightened smile.
    "I gave better than I took, Noll," said he. "Master Godolphin is as cold by now as the snow on which I left him."
    His brother's sudden start and the fixed stare from out of his slowly paling face scared Lionel a little. He observed, almost subconsciously, the dull red wheal that came into prominence as the colour faded out of Sir Oliver's face, yet never thought to ask how it came there. His own affairs possessed him too completely.
    "What's this?" quoth Oliver at last, hoarsely.
    Lionel dropped his eyes, unable longer to meet a glance that was becoming terrible.
    "He would have it," he growled almost sullenly, answering the reproach that was written in every line of his brother's taut body. "I had warned him not to cross my path. But tonight I think some madness had seized upon him. He affronted me, Noll; he said things which it was beyond human power to endure, and . . ." He shrugged to complete his sentence.
    "Well, well," said Oliver in a small voice. "First let us tend this wound of yours."
    "Do not call Nick," was the other's swift admonition. "Don't you see, Noll?" he explained in answer to the inquiry of his brother's stare, "don't you see that we fought there almost in the dark and without witnesses. It . . ." he swallowed, "it will be called murder, fair fight though it was; and should it be discovered that it was I . . ." He shivered and his glance grew wild; his lips twitched.
    "I see," said Oliver, who understood at last, and he added bitterly: "You fool!"
    "I had no choice," protested Lionel. "He came atme with his drawn sword. Indeed, I think he was half-drunk. I warned him of what must happen to the other did either of us fall, but he bade me not concern myself with the fear of any such consequences to himself. He was full of foul words of me and you and all who ever bore our name. He struck me with the flat of his blade and threatened to run me through as I stood unless I drew to defend myself. What choice had I? I did not mean to kill him—as God's my witness, I did not, Noll."
    Without a word Oliver turned to a side-table, where stood a metal basin and ewer. He poured water, then came in the same silence to treat his brother's wound. The tale that Lionel told made blame impossible, at least from Oliver. He had but to recall the mood in which he himself had ridden after Peter Godolphin; he had but to remember that only the consideration of Rosamund—only, indeed, the consideration of his future—had set a curb upon his own bloodthirsty humour.
    When he had washed the wound he fetched some table-linen from a press and ripped it into strips with his dagger; he threaded out one of