DEAD MEN TELL NO TALES

By E. W. Hornung

CONTENTS

 Chapter I Love on the Ocean

 Chapter II The Mysterious Cargo

 Chapter III To the Water's Edge

 Chapter IV The Silent Sea

 Chapter V My Reward

 Chapter VI The Sole Survivor

 Chapter V I Find a Friend

 Chapter VI A Small Precaution

 Chapter VII My Convalescent Home

 Chapter VIII Wine and Weakness

 Chapter IX I Live Again

 Chapter X My Lady's Bidding

 Chapter XI The Longest Day of My Life

 Chapter XII In the Garden

 Chapter XIII First Blood

 Chapter XIV A Deadlock

 Chapter XV When Thieves Fall Out

 Chapter XVI A Man of Many Murders

 Chapter XVII My Great Hour

 Chapter XVIII The Statement of Francis Rattray

CHAPTER I. LOVE ON THE OCEAN

Nothing is so easy as falling in love on a long sea voyage, exceptfalling out of love. Especially was this the case in the days when thewooden clippers did finely to land you in Sydney or in Melbourne underthe four full months. We all saw far too much of each other, unless, indeed, we were to see still more. Our superficial attractions mutuallyexhausted, we lost heart and patience in the disappointing stratawhich lie between the surface and the bed-rock of most natures. My ownexperience was confined to the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, in theyear 1853. It was no common experience, as was only too well knownat the time. And I may add that I for my part had not the faintestintention of falling in love on board; nay, after all these years, let me confess that I had good cause to hold myself proof against suchweakness. Yet we carried a young lady, coming home, who, God knows, might have made short work of many a better man!

Eva Denison was her name, and she cannot have been more than nineteenyears of age. I remember her telling me that she had not yet come out, the very first time I assisted her to promenade the poop. My own namewas still unknown to her, and yet I recollect being quite fascinated byher frankness and self-possession. She was exquisitely young, and yetludicrously old for her years; had been admirably educated, chieflyabroad, and, as we were soon to discover, possessed accomplishmentswhich would have made the plainest old maid a popular personage on boardship. Miss Denison, however, was as beautiful as she was young, with thebloom of ideal health upon her perfect skin. She had a wealth of lovelyhair, with strange elusive strands of gold among the brown, that drownedher ears (I thought we were to have that mode again?) in sunny ripples;and a soul greater than the mind, and a heart greater than either, laysleeping somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes. 

We were at sea together so many weeks. I cannot think what I was made ofthen!

It was in the brave old days of Ballarat and Bendigo, when ship aftership went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to bounce homewith a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to reef topsailsin a gale. Nor was this the worst; for not the crew only, but, in manycases, captain and officers as well, would join in the stampede to thediggings; and we found Hobson's Bay the congested asylum of all mannerof masterless and deserted vessels. I have a lively recollection of ourskipper's indignation when the pilot informed him of this disgracefulfact. Within a fortnight, however, I met the good man face to face uponthe diggings. It is but fair to add that the Lady Jermyn lost everyofficer and man in the same way, and that the captain did obey traditionto the extent of being the last to quit his ship. Nevertheless, ofall who sailed by her in January, I alone was ready to return at thebeginning of the following July. 

I had been to Ballarat. I had given the thing a trial. For the mostodious weeks I had been a licensed digger on Black Hill Flats; and I hadactually failed to make running expenses. That, however, will surpriseyou the less when I pause to declare that I have paid as much as fourshillings and sixpence for half a loaf of execrable bread; that my mateand I, between us, seldom took more than a few pennyweights of gold-dustin any one day; and never once struck pick into nugget, big or little, though we had the mortification of inspecting the "mammoth masses" ofwhich we found the papers full on landing, and which had brought thegold-fever to its height during our very voyage. With me, however, aswith many a young fellow who had turned his back on better things, themalady was short-lived. We expected to make our fortunes out of hand, and we had reckoned without the vermin and the villainy which renderedus more than ever impatient of delay. In my fly-blown blankets I dreamtof London until I hankered after my chambers and my club more than aftermuch fine gold. Never shall I forget my first hot bath on getting backto Melbourne; it cost five shillings, but it was worth five pounds, andis altogether my pleasantest reminiscence of Australia. 

There was, however, one slice of luck in store for me. I found the dearold Lady Jermyn on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain, a newcrew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally no cargoat all. I felt none the less at home when I stepped over her familiarside. 

In the cuddy we were only five, but a more uneven quintette I defy youto convene. There was a young fellow named Ready, packed out forhis health, and hurrying home to die among friends. There was anoutrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink nothingbut champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day, and I haveseen him pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour together. MissDenison was our only lady, and her step-father, with whom she wastravelling, was the one man of distinction on board. He was a Portugueseof sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos by name; at first it wasincredible to me that he had no title, so noble was his bearing; butvery soon I realized that he was one of those to whom adventitioushonors can add no lustre. He treated Miss Denison as no parent evertreated a child, with a gallantry and a courtliness quite beautiful towatch, and not a little touching in the light of the circumstances underwhich they were travelling together. The girl had gone straight fromschool to her step-father's estate on the Zambesi, where, a few monthslater, her mother had died of the malaria. Unable to endure the placeafter his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to Victoria, thereto seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as my own. He wasnow taking Miss Denison back to England, to make her home with otherrelatives, before he himself returned to Africa (as he once told me) tolay his bones beside those of his wife. I hardly know which of the pairI see more plainly as I write--the young girl with her soft eyes and hersunny hair, or the old gentleman with the erect though wasted figure, the noble forehead, the steady eye, the parchment skin, the whiteimperial, and the eternal cigarette between his shrivelled lips. 

No need to say that I came more in contact with the young girl. She wasnot less charming in my eyes because she provoked me greatly as I cameto know her intimately. She had many irritating faults. Like most youngpersons of intellect and inexperience, she was hasty and intolerant innearly all her judgments, and rather given to being critical in a crudeway. She was very musical, playing the guitar and singing in a stylethat made our shipboard concerts vastly superior to the average of theirorder; but I have seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folkswho were also doing their best; and it was the same in other directionswhere her superiority was less specific. The faults which are mostexasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and I confessthat I was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms. Then she hada little weakness for exaggeration, for unconscious egotism inconversation, and I itched to tell her so. I felt so certain that thegirl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to noble heightsin stress or storm: all the more would I long now to take her in handand mould her in little things, and anon to take her in my arms just asshe was. The latter feeling was resolutely crushed. To be plain, I hadendured what is euphemistically called "disappointment" already; and, not being a complete coxcomb, I had no intention of courting a second. 

Yet, when I write of Eva Denison, I am like to let my pen outrun mytale. I lay the pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring in myears, with my own contradictious comments, that I was doomed so soonto repent; a hundred visions of her start to my eyes; and there is thetrade-wind singing in the rigging, and loosening a tress of my darling'shair, till it flies like a tiny golden streamer in the tropic sun. There, it is out! I have called her what she was to be in my heart everafter. Yet at the time I must argue with her--with her! When all mycourage should have gone to love-making, I was plucking it up to sail asnear as I might to plain remonstrance! I little dreamt how the ghost ofevery petty word was presently to return and torture me. 

So it is that I can see her and hear her now on a hundred separateoccasions beneath the awning beneath the stars on deck below at noonor night but plainest of all in the evening of the day we signalledthe Island of Ascension, at the close of that last concert on thequarter-deck. The watch are taking down the extra awning; they areremoving the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns are trailedforward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch thevivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The starsare very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they shimmer onthe sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the stars, for thetrades have yet to fail us, and every inch of canvas has its fill of thegentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night. The peace of God broods uponHis waters. No jarring note offends the ear. In the forecastle a voiceis humming a song of Eva Denison's that has caught the fancy of the men;the young girl who sang it so sweetly not twenty minutes since whosang it again and again to please the crew she alone is at war with ourlittle world she alone would head a mutiny if she could. 

"I hate the captain!" she says again. 

"My dear Miss Denison!" I begin; for she has always been severe upon ourbluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone which makesme invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not one whom theowners would have chosen to command the Lady Jermyn; a good seaman nonethe less, who brought us round the Horn in foul weather without losingstitch or stick. I think of the ruddy ruffian in his dripping oilskins, on deck day and night for our sakes, and once more I must needs take hispart; but Miss Denison stops me before I can get out another word. 

"I am not dear, and I'm not yours, " she cries. "I'm only aschool-girl--you have all but told me so before to-day! If I were aman--if I were you--I should tell Captain Harris what I thought of him!"

"Why? What has he done now?"

"Now? You know how rude he was to poor Mr. Ready this very afternoon!"

It was true. He had been very rude indeed. But Ready also had been atfault. It may be that I was always inclined to take an opposite view, but I felt bound to point this out, and at any cost. 

"You mean when Ready asked him if we were out of our course? I mustsay I thought it was a silly question to put. It was the same the otherevening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in ballast why notbelieve him? Why repeat steerage gossip, about mysterious cargoes, atthe cuddy table? Captains are always touchy about that sort of thing. Iwasn't surprised at his letting out. "

My poor love stares at me in the starlight. Her great eyes flash theirscorn. Then she gives a little smile--and then a little nod--morescornful than all the rest. 

"You never are surprised, are you, Mr. Cole?" says she. "You were notsurprised when the wretch used horrible language in front of me! Youwere not surprised when it was a--dying man--whom he abused!"

I try to soothe her. I agree heartily with her disgust at the epithetsemployed in her hearing, and towards an invalid, by the irate skipper. But I ask her to make allowances for a rough, uneducated man, ratherclumsily touched upon his tender spot. I shall conciliate her presently;the divine pout (so childish it was!) is fading from her lips; thestarlight is on the tulle and lace and roses of her pretty eveningdress, with its festooned skirts and obsolete flounces; and I amwatching her, ay, and worshipping her, though I do not know it yet. Andas we stand there comes another snatch from the forecastle:--

 "What will you do, love, when I am going. With white sail flowing, The seas beyond? What will you do, love--"

"They may make the most of that song, " says Miss Denison grimly; "it'sthe last they'll have from me. Get up as many more concerts as you like. I won't sing at another unless it's in the fo'c'sle. I'll sing to themen, but not to Captain Harris. He didn't put in an appearance tonight. He shall not have another chance of insulting me. "

Was it her vanity that was wounded after all? "You forget, " said I, "that you would not answer when he addressed you at dinner. "

"I should think I wouldn't, after the way he spoke to Mr. Ready; and hetoo agitated to come to table, poor fellow!"

"Still, the captain felt the open slight. "

"Then he shouldn't have used such language in front of me. "

"Your father felt it, too, Miss Denison. "

I hear nothing plainer than her low but quick reply:

"Mr. Cole, my father has been dead many; many years; he died before Ican remember. That man only married my poor mother. He sympathizeswith Captain Harris--against me; no father would do that. Look at themtogether now! And you take his side, too; oh! I have no patience withany of you--except poor Mr. Ready in his berth. "

"But you are not going. "

"Indeed I am. I am tired of you all. "

And she was gone with angry tears for which I blamed myself as I fell topacing the weather side of the poop--and so often afterwards! So often, and with such unavailing bitterness!

Senhor Santos and the captain were in conversation by the weather rail. I fancied poor old Harris eyed me with suspicion, and I wished he hadbetter cause. The Portuguese, however, saluted me with his customarycourtesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle in his steady eye. 

"Are you in deesgrace also, friend Cole?" he inquired in his all butperfect English. 

"More or less, " said I ruefully. 

He gave the shrug of his country--that delicate gesture which is donealmost entirely with the back--a subtlety beyond the power of Britishshoulders. 

"The senhora is both weelful and pivish, " said he, mixing the two vowelswhich (with the aspirate) were his only trouble with our tongue. "It isgreat grif to me to see her growing so unlike her sainted mother!"

He sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette theywere rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast. He was alwayssmoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new one the glowfell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a tiny crucifix inlaidin mosaic. So the religious cast of Senhor Santos was brought twice hometo me in the same moment, though, to be sure, I had often been struckby it before. And it depressed me to think that so sweet a child as EvaDenison should have spoken harshly of so good a man as her step-father, simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse oldsalt like Captain Harris. 

I turned in, however, and I cannot say the matter kept me awake in theseparate state-room which was one luxury of our empty saloon. Alas? Iwas a heavy sleeper then. 

CHAPTER II. THE MYSTERIOUS CARGO

"Wake up, Cole! The ship's on fire!"

It was young Ready's hollow voice, as cool, however, as though he weretelling me I was late for breakfast. I started up and sought him wildlyin the darkness. 

"You're joking, " was my first thought and utterance; for now he waslighting my candle, and blowing out the match with a care that seemed initself a contradiction. 

"I wish I were, " he answered. "Listen to that!"

He pointed to my cabin ceiling; it quivered and creaked; and all at onceI was as a deaf man healed. 

One gets inured to noise at sea, but to this day it passes me how even Icould have slept an instant in the abnormal din which I now heard ragingabove my head. Sea-boots stamped; bare feet pattered; men bawled; womenshrieked; shouts of terror drowned the roar of command. 

"Have we long to last?" I asked, as I leaped for my clothes. 

"Long enough for you to dress comfortably. Steady, old man! It's onlyjust been discovered; they may get it under. The panic's the worst partat present, and we're out of that. "

But was Eva Denison? Breathlessly I put the question; his answer wasreassuring. Miss Denison was with her step-father on the poop. "And bothof 'em as cool as cucumbers, " added Ready. 

They could not have been cooler than this young man, with death at thebottom of his bright and sunken eyes. He was of the type which is allmuscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the next; butuntil this moment the athlete had been to me a mere and incredibletradition. In the afternoon I had seen his lean knees totter under thecaptain's fire. Now, at midnight--the exact time by my watch--it was asif his shrunken limbs had expanded in his clothes; he seemed hardly toknow his own flushed face, as he caught sight of it in my mirror. 

"By Jove!" said he, "this has put me in a fine old fever; but I don'tknow when I felt in better fettle. If only they get it under! I've notlooked like this all the voyage. "

And he admired himself while I dressed in hot haste: a fine youngfellow; not at all the natural egotist, but cast for death by thedoctors, and keenly incredulous in his bag of skin. It revived one'sconfidence to hear him talk. But he forgot himself in an instant, andgave me a lead through the saloon with a boyish eagerness that made meactually suspicious as I ran. We were nearing the Line. I recalled theexcesses of my last crossing, and I prepared for some vast hoax at thelast moment. It was only when we plunged upon the crowded quarter-deck, and my own eyes read lust of life and dread of death in the startingeyes of others, that such lust and such dread consumed me in my turn, sothat my veins seemed filled with fire and ice. 

To be fair to those others, I think that the first wild panic wassubsiding even then; at least there was a lull, and even a reaction inthe right direction on the part of the males in the second class andsteerage. A huge Irishman at their head, they were passing bucketstowards the after-hold; the press of people hid the hatchway fromus until we gained the poop; but we heard the buckets spitting and ahose-pipe hissing into the flames below; and we saw the column of whitevapor rising steadily from their midst. 

At the break of the poop stood Captain Harris, his legs planted wideapart, very vigorous, very decisive, very profane. And I must confessthat the shocking oaths which had brought us round the Horn inspired akind of confidence in me now. Besides, even from the poop I could seeno flames. But the night was as beautiful as it had been an hour or twoback; the stars as brilliant, the breeze even more balmy, the sea evenmore calm; and we were hove-to already, against the worst. 

In this hour of peril the poop was very properly invaded by all classesof passengers, in all manner of incongruous apparel, in all stages offear, rage, grief and hysteria; as we made our way among this motleynightmare throng, I took Ready by the arm. 

"The skipper's a brute, " said I, "but he's the right brute in the rightplace to-night, Ready!"

"I hope he may be, " was the reply. "But we were off our course thisafternoon; and we were off it again during the concert, as sure as we'renot on it now. "

His tone made me draw him to the rail. 

"But how do you know? You didn't have another look, did you?"

"Lots of looks-at the stars. He couldn't keep me from consulting them;and I'm just as certain of it as I'm certain that we've a cargo aboardwhich we're none of us supposed to know anything about. "

The latter piece of gossip was, indeed, all over the ship; but thisallusion to it struck me as foolishly irrelevant and frivolous. As tothe other matter, I suggested that the officers would have had more tosay about it than Ready, if there had been anything in it. 

"Officers be damned!" cried our consumptive, with a sound man's vigor. "They're ordinary seamen dressed up; I don't believe they've a secondmate's certificate between them, and they're frightened out of theirsouls. "

"Well, anyhow, the skipper isn't that. "

"No; he's drunk; he can shout straight, but you should hear him try tospeak. "

I made my way aft without rejoinder. "Invalid's pessimism, " was myprivate comment. And yet the sick man was whole for the time being; thevirile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and itwas with illogical relief that I found those I sought standing almostunconcernedly beside the binnacle. 

My little friend was, indeed, pale enough, and her eyes great withdismay; but she stood splendidly calm, in her travelling cloak andbonnet, and with all my soul I hailed the hardihood with which I hadrightly credited my love. Yes! I loved her then. It had come home to meat last, and I no longer denied it in my heart. In my innocence and myjoy I rather blessed the fire for showing me her true self and my own;and there I stood, loving her openly with my eyes (not to lose anotherinstant), and bursting to tell her so with my lips. 

But there also stood Senhor Santos, almost precisely as I had seen himlast, cigarette, tie-pin, and all. He wore an overcoat, however, andleaned upon a massive ebony cane, while he carried his daughter's guitarin its case, exactly as though they were waiting for a train. Moreover, I thought that for the first time he was regarding me with no veryfavoring glance. 

"You don't think it serious?" I asked him abruptly, my heart stillbounding with the most incongruous joy. 

He gave me his ambiguous shrug; and then, "A fire at sea is surelysirrious, " said he. 

"Where did it break out?"

"No one knows; it may have come of your concert. "

"But they are getting the better of it?"

"They are working wonders so far, senhor. "

"You see, Miss Denison, " I continued ecstatically, "our rough olddiamond of a skipper is the right man in the right place after all. Atight man in a tight place, eh?" and I laughed like an idiot in theircalm grave faces. 

"Senhor Cole is right, " said Santos, "although his 'ilarity sims aleetle out of place. But you must never spik against Captain 'Arreesagain, menma. "

"I never will, " the poor child said; yet I saw her wince whenever thecaptain raised that hoarse voice of his in more and more blasphemousexhortation; and I began to fear with Ready that the man was drunk. 

My eyes were still upon my darling, devouring her, revelling in her, when suddenly I saw her hand twitch within her step-father's arm. It wasan answering start to one on his part. The cigarette was snatched fromhis lips. There was a commotion forward, and a cry came aft, from mouthto mouth:

"The flames! The flames!"

I turned, and caught their reflection on the white column of smoke andsteam. I ran forward, and saw them curling and leaping in the hell-mouthof the hold. 

The quarter-deck now staged a lurid scene: that blazing trap-door inits midst; and each man there a naked demon madly working to save hisroasting skin. Abaft the mainmast the deck-pump was being ceaselesslyworked by relays of the passengers; dry blankets were passed forward, soaking blankets were passed aft, and flung flat into the furnace oneafter another. These did more good than the pure water: the pillar ofsmoke became blacker, denser: we were at a crisis; a sudden hush denotedit; even our hoarse skipper stood dumb. 

I had rushed down into the waist of the ship--blushing for my delay--andalready I was tossing blankets with the rest. Looking up in an enforcedpause, I saw Santos whispering in the skipper's ear, with the expressionof a sphinx but no lack of foreign gesticulation--behind them a fringeof terror-stricken faces, parted at that instant by two more figures, as wild and strange as any in that wild, strange scene. One was ourluckless lucky digger, the other a gigantic Zambesi nigger, who fordays had been told off to watch him; this was the servant (or rather theslave) of Senhor Santos. 

The digger planted himself before the captain. His face was reddened bya fire as consuming as that within the bowels of our gallant ship. Hehad a huge, unwieldy bundle under either arm. 

"Plain question--plain answer, " we heard him stutter. "Is there any ----chance of saving this ---- ship?"

His adjectives were too foul for print; they were given with such aspecial effort at distinctness, however, that I was smiling one instant, and giving thanks the next that Eva Denison had not come forward withher guardian. Meanwhile the skipper had exchanged a glance with SenhorSantos, and I think we all felt that he was going to tell us the truth. 

He told it in two words--"Very little. "

Then the first individual tragedy was enacted before every eye. Witha yell the drunken maniac rushed to the rail. The nigger was at hisheels--he was too late. Uttering another and more piercing shriek, themadman was overboard at a bound; one of his bundles preceded him; theother dropped like a cannon-ball on the deck. 

The nigger caught it up and carried it forward to the captain. 

Harris held up his hand. We were still before we had fairly found ourtongues. His words did run together a little, but he was not drunk. 

"Men and women, " said he, "what I told that poor devil is Gospel truth;but I didn't tell him we'd no chance of saving our lives, did I? Notme, because we have! Keep your heads and listen to me. There's twogood boats on the davits amidships; the chief will take one, the secondofficer the other; and there ain't no reason why every blessed one ofyou shouldn't sleep in Ascension to-morrow night. As for me, let me seeevery soul off of my ship and perhaps I may follow; but by the God thatmade you, look alive! Mr. Arnott--Mr. McClellan--man them boats andlower away. You can't get quit o' the ship too soon, an' I don't mindtellin' you why. I'll tell you the worst, an' then you'll know. There'sbeen a lot o' gossip goin', gossip about my cargo. I give out as I'dnone but ship's stores and ballast, an' I give out a lie. I don't mindtellin' you now. I give out a cussed lie, but I give it out for thegood o' the ship! What was the use o' frightenin' folks? But where's thesense in keepin' it back now? We have a bit of a cargo, " shouted Harris;"and it's gunpowder--every damned ton of it!"

The effect of this announcement may be imagined; my hand has not thecunning to reproduce it on paper; and if it had, it would shrink fromthe task. Mild men became brutes, brutal men, devils, women--God helpthem!--shrieking beldams for the most part. Never shall I forget themwith their streaming hair, their screaming open mouths, and the cruelascending fire glinting on their starting eyeballs!

Pell-mell they tumbled down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they racedamidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling throughthe seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon it, one overanother, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong into the flames. A handful remained on the poop, cowering and undone with terror. Uponthese turned Captain Harris, as Ready and I, stemming the torrent ofmaddened humanity, regained the poop ourselves. 

"For'ard with ye!" yelled the skipper. "The powder's underneath you inthe lazarette!"

They were gone like hunted sheep. And now abaft the flaming hatchwaythere were only we four surviving saloon passengers, the captain, hissteward, the Zambesi negro, and the quarter-master at the wheel. Thesteward and the black I observed putting stores aboard the captain's gigas it overhung the water from the stern davits. 

"Now, gentlemen, " said Harris to the two of us, "I must trouble you tostep forward with the rest. Senhor Santos insists on taking his chancealong with the young lady in my gig. I've told him the risk, but heinsists, and the gig'll hold no more. "

"But she must have a crew, and I can row. For God's sake take me, captain!" cried I; for Eva Denison sat weeping in her deck chair, and myheart bled faint at the thought of leaving her, I who loved her so, andmight die without ever telling her my love! Harris, however, stood firm. 

"There's that quartermaster and my steward, and Jose the nigger, " saidhe. "That's quite enough, Mr. Cole, for I ain't above an oar myself;but, by God, I'm skipper o' this here ship, and I'll skip her as long asI remain aboard!"

I saw his hand go to his belt; I saw the pistols stuck there formutineers. I looked at Santos. He answered me with his neutral shrug, and, by my soul, he struck a match and lit a cigarette in that hour oflife and death! Then last I looked at Ready; and he leant invertebrateover the rail, gasping pitiably from his exertions in regaining thepoop, a dying man once more. I pointed out his piteous state. 

"At least, " I whispered, "you won't refuse to take him?"

"Will there be anything to take?" said the captain brutally. 

Santos advanced leisurely, and puffed his cigarette over the poor wastedand exhausted frame. 

"It is for you to decide, captain, " said he cynically; "but this onewill make no deeference. Yes, I would take him. It will not be far, " headded, in a tone that was not the less detestable for being lowered. 

"Take them both!" moaned little Eva, putting in her first and last sweetword. 

"Then we all drown, Evasinha, " said her stepfather. "It is impossible. "

"We're too many for her as it is, " said the captain. "So for'ard withye, Mr. Cole, before it's too late. "

But my darling's brave word for me had fired my blood, and I turnedwith equal resolution on Harris and on the Portuguese. "I will go likea lamb, " said I, "if you will first give me five minutes' conversationwith Miss Denison. Otherwise I do not go; and as for the gig, you maytake me or leave me, as you choose. "

"What have you to say to her?" asked Santos, coming up to me, and againlowering his voice. 

I lowered mine still more. "That I love her!" I answered in a softecstasy. "That she may remember how I loved her, if I die!"

His shoulders shrugged a cynical acquiescence. 

"By all mins, senhor; there is no harm in that. "

I was at her side before another word could pass his withered lips. 

"Miss Denison, will you grant me five minutes', conversation? It may bethe last that we shall ever have together!"

Uncovering her face, she looked at me with a strange terror in her greateyes; then with a questioning light that was yet more strange, for in itthere was a wistfulness I could not comprehend. She suffered me to takeher hand, however, and to lead her unresisting to the weather rail. 

"What is it you have to say?" she asked me in her turn. "What is it thatyou--think?"

Her voice fell as though she must have the truth. 

"That we have all a very good chance, " said I heartily. 

"Is that all?" cried Eva, and my heart sank at her eager manner. 

She seemed at once disappointed and relieved. Could it be possible shedreaded a declaration which she had foreseen all along? My evil firstexperience rose up to warn me. No, I would not speak now; it was notime. If she loved me, it might make her love me less; better to trustto God to spare us both. 

"Yes, it is all, " I said doggedly. 

She drew a little nearer, hesitating. It was as though herdisappointment had gained on her relief. 

"Do you know what I thought you were going to say?"

"No, indeed. "

"Dare I tell you?"

"You can trust me. "

Her pale lips parted. Her great eyes shone. Another instant, and she hadtold me that which I would have given all but life itself to know. Butin that tick of time a quick step came behind me, and the light went outof the sweet face upturned to mine. 

"I cannot! I must not! Here is--that man!"

Senhor Santos was all smiles and rings of pale-blue smoke. 

"You will be cut off, friend Cole, " said he. "The fire is spreading. "

"Let it spread!" I cried, gazing my very soul into the young girl'seyes. "We have not finished our conversation. 

"We have!" said she, with sudden decision. "Go--go--for my sake--foryour own sake--go at once!"

She gave me her hand. I merely clasped it. And so I left her at therail-ah, heaven! how often we had argued on that very spot! So I lefther, with the greatest effort of all my life (but one); and yet inpassing, full as my heart was of love and self, I could not but lay ahand on poor Ready's shoulders. 

"God bless you, old boy!" I said to him. 

He turned a white face that gave me half an instant's pause. 

"It's all over with me this time, " he said. "But, I say, I was rightabout the cargo?"

And I heard a chuckle as I reached the ladder; but Ready was no longerin my mind; even Eva was driven out of it, as I stood aghast on thetop-most rung. 

CHAPTER III. TO THE WATER'S EDGE

It was not the new panic amidships that froze my marrow; it was not thatthe pinnace hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and had shot outthose who had swarmed aboard her before she was lowered, as a cartshoots a load of bricks. It was bad enough to see the whole boat-loadstruggling, floundering, sinking in the sea; for selfish eyes (and whichof us is all unselfish at such a time?) there was a worse sight yet; forI saw all this across an impassable gulf of fire. 

The quarter-deck had caught: it was in flames to port and starboard ofthe flaming hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck sound to thelips of that hideous mouth, with the hundred tongues shooting out andup. 

Could I jump it there? I sprang down and looked. It was only a few feetacross; but to leap through that living fire was to leap into eternity. I drew back instantly, less because my heart failed me, I may truly say, than because my common sense did not. 

Some were watching me, it seemed, across this hell. "The bulwarks!" theyscreamed. "Walk along the bulwarks!" I held up my hand in token thatI heard and understood and meant to act. And as I did their bidding Inoticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler eyes: the wind wasnot; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed ship was rolling in adead calm. 

Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before I dared tomove an inch. Then I tried it on my hands and knees, but the scorchedbulwarks burned me to the bone. And then I leapt up, desperate with thepain; and, with my tortured hands spread wide to balance me, I walkedthose few yards, between rising sea and falling fire, and falling seaand rising fire, as an acrobat walks a rope, and by God's grace withoutmishap. 

There was no time to think twice about my feat, or, indeed, aboutanything else that befell upon a night when each moment was morepregnant than the last. And yet I did think that those who hadencouraged me to attempt so perilous a trick might have welcomed mealive among them; they were looking at something else already; and thiswas what it was. 

One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the poop; he had abottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare we sawhim dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette. Harrisappeared to threaten him. What he said we could not hear for thedeep-drawn blast and the high staccato crackle of the blazing hold. Butwe saw the staggering steward offering him a drink; saw the glass flungnext instant in the captain's face, the blood running, a pistol drawn, fired without effect, and snatched away by the drunken mutineer. Nextinstant a smooth black cane was raining blow after blow on the man'shead. He dropped; the blows fell thick and heavy as before. He laywriggling; the Portuguese struck and struck until he lay quite still;then we saw Joaquin Santos kneel, and rub his stick carefully on thestill thing's clothes, as a man might wipe his boots. 

Curses burst from our throats; yet the fellow deserved to die. Nor, as Isay, had we time to waste two thoughts upon any one incident. Thislast had begun and ended in the same minute; in another we were at thestarboard gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the lowered long-boat. 

She lay safely on the water: how we thanked our gods for that! Lower andlower sank her gunwale as we dropped aboard her, with no more care thanthe Gadarene swine whose fate we courted. Discipline, order, method, common care, we brought none of these things with us from our floatingfurnace; but we fought to be first over the bulwarks, and in the bottomof the long-boat we fought again. 

And yet she held us all! All, that is, but a terror-stricken few, wholay along the jibboom like flies upon a stick: all but two or three morewhom we left fatally hesitating in the forechains: all but the selfishsavages who had been the first to perish in the pinnace, and onedistracted couple who had thrown their children into the kindly ocean, and jumped in after them out of their torment, locked for ever in eachother's arms. 

Yes! I saw more things on that starry night, by that blood-red glare, than I have told you in their order, and more things than I shall tellyou now. Blind would I gladly be for my few remaining years, if thatnight's horrors could be washed from these eyes for ever. I have said somuch, however, that in common candor I must say one thing more. I havespoken of selfish savages. God help me and forgive me! For by this timeI was one myself. 

In the long-boat we cannot have been less than thirty; the exact numberno man will ever know. But we shoved off without mischance; the chiefmate had the tiller; the third mate the boat-hook; and six or eightoars were at work, in a fashion, as we plunged among the great smoothsickening mounds and valleys of fathomless ink. 

Scarcely were we clear when the foremast dropped down on the fastenings, dashing the jib-boom into the water with its load of demented humanbeings. The mainmast followed by the board before we had doubled ourdistance from the wreck. Both trailed to port, where we could not seethem; and now the mizzen stood alone in sad and solitary grandeur, herflapping idle sails lighted up by the spreading conflagration, so thatthey were stamped very sharply upon the black add starry sky. But thewhole scene from the long-boat was one of startling brilliancy andhorror. The fire now filled the entire waist of the vessel, and thenoise of it was as the rumble and roar of a volcano. As for the light, I declare that it put many a star clean out, and dimmed the radianceof all the rest, as it flooded the sea for miles around, and a sea ofmolten glass reflected it. My gorge rose at the long, low billows-sleekas black satin--lifting and dipping in this ghastly glare. I preferredto keep my eyes upon the little ship burning like a tar barrel as thepicture grew. But presently I thanked God aloud: there was the gigswimming like a beetle over the bloodshot rollers in our wake. 

In our unspeakable gladness at being quit of the ship, some minutespassed before we discovered that the long-boat was slowly filling. Thewater was at our ankles before a man of us cried out, so fast were oureyes to the poor lost Lady Jermyn. Then all at once the ghastly factdawned upon us; and I think it was the mate himself who burst out cryinglike a child. I never ascertained, however, for I had kicked off myshoes and was busy baling with them. Others were hunting for the leak. But the mischief was as subtle as it was mortal--as though a plankhad started from end to end. Within and without the waters roseequally--then lay an instant level with our gunwales--then swamped us, oh! so slowly, that I thought we were never going to sink. It waslike getting inch by inch into your tub; I can feel it now, creeping, crawling up my back. "It's coming! O Christ!" muttered one as it came;to me it was a downright relief to be carried under at last. 

But then, thank God, I have always been a strong swimmer. The water waswarm and buoyant, and I came up like a cork, as I knew I should. I shookthe drops from my face, and there were the sweet stars once more; formany an eye they had gone Out for ever; and there the burning wreck. 

A man floundered near me, in a splutter of phosphorescence. I tried tohelp him, and in an instant he had me wildly round the neck. In the endI shook him off, poor devil, to his death. And he was the last I triedto aid: have I not said already what I was become?

In a little an oar floated my way: I threw my arms across it and grippedit with my chin as I swam. It relieved me greatly. Up and down I rodeamong the oily black hillocks; I was down when there was a sudden flareas though the sun had risen, and I saw still a few heads bobbing and afew arms waving frantically around me. At the same instant a terrificdetonation split the ears; and when I rose on the next bald billow, where the ship lay burning a few seconds before, there remained but ared-hot spine that hissed and dwindled for another minute, and then lefta blackness through which every star shone with redoubled brilliance. 

And now right and left splashed falling missiles; a new source of dangeror of temporary respite; to me, by a merciful Providence, it proved thelatter. 

Some heavy thing fell with a mighty splash right in front of me. A fewmore yards, and my brains had floated with the spume. As it was, theoar was dashed from under my armpits; in another moment they had found amore solid resting-place. 

It was a hen-coop, and it floated bars upwards like a boat. In thiscalm it might float for days. I climbed upon the bars-and the whole cagerolled over on top of me. 

Coming to the surface, I found to my joy that the hen-coop had righteditself; so now I climbed up again, but this time very slowly andgingerly; the balance was undisturbed, and I stretched myself cautiouslyalong the bars on my stomach. A good idea immediately occurred to me. Ihad jumped as a matter of course into the flannels which one naturallywears in the tropics. To their lightness I already owed my life, but thecommon cricket-belt which was part of the costume was the thing to whichI owe it most of all. Loosening this belt a little, as I tucked my toestenaciously under the endmost bar, I undid and passed the two ends underone of the middle bars, fastening the clasp upon the other side. If Icapsized now, well, we might go to the bottom together; otherwise thehen-coop and I should not part company in a hurry; and I thought, Ifelt, that she would float. 

Worn out as I was, and comparatively secure for the moment, I will notsay that I slept; but my eyes closed, and every fibre rested, as I roseand slid with the smooth, long swell. Whether I did indeed hear voices, curses, cries, I cannot say positively to this day. I only know that Iraised my head and looked sharply all ways but the way I durst not lookfor fear of an upset. And, again, I thought I saw first a tiny flame, and then a tinier glow; and as my head drooped, and my eyes closedagain, I say I thought I smelt tobacco; but this, of course, was myimagination supplying all the links from one. 

CHAPTER IV. THE SILENT SEA

Remember (if indeed there be any need to remind you) that it is aflagrant landsman who is telling you this tale. Nothing know I ofseamanship, save what one could not avoid picking up on the round voyageof the Lady Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe. I may be toldthat I have burned that devoted vessel as nothing ever burned on land orsea. I answer that I write of what I saw, and that is not altered by amiscalled spar or a misunderstood manouvre. But now I am aboard a craftI handle for myself, and must make shift to handle a second time withthis frail pen. 

The hen-coop was some six feet long, by eighteen or twenty inches inbreadth and depth. It was simply a long box with bars in lieu of a lid;but it was very strongly built. 

I recognized it as one of two which had stood lashed against either railof the Lady Jermyn's poop; there the bars had risen at right angles tothe deck; now they lay horizontal, a gridiron six feet long-and my bed. And as each particular bar left its own stripe across my wearied body, and yet its own comfort in my quivering heart, another day broke overthe face of the waters, and over me. 

Discipline, what there was of it originally, had been the very firstthing to perish aboard our ill-starred ship; the officers, I am afraid, were not much better than poor Ready made them out (thanks to Bendigoand Ballarat), and little had been done in true ship-shape style allnight. All hands had taken their spell at everything as the fancy seizedthem; not a bell had been struck from first to last; and I can onlyconjecture that the fire raged four or five hours, from the fact thatit was midnight by my watch when I left it on my cabin drawers, and thatthe final extinction of the smouldering keel was so soon followed by thefirst deep hint of dawn. The rest took place with the trite rapidity ofthe equatorial latitudes. It had been my foolish way to pooh-pooh theold saying that there is no twilight in the tropics. I saw more truth init as I lay lonely on this heaving waste. 

The stars were out; the sea was silver; the sun was up. 

And oh! the awful glory of that sunrise! It was terrific; it wassickening; my senses swam. Sunlit billows smooth and sinister, without acrest, without a sound; miles and miles of them as I rose; an oily graveamong them as I fell. Hill after hill of horror, valley after valley ofdespair! The face of the waters in petty but eternal unrest; and nowthe sun must shine to set it smiling, to show me its cruel ceaselessmouthings, to reveal all but the ghastlier horrors underneath. 

How deep was it? I fell to wondering! Not that it makes any differencewhether you drown in one fathom or in ten thousand, whether you fallfrom a balloon or from the attic window. But the greater depth ordistance is the worse to contemplate; and I was as a man hanging by hishands so high above the world, that his dangling feet cover countries, continents; a man who must fall very soon, and wonders how long he willbe falling, falling; and how far his soul will bear his body company. 

In time I became more accustomed to the sun upon this heaving void; lessfrightened, as a child is frightened, by the mere picture. And I havestill the impression that, as hour followed hour since the falling ofthe wind, the nauseous swell in part subsided. I seemed less often onan eminence or in a pit; my glassy azure dales had gentler slopes, or adistemper was melting from my eyes. 

At least I know that I had now less work to keep my frail ship trim, though this also may have come by use and practice. In the beginning oneor other of my legs had been for ever trailing in the sea, to keep thehen-coop from rolling over the other way; in fact, as I understand theysteer the toboggan in Canada, so I my little bark. Now the necessity forthis was gradually decreasing; whatever the cause, it was the greatestmercy the day had brought me yet. With less strain on the attention, however, there was more upon the mind. No longer forced to exert somemuscle twice or thrice a minute, I had time to feel very faint, and yettime to think. My soul flew homing to its proper prison. I was no longerany unit at unequal strife with the elements; instincts common to mykind were no longer my only stimulus. I was my poor self again; it wasmy own little life, and no other, that I wanted to go on living; andyet I felt vaguely there was some special thing I wished to live for, something that had not been very long in my ken; something that hadperhaps nerved and strengthened me all these hours. What, then, could itbe? I could not think. 

For moments or for minutes I wondered stupidly, dazed as I was. ThenI remembered--and the tears gushed to my eyes. How could I ever haveforgotten? I deserved it all, all, all! To think that many a time wemust have sat together on this very coop! I kissed its blistering edgeat the thought, and my tears ran afresh, as though they never wouldstop. 

Ah! how I thought of her as that cruel day's most cruel sun climbedhigher and higher in the flawless flaming vault. A pocket-handkerchiefof all things had remained in my trousers pocket through fire and water;I knotted it on the old childish plan, and kept it ever drenched uponthe head that had its own fever to endure as well. Eva Denison! EvaDenison! I was talking to her in the past, I was talking to her in thefuture, and oh! how different were the words, the tone! Yes, I hatedmyself for having forgotten her; but I hated God for having given herback to my tortured brain; it made life so many thousandfold more sweet, and death so many thousandfold more bitter. 

She was saved in the gig. Sweet Jesus, thanks for that! But I--I wasdying a lingering death in mid-ocean; she would never know how I lovedher, I, who could only lecture her when I had her at my side. 

Dying? No--no--not yet! I must live--live--live--to tell my darling howI had loved her all the time. So I forced myself from my lethargy ofdespair and grief; and this thought, the sweetest thought of all mylife, may or may not have been my unrealized stimulus ere now; it was invery deed my most conscious and perpetual spur henceforth until the end. 

From this onward, while my sense stood by me, I was practical, resourceful, alert. It was now high-noon, and I had eaten nothing sincedinner the night before. How clearly I saw the long saloon table, onlylaid, however, abaft the mast; the glittering glass, the cool whitenapery, the poor old dried dessert in the green dishes! Earlier, thishad occupied my mind an hour; now I dismissed it in a moment; there wasEva, I must live for her; there must be ways of living at least a day ortwo without sustenance, and I must think of them. 

So I undid that belt of mine which fastened me to my gridiron, and Istraddled my craft with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which I neveronce had thought until now. Then I tightened the belt about my hollowbody, and just sat there with the problem. The past hour I had beenwholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but that was overnow, and I sat as upright as possible, seeking greedily for a sail. Ofcourse I saw none. Had we indeed been off our course before the firebroke out? Had we burned to cinders aside and apart from the regulartrack of ships? Then, though my present valiant mood might ignorethe adverse chances, they were as one hundred to a single chance ofdeliverance. Our burning had brought no ship to our succor; and howshould I, a mere speck amid the waves, bring one to mine?

Moreover, I was all but motionless; I was barely drifting at all. ThisI saw from a few objects which were floating around me now at noon; theyhad been with me when the high sun rose. One was, I think, the veryoar which had been my first support; another was a sailor's cap; butanother, which floated nearer, was new to me, as though it had come tothe surface while my eyes were turned inwards. And this was clearly thecase; for the thing was a drowned and bloated corpse. 

It fascinated me, though not with extraordinary horror; it came too lateto do that. I thought I recognized the man's back. I fancied it wasthe mate who had taken charge of the long-boat. Was I then the singlesurvivor of those thirty souls? I was still watching my poor lostcomrade, when that happened to him against which even I was not proof. Through the deep translucent blue beneath me a slim shape glided; threesmaller fish led the way; they dallied an instant a fathom under myfeet, which were snatched up, with what haste you may imagine; then onthey went to surer prey. 

He turned over; his dreadful face stared upwards; it was the chiefofficer, sure enough. Then he clove the water with a rush, his dead handwaved, the last of him to disappear; and I had a new horror to thinkover for my sins. His poor fingers were all broken and beaten to a pulp. 

The voices of the night came back to me--the curses and the cries. Yes, I must have heard them. In memory now I recognized the voice of thechief mate, but there again came in the assisted imagination. Yet Iwas not so sure of this as before. I thought of Santos and his horribleheavy cane. Good God! she was in the power of that! I must live for Evaindeed; must save myself to save and protect my innocent and helplessgirl. 

Again I was a man; stronger than ever was the stimulus now, louder thanever the call on every drop of true man's blood in my perishing frame. It should not perish! It should not!

Yet my throat was parched; my lips were caked; my frame was hollow. Veryweak I was already; without sustenance I should surely die. But as yetI was far enough from death, or I had done disdaining the means of lifethat all this time lay ready to my hand. A number of dead fowls impartedballast to my little craft. 

Yet I could not look at them in all these hours; or I could look, butthat was all. So I must sit up one hour more, and keep a sharper eyethan ever for the tiniest glimmer of a sail. To what end, I often askedmyself? I might see them; they would never see me. 

Then my eyes would fail, and "you squeamish fool!" I said at intervals, until my tongue failed to articulate; it had swollen so in my mouth. Flying fish skimmed the water like thick spray; petrels were so few thatI could count them; another shark swam round me for an hour. In suddenpanic I dashed my knuckles on the wooden bars, to get at a duck to givethe monster for a sop. My knuckles bled. I held them to my mouth. Mycleaving tongue wanted more. The duck went to the shark; a few minutesmore and I had made my own vile meal as well. 

CHAPTER V. MY REWARD

The sun declined; my shadow broadened on die waters; and now I felt thatif my cockle-shell could live a little longer, why, so could I. 

I had got at the fowls without further hurt. Some of the bars took out, I discovered how. And now very carefully I got my legs in, and knelt;but the change of posture was not worth the risk one ran for it; therewas too much danger of capsizing, and failing to free oneself before shefilled and sank. 

With much caution I began breaking the bars, one by one; it was hardenough, weak as I was; my thighs were of more service than my hands. 

But at last I could sit, the grating only covering me from the kneesdownwards. And the relief of that outweighed all the danger, which, as Idiscovered to my untold joy, was now much less than it had been before. I was better ballast than the fowls. 

These I had attached to the lashings which had been blown asunder by theexplosion; at one end of the coop the ring-bolt had been torn clean out, but at the other it was the cordage that had parted. To the frayedends I tied my fowls by the legs, with the most foolish pride in my owncunning. Do you not see? It would keep them fresh for my use, and it wasa trick I had read of in no book; it was all my own. 

So evening fell and found me hopeful and even puffed up; but yet, nosail. 

Now, however, I could lie back, and use had given me a strange sense ofsafety; besides, I think I knew, I hope I felt, that the hen-coop was inother Hands than mine. 

All is reaction in the heart of man; light follows darkness nowhere moresurely than in that hidden self, and now at sunset it was my heart'shigh-noon. Deep peace pervaded me as I lay outstretched in my narrowrocking bed, as it might be in my coffin; a trust in my Maker's willto save me if that were for the best, a trust in His final wisdom andloving-kindness, even though this night should be my last on earth. Formyself I was resigned, and for others I must trust Him no less. Who wasI to constitute myself the protector of the helpless, when He was inHis Heaven? Such was my sunset mood; it lasted a few minutes, and then, without radically changing, it became more objective. 

The west was a broadening blaze of yellow and purple and red. I cannotdescribe it to you. If you have seen the sun set in the tropics, youwould despise my description; and, if not, I for one could never makeyou see it. Suffice it that a petrel wheeled somewhere between deepeningcarmine and paling blue, and it took my thoughts off at an earthytangent. I thanked God there were no big sea-birds in these latitudes;no molly-hawks, no albatrosses, no Cape-hens. I thought of an albatrossthat I had caught going out. Its beak and talons were at the bottomwith the charred remains of the Lady Jermyn. But I could see themstill, could feel them shrewdly in my mind's flesh; and so to the oldsuperstition, strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem whichI, with my special experience, not unnaturally consider the greatestpoem ever penned. 

But I did not know it then as I do now--and how the lines eluded me! Iseemed to see them in the book, yet I could not read the words!

 "Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. "

That, of course, came first (incorrectly); and it reminded me of mythirst, which the blood of the fowls had so very partially appeased. Isee now that it is lucky I could recall but little more. Experience isless terrible than realization, and that poem makes me realize what Iwent through as memory cannot. It has verses which would have driven memad. On the other hand, the exhaustive mental search for them distractedmy thoughts until the stars were back in the sky; and now I had a newoccupation, saying to myself all the poetry I could remember, especiallythat of the sea; for I was a bookish fellow even then. But I neverwas anything of a scholar. It is odd therefore, that the one appositepassage which recurred to me in its entirety was in hexameters andpentameters:

 Me miserum, quanti montes volvuntur aquarum! Jam jam tacturos sidera summa putes. Quantae diducto subsidunt aequore valles! Jam jam tacturas Tartara nigra putes. Quocunque adspicio, nihil est nisi pontus et aether; Fluctibus hic tumidis, nubibus ille minax. . . . 

More there was of it in my head; but this much was an accurate statementof my case; and yet less so now (I was thankful to reflect) than inthe morning, when every wave was indeed a mountain, and its trough aTartarus. I had learnt the lines at school; nay, they had formed my veryearliest piece of Latin repetition. And how sharply I saw the room Isaid them in, the man I said them to, ever since my friend! I figuredhim even now hearing Ovid rep. , the same passage in the same room. And Ilay saying it on a hen-coop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean!

At last I fell into a deep sleep, a long unconscious holiday of thesoul, undefiled by any dream. 

They say that our dreaming is done as we slowly wake; then was I out ofthe way of it that night, for a sudden violent rocking awoke me inone horrid instant. I made it worse by the way I started to a sittingposture. I had shipped some water. I was shipping more. Yet all aroundthe sea was glassy; whence then the commotion? As my ship came trimagain, and I saw that my hour was not yet, the cause occurred to me; andmy heart turned so sick that it was minutes before I had the courage totest my theory. 

It was the true one. 

A shark had been at my trailing fowls; had taken the bunch of themtogether, dragging the legs from my loose fastenings. Lucky they hadbeen no stronger! Else had I been dragged down to perdition too. 

Lucky, did I say? The refinement of cruelty rather; for now I hadneither meat nor drink; my throat was a kiln; my tongue a flame; andanother day at hand. 

The stars were out; the sea was silver; the sun was up!

 . . . . . 

Hours passed. 

I was waiting now for my delirium. 

It came in bits. 

I was a child. I was playing on the lawn at home. I was back on theblazing sea. 

I was a schoolboy saying my Ovid; then back once more. 

The hen-coop was the Lady Jermyn. I was at Eva Denison's side. They weremarrying us on board. The ship's bell was ringing for us; a guitar inthe background burlesqued the Wedding March under skinny fingers; theair was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they raised a pall of smokeabove the mastheads, they set fire to the ship; smoke and flame coveredthe sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame filled the universe; the seadried up, and I was left lying in its bed, lying in my coffin, withred-hot teeth, because the sun blazed right above them, and my witheredlips were drawn back from them for ever. 

So once more I came back to my living death; too weak now to carry afinger to the salt water and back to my mouth; too weak to think of Eva;too weak to pray any longer for the end, to trouble or to care any more. 

Only so tired. 

 . . . . . 

Death has no more terrors for me. I have supped the last horror of theworst death a man can die. You shall hear now for what I was delivered;you shall read of my reward. 

My floating coffin was many things in turn; a railway carriage, apleasure boat on the Thames, a hammock under the trees; last of all itwas the upper berth in a not very sweet-smelling cabin, with a clatterof knives and forks near at hand, and a very strong odor of onions inthe Irish stew. 

My hand crawled to my head; both felt a wondrous weight; and my headwas covered with bristles no longer than those on my chin, only lessstubborn. 

"Where am I?" I feebly asked. 

The knives and forks clattered on, and presently I burst out cryingbecause they had not heard me, and I knew that I could never make themhear. Well, they heard my sobs, and a huge fellow came with his mouthfull, and smelling like a pickle bottle. 

"Where am I?"

"Aboard the brig Eliza, Liverpool, homeward bound; glad to see them eyesopen. "

"Have I been here long?"

"Matter o' ten days. "

"Where did you find me?"

"Floating in a hen-coop; thought you was a dead 'un. "

"Do you know what ship?"

"Do we know? No, that's what you've got to tell us!"

"I can't, " I sighed, too weak to wag my head upon the pillow. 

The man went to my cabin door. 

"Here's a go, " said he; "forgotten the name of his blessed ship, he has. Where's that there paper, Mr. Bowles? There's just a chance it may bethe same. "

"I've got it, sir. "

"Well, fetch it along, and come you in, Mr. Bowles; likely you may thinko' somethin'. "

A reddish, hook-nosed man, with a jaunty, wicked look, came and smiledupon me in the friendliest fashion; the smell of onions became more thanI knew how to endure. 

"Ever hear of the ship Lady Jermyn?" asked the first corner, winking atthe other. 

I thought very hard, the name did sound familiar; but no, I could nothonestly say that I had beard it before. 

The captain looked at his mate. 

"It was a thousand to one, " said he; "still we may as well try him withthe other names. Ever heard of Cap'n Harris, mister?"

"Not that I know of. "

"Of Saunderson-stooard?"

"No. "

"Or Crookes-quartermaster. "

"Never. "

"Nor yet of Ready--a passenger?"

"No. "

"It's no use goin' on, " said the captain folding up the paper. 

"None whatever, sir, " said the mate

"Ready! Ready!" I repeated. "I do seem to have heard that name before. Won't you give me another chance?"

The paper was unfolded with a shrug. 

"There was another passenger of the name of San-Santos. Dutchman, seemin'ly. Ever heard o' him?"

My disappointment was keen. I could not say that I had. Yet I would notswear that I had not. 

"Oh, won't you? Well, there's only one more chance. Ever heard of MissEva Denison--"

"By God, yes! Have you?"

I was sitting bolt upright in my bunk. The skipper's beard dropped uponhis chest. 

"Bless my soul! The last name o' the lot, too!"

"Have you heard of her?" I reiterated. 

"Wait a bit, my lad! Not so fast. Lie down again and tell me who shewas. "

"Who she was?" I screamed. "I want to know where she is!"

"I can't hardly say, " said the captain awkwardly. "We found the gig o'the Lady Jermyn the week arter we found you, bein' becalmed like; therewasn't no lady aboard her, though. "

"Was there anybody?"

"Two dead 'uns--an' this here paper. "

"Let me see it!"

The skipper hesitated. 

"Hadn't you better wait a bit?"

"No, no; for Christ's sake let me see the worst; do you think I can'tread it in your face?"

I could--I did. I made that plain to them, and at last I had thepaper smoothed out upon my knees. It was a short statement of the lastsufferings of those who had escaped in the gig, and there was nothingin it that I did not now expect. They had buried Ready first--then mydarling--then her step-father. The rest expected to follow fast enough. It was all written plainly, on a sheet of the log-book, in differenttrembling hands. Captain Harris had gone next; and two had beendiscovered dead. 

How long I studied that bit of crumpled paper, with the salt spraystill sparkling on it faintly, God alone knows. All at once a peal ofnightmare laughter rattled through the cabin. My deliverers startedback. The laugh was mine. 

CHAPTER VI. THE SOLE SURVIVOR

A few weeks later I landed in England, I, who no longer desired to setfoot on any land again. 

At nine-and-twenty I was gaunt and gray; my nerves were shattered, myheart was broken; and my face showed it without let or hindrance fromthe spirit that was broken too. Pride, will, courage, and endurance, allthese had expired in my long and lonely battle with the sea. They hadkept me alive-for this. And now they left me naked to mine enemies. 

For every hand seemed raised against me, though in reality it was thehand of fellowship that the world stretched out, and the other was thereading of a jaundiced eye. I could not help it: there was a poison inmy veins that made me all ingratitude and perversity. The world welcomedme back, and I returned the compliment by sulking like the recapturedrunaway I was at heart. The world showed a sudden interest in me; so Itook no further interest in the world, but, on the contrary, resentedits attentions with unreasonable warmth and obduracy; and my would-befriends I regarded as my very worst enemies. The majority, I feel sure, meant but well and kindly by the poor survivor. But the survivor couldnot forget that his name was still in the newspapers, nor blink the factthat he was an unworthy hero of the passing hour. And he sufferedenough from brazenly meddlesome and self-seeking folk, from impudent andinquisitive intruders, to justify some suspicion of old acquaintancessuddenly styling themselves old friends, and of distant connectionsnewly and unduly eager to claim relationship. Many I misjudged, and havelong known it. On the whole, however, I wonder at that attitude of mineas little as I approve of it. 

If I had distinguished myself in any other way, it would have been adifferent thing. It was the fussy, sentimental, inconsiderateinterest in one thrown into purely accidental and necessarily painfulprominence--the vulgarization of an unspeakable tragedy--that my soulabhorred. I confess that I regarded it from my own unique and selfishpoint of view. What was a thrilling matter to the world was a torturingmemory to me. The quintessence of the torture was, moreover, my ownsecret. It was not the loss of the Lady Jermyn that I could not bear tospeak about; it was my own loss; but the one involved the other. Myloss apart, however, it was plain enough to dwell upon experiences soterrible and yet so recent as those which I had lived to tell. I didwhat I considered my duty to the public, but I certainly did no more. Myreticence was rebuked in the papers that made the most of me, but wouldfain have made more. And yet I do not think that I was anything butdocile with those who had a manifest right to question me; to theowners, and to other interested persons, with whom I was confronted onone pretext or another, I told my tale as fully and as freely as I havetold it here, though each telling hurt more than the last. That wasnecessary and unavoidable; it was the private intrusions which Iresented with all the spleen the sea had left me in exchange for thequalities it had taken away. 

Relatives I had as few as misanthropist could desire; but fromself-congratulation on the fact, on first landing, I soon came to keenregret. They at least would have sheltered me from spies and busybodies;they at least would have secured the peace and privacy of one who wasno hero in fact or spirit, whose noblest deed was a piece of selfpreservation which he wished undone with all his heart. 

Self-consciousness no doubt multiplied my flattering assailants. Ihave said that my nerves were shattered. I may have imagined much andexaggerated the rest. Yet what truth there was in my suspicions youshall duly see. I felt sure that I was followed in the street, and myevery movement dogged by those to whom I would not condescend to turnand look. Meanwhile, I had not the courage to go near my club, andthe Temple was a place where I was accosted in every court, effusivelycongratulated on the marvellous preservation of my stale spoilt life, and invited right and left to spin my yarn over a quiet pipe! Well, perhaps such invitations were not so common as they have grown in mymemory; nor must you confuse my then feelings on all these matters withthose which I entertain as I write. I have grown older, and, I hope, something kindlier and wiser since then. Yet to this day I cannot blamemyself for abandoning my chambers and avoiding my club. 

For a temporary asylum I pitched upon a small, quiet, empty, privatehotel which I knew of in Charterhouse Square. Instantly the room nextmine became occupied. 

All the first night I imagined I heard voices talking about me in thatroom next door. It was becoming a disease with me. Either I was beingdogged, watched, followed, day and night, indoors and out, or I was thevictim of a very ominous hallucination. That night I never closed an eyenor lowered my light. In the morning I took a four-wheel cab anddrove straight to Harley Street; and, upon my soul, as I stood on thespecialist's door-step, I could have sworn I saw the occupant of theroom next mine dash by me in a hansom!

"Ah!" said the specialist; "so you cannot sleep; you hear voices;you fancy you are being followed in the street. You don't think thesefancies spring entirely from the imagination? Not entirely--just so. Andyou keep looking behind you, as though somebody were at your elbow; andyou prefer to sit with your back close to the wall. Just so--just so. Distressing symptoms, to be sure, but--but hardly to be wondered at in aman who has come through your nervous strain. " A keen professional lightglittered in his eyes. "And almost commonplace, " he added, smiling, "compared with the hallucinations you must have suffered from on thathen-coop! Ah, my dear sir, the psychological interest of your case isvery great!"

"It may be, " said I, brusquely. "But I come to you to get that hen-coopout of my head, not to be reminded of it. Everybody asks me about thedamned thing, and you follow everybody else. I wish it and I were at thebottom of the sea together!"

This speech had the effect of really interesting the doctor in mypresent condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation andextreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackestdespair. Instead of offending my gentleman I had put him on his mettle, and for half an hour he honored me with the most exhaustive inquisitionever elicited from a medical man. His panacea was somewhat in the natureof an anti-climax, but at least it had the merits of simplicity andof common sense. A change of air--perfect quiet--say a cottage in thecountry--not too near the sea. And he shook my hand kindly when I left. 

"Keep up your heart, my dear sir, " said he. "Keep up your courage andyour heart. "

"My heart!" I cried. "It's at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. "

He was the first to whom I had said as much. He was a stranger. What didit matter? And, oh, it was so true--so true. 

Every day and all day I was thinking of my love; every hour and allhours she was before me with her sunny hair and young, young face. Herwistful eyes were gazing into mine continually. Their wistfulness Ihad never realized at the time; but now I did; and I saw it for what itseemed always to have been, the soft, sad, yearning look of one fatedto die young. So young--so young! And I might live to be an old man, mourning her. 

That I should never love again I knew full well. This time there was nomistake. I have implied, I believe, that it was for another woman I fledoriginally to the diggings. Well, that one was still unmarried, and whenthe papers were full of me she wrote me a letter which I now believe tohave been merely kind. At the time I was all uncharitableness; but wordsof mine would fail to tell you how cold this letter left me; it was as acandle lighted in the full blaze of the sun. 

With all my bitterness, however, you must not suppose that I had quitelost the feelings which had inspired me at sunset on the lonely ocean, while my mind still held good. I had been too near my Maker ever to losethose feelings altogether. They were with me in the better moments ofthese my worst days. I trusted His wisdom still. There was a reason foreverything; there were reasons for all this. I alone had been saved outof all those souls who sailed from Melbourne in the Lady Jermyn. Whyshould I have been the favored one; I with my broken heart and nowlonely life? Some great inscrutable reason there must be; at my worstI did not deny that. But neither did I puzzle my sick brain with thereason. I just waited for it to be revealed to me, if it were God's willever to reveal it. And that I conceive to be the one spirit in which aman may contemplate, with equal sanity and reverence, the mysteries andthe miseries of his life. 

CHAPTER VII. I FIND A FRIEND

The night after I consulted the specialist I was quite determined tosleep. I had laid in a bundle of the daily papers. No country cottagewas advertised to let but I knew of it by evening, and about all thelikely ones I had already written. The scheme occupied my thoughts. Trout-fishing was a desideratum. I would take my rod and plenty ofbooks, would live simply and frugally, and it should make a new man ofme by Christmas. It was now October. I went to sleep thinking of autumntints against an autumn sunset. It must have been very early, certainlynot later than ten o'clock; the previous night I had not slept at all. 

Now, this private hotel of mine was a very old fashioned house, dark anddingy all day long, with heavy old chandeliers and black old oak, anddead flowers in broken flower-pots surrounding a grimy grass-plot in therear. On this latter my bedroom window looked; and never am I likely toforget the vile music of the cats throughout my first long wakeful nightthere. The second night they actually woke me; doubtless they had beenbusy long enough, but it was all of a sudden that I heard them, and laylistening for more, wide awake in an instant. My window had been verysoftly opened, and the draught fanned my forehead as I held my breath. 

A faint light glimmered through a ground-glass pane over the door; andwas dimly reflected by the toilet mirror, in its usual place against thewindow. This mirror I saw moved, and next moment I had bounded from bed. 

The mirror fell with a horrid clatter: the toilet-table followed it witha worse: the thief had gone as he had come ere my toes halted achingamid the debris. 

A useless little balcony--stone slab and iron railing--jutted out frommy window. I thought I saw a hand on the railing, another on the slab, then both together on the lower level for one instant before theydisappeared. There was a dull yet springy thud on the grass below. Thenno more noise but the distant thunder of the traffic, and the one thatwoke me, until the window next mine was thrown up. 

"What the devil's up?"

The voice was rich, cheery, light-hearted, agreeable; all that my ownwas not as I answered "Nothing!" for this was not the first time mynext-door neighbor had tried to scrape acquaintance with me. 

"But surely, sir, I heard the very dickens of a row?"

"You may have done. "

"I was afraid some one had broken into your room!"

"As a matter of fact, " said I, put to shame by the undiminishedgood-humor of my neighbor, "some one did; but he's gone now, so let himbe. "

"Gone? Not he! He's getting over that wall. After him--after him!" Andthe head disappeared from the window next mine. 

I rushed into the corridor, and was just in time to intercept asingularly handsome young fellow, at whom I had hardly taken the troubleto look until now. He was in full evening dress, and his face wasradiant with the spirit of mischief and adventure. 

"For God's sake, sir, " I whispered, "let this matter rest. I shall haveto come forward if you persist, and Heaven knows I have been before thepublic quite enough!"

His dark eyes questioned me an instant, then fell as though he would notdisguise that he recollected and understood. I liked him for his goodtaste. I liked him for his tacit sympathy, and better still for theamusing disappointment in his gallant, young face. 

"I am sorry to have robbed you of a pleasant chase, " said I. "At onetime I should have been the first to join you. But, to tell you thetruth, I've had enough excitement lately to last me for my life. "

"I can believe that, " he answered, with his fine eyes full upon me. How strangely I had misjudged him! I saw no vulgar curiosity in hisflattering gaze, but rather that very sympathy of which I stood in need. I offered him my hand. 

"It is very good of you to give in, " I said. "No one else has heard athing, you see. I shall look for another opportunity of thanking youto-morrow. "

"No, no!" cried he, "thanks be hanged, but--but, I say, if I promiseyou not to bore you about things--won't you drink a glass ofbrandy-and-water in my room before you turn in again?"

Brandy-and-water being the very thing I needed, and this young manpleasing me more and more, I said that I would join him with all myheart, and returned to my room for my dressing-gown and slippers. Tofind them, however, I had to light my candles, when the first thingI saw was the havoc my marauder had left behind him. The mirror wascracked across; the dressing-table had lost a leg; and both lay flat, with my brushes and shaving-table, and the foolish toilet crockery whichno one uses (but I should have to replace) strewn upon the carpet. Butone thing I found that had not been there before: under the window laya formidable sheath-knife without its sheath. I picked it up withsomething of a thrill, which did not lessen when I felt its edge. Thething was diabolically sharp. I took it with me to show my neighbor, whom I found giving his order to the boots; it seemed that it was barelymidnight, and that he had only just come in when the clatter took placein my room. 

"Hillo!" he cried, when the man was gone, and I produced my trophy. "Why, what the mischief have you got there?"

"My caller's card, " said I. "He left it behind him. Feel the edge. "

I have seldom seen a more indignant face than the one which my newacquaintance bent over the weapon, as he held it to the light, and ranhis finger along the blade. He could have not frowned more heavily if hehad recognized the knife. 

"The villains!" he muttered. "The damned villains!"

"Villains?" I queried. "Did you see more than one of them, then?"

"Didn't you?" he asked quickly. "Yes, yes, to be sure! There was atleast one other beggar skulking down below. " He stood looking at me, theknife in his hand, though mine was held out for it. "Don't you think, Mr. Cole, that it's our duty to hand this over to the police? I--I'veheard of other cases about these Inns of Court. There's evidently a gangof them, and this knife might convict the lot; there's no saying; anywayI think the police should have it. If you like I'll take it to ScotlandYard myself, and hand it over without mentioning your name. "

"Oh, if you keep my name out of it, " said I, "and say nothing aboutit here in the hotel, you may do what you like, and welcome! It's theproper course, no doubt; only I've had publicity enough, and wouldsooner have felt that blade in my body than set my name going again inthe newspapers. "

"I understand, " he said, with his well-bred sympathy, which never wenta shade too far; and he dropped the weapon into a drawer, as the bootsentered with the tray. In a minute he had brewed two steaming jorums ofspirits-and-water; as he handed me one, I feared he was going to drinkmy health, or toast my luck; but no, he was the one man I had met whoseemed, as he said, to "understand. " Nevertheless, he had his toast. 

"Here's confusion to the criminal classes in general, " he cried; "butdeath and damnation to the owners of that knife!"

And we clinked tumblers across the little oval table in the middle ofthe room. It was more of a sitting-room than mine; a bright fire wasburning in the grate, and my companion insisted on my sitting over itin the arm-chair, while for himself he fetched the one from his bedside, and drew up the table so that our glasses should be handy. He thenproduced a handsome cigar-case admirably stocked, and we smoked andsipped in the cosiest fashion, though without exchanging many words. 

You may imagine my pleasure in the society of a youth, equally charmingin looks, manners and address, who had not one word to say to me aboutthe Lady Jermyn or my hen-coop. It was unique. Yet such, I suppose, was my native contrariety, that I felt I could have spoken of thecatastrophe to this very boy with less reluctance than to any othercreature whom I had encountered since my deliverance. He seemed so fullof silent sympathy: his consideration for my feelings was so marked andyet so unobtrusive. I have called him a boy. I am apt to write as theold man I have grown, though I do believe I felt older then than now. In any case my young friend was some years my junior. I afterwards foundout that he was six-and-twenty. 

I have also called him handsome. He was the handsomest man that I haveever met, had the frankest face, the finest eyes, the brightest smile. Yet his bronzed forehead was low, and his mouth rather impudent and boldthan truly strong. And there was a touch of foppery about him, in theenormous white tie and the much-cherished whiskers of the fifties, whichwas only redeemed by that other touch of devilry that he had shown mein the corridor. By the rich brown of his complexion, as well as by acertain sort of swagger in his walk, I should have said that he was anaval officer ashore, had he not told me who he was of his own accord. 

"By the way, " he said, "I ought to give you my name. It's Rattray, of one of the many Kirby Halls in this country. My one's down inLancashire. "

"I suppose there's no need to tell my name?" said I, less sadly, Idaresay, than I had ever yet alluded to the tragedy which I alonesurvived. It was an unnecessary allusion, too, as a reference to theforegoing conversation will show. 

"Well, no!" said he, in his frank fashion; "I can't honestly say thereis. "

We took a few puffs, he watching the fire, and I his firelit face. 

"It must seem strange to you to be sitting with the only man who livedto tell the tale!"

The egotism of this speech was not wholly gratuitous. I thought it didseem strange to him: that a needless constraint was put upon him byexcessive consideration for my feelings. I desired to set him at hisease as he had set me at mine. On the contrary, he seemed quite startledby my remark. 

"It is strange, " he said, with a shudder, followed by the biggest sipof brandy-and-water he had taken yet. "It must have beenhorrible--horrible!" he added to himself, his dark eyes staring into thefire. 

"Ah!" said I, "it was even more horrible than you suppose or can everimagine. "

I was not thinking of myself, nor of my love, nor of any particularincident of the fire that still went on burning in my brain. My tone wasdoubtless confidential, but I was meditating no special confidence whenmy companion drew one with his next words. These, however, came after apause, in which my eyes had fallen from his face, but in which I heardhim emptying his glass. 

"What do you mean?" he whispered. "That there were othercircumstances--things which haven't got into the papers?"

"God knows there were, " I answered, my face in my hands; and, mygrief brought home to me, there I sat with it in the presence of thatstranger, without compunction and without shame. 

He sprang up and paced the room. His tact made me realize my weakness, and I was struggling to overcome it when he surprised me by suddenlystopping and laying a rather tremulous hand upon my shoulder. 

"You--It wouldn't do you any good to speak of those circumstances, Isuppose?" he faltered. 

"No: not now: no good at all. "

"Forgive me, " he said, resuming his walk. "I had no business--I felt sosorry--I cannot tell you how I sympathize! And yet--I wonder if you willalways feel so?"

"No saying how I shall feel when I am a man again, " said I. "You seewhat I am at present. " And, pulling myself together, I rose to find mynew friend quite agitated in his turn. 

"I wish we had some more brandy, " he sighed. "I'm afraid it's too lateto get any now. "

"And I'm glad of it, " said I. "A man in my state ought not to look atspirits, or he may never look past them again. Thank goodness, there areother medicines. Only this morning I consulted the best man on nerves inLondon. I wish I'd gone to him long ago. "

"Harley Street, was it?"

"Yes. "

"Saw you on his doorstep, by Jove!" cried Rattray at once. "I wasdriving over to Hampstead, and I thought it was you. Well, what's theprescription?"

In my satisfaction at finding that he had not been dogging meintentionally (though I had forgotten the incident till he reminded meof it), I answered his question with unusual fulness. 

"I should go abroad, " said Rattray. "But then, I always am abroad; it'sonly the other day I got back from South America, and I shall up anchoragain before this filthy English winter sets in. "

Was he a sailor after all, or only a well-to-do wanderer on the face ofthe earth? He now mentioned that he was only in England for a few weeks, to have a look at his estate, and so forth; after which he plunged intomore or less enthusiastic advocacy of this or that foreign resort, asopposed to the English cottage upon which I told him I had set my heart. 

He was now, however, less spontaneous, I thought, than earlier in thenight. His voice had lost its hearty ring, and he seemed preoccupied, asif talking of one matter while he thought upon another. Yet he wouldnot let me go; and presently he confirmed my suspicion, no less than myfirst impression of his delightful frankness and cordiality, by candidlytelling me what was on his mind. 

"If you really want a cottage in the country, " said he, "and the mostabsolute peace and quiet to be got in this world, I know of the verything on my land in Lancashire. It would drive me mad in a week; but ifyou really care for that sort of thing--"

"An occupied cottage?" I interrupted. 

"Yes; a couple rent it from me, very decent people of the name ofBraithwaite. The man is out all day, and won't bother you when he's in;he's not like other people, poor chap. But the woman 's all there, andwould do her best for you in a humble, simple, wholesome sort of way. "

"You think they would take me in?"

"They have taken other men--artists as a rule. "

"Then it's a picturesque country?"

"Oh, it's that if it's nothing else; but not a town for miles, mind you, and hardly a village worthy the name. "

"Any fishing?"

"Yes--trout--small but plenty of 'em--in a beck running close behind thecottage. "

"Come, " cried I, "this sounds delightful! Shall you be up there?"

"Only for a day or two, " was the reply. "I shan't trouble you, Mr. Cole. "

"My dear sir, that wasn't my meaning at all. I'm only sorry I shall notsee something of you on your own heath. I can't thank you enough foryour kind suggestion. When do you suppose the Braithwaites could do withme?"

His charming smile rebuked my impatience. 

"We must first see whether they can do with you at all, " said he. "Isincerely hope they can; but this is their time of year for tourists, though perhaps a little late. I'll tell you what I'll do. As a matterof fact, I'm going down there to-morrow, and I've got to telegraph to myplace in any case to tell them when to meet me. I'll send the telegramfirst thing, and I'll make them send one back to say whether there'sroom in the cottage or not. "

I thanked him warmly, but asked if the cottage was close to Kirby Hall, and whether this would not be giving a deal of trouble at the other end;whereupon he mischievously misunderstood me a second time, saying thecottage and the hall were not even in sight of each other, and I reallyhad no intrusion to fear, as he was a lonely bachelor like myself, and would only be up there four or five days at the most. So I made myappreciation of his society plainer than ever to him; for indeed Ihad found a more refreshing pleasure in it already than I had hoped toderive from mortal man again; and we parted, at three o'clock in themorning, like old fast friends. 

"Only don't expect too much, my dear Mr. Cole, " were his last words tome. "My own place is as ancient and as tumble-down as most ruins thatyou pay to see over. And I'm never there myself because--I tell youfrankly--I hate it like poison!"

CHAPTER VIII. A SMALL PRECAUTION

My delight in the society of this young Squire Rattray (as I soon was tohear him styled) had been such as to make me almost forget the sinisterincident which had brought us together. When I returned to my room, however, there were the open window and the litter on the floor toremind me of what had happened earlier in the night. Yet I was lessdisconcerted than you might suppose. A common housebreaker can havefew terrors for one who has braved those of mid-ocean single-handed; mywould-be visitor had no longer any for me; for it had not yet occurredto me to connect him with the voices and the footsteps to which, indeed, I had been unable to swear before the doctor. On the other hand, thesemorbid imaginings (as I was far from unwilling to consider them) hadone and all deserted me in the sane, clean company of the capital youngfellow in the next room. 

I have confessed my condition up to the time of this queer meeting. I have tried to bring young Rattray before you with some hint of hisfreshness and his boyish charm; and though the sense of failure is heavyupon me there, I who knew the man knew also that I must fail to do himjustice. Enough may have been said, however, to impart some faint ideaof what this youth was to me in the bitter and embittering anti-climaxof my life. Conventional figures spring to my pen, but every one of themis true; he was flowers in spring, he was sunshine after rain, he wasrain following long months of drought. I slept admirably after all;and I awoke to see the overturned toilet-table, and to thrill as Iremembered there was one fellow-creature with whom I could fraternizewithout fear of a rude reopening of my every wound. 

I hurried my dressing in the hope of our breakfasting together. Iknocked at the next door, and, receiving no answer, even venturedto enter, with the same idea. He was not there. He was not in thecoffee-room. He was not in the hotel. 

I broke my fast in disappointed solitude, and I hung about disconsolateall the morning, looking wistfully for my new-made friend. Towardsmid-day he drove up in a cab which he kept waiting at the curb. 

"It's all right!" he cried out in his hearty way. "I sent my telegramfirst thing, and I've had the answer at my club. The rooms are vacant, and I'll see that Jane Braithwaite has all ready for you by to-morrownight. "

I thanked him from my heart. "You seem in a hurry!" I added, as Ifollowed him up the stairs. 

"I am, " said he. "It's a near thing for the train. I've just time tostick in my things. "

"Then I'll stick in mine, " said I impulsively, "and I'll come with you, and doss down in any corner for the night. "

He stopped and turned on the stairs. 

"You mustn't do that, " said he; "they won't have anything ready. I'mgoing to make it my privilege to see that everything is as cosey aspossible when you arrive. I simply can't allow you to come to-day, Mr. Cole!" He smiled, but I saw that he was in earnest, and of course I gavein. 

"All right, " said I; "then I must content myself with seeing you off atthe station. "

To my surprise his smile faded, and a flush of undisguised annoyancemade him, if anything, better-looking than ever. It brought out acertain strength of mouth and jaw which I had not observed therehitherto. It gave him an ugliness of expression which only emphasizedhis perfection of feature. 

"You mustn't do that either, " said he, shortly. "I have an appointmentat the station. I shall be talking business all the time. "

He was gone to his room, and I went to mine feeling duly snubbed; yet Ideserved it; for I had exhibited a characteristic (though not chronic)want of taste, of which I am sometimes guilty to this day. Not to showill-feeling on the head of it, I nevertheless followed him down againin four or five minutes. And I was rewarded by his brightest smile as hegrasped my hand. 

"Come to-morrow by the same train, " said he, naming station, line, andhour; "unless I telegraph, all will be ready and you shall be met. Youmay rely on reasonable charges. As to the fishing, go up-stream--to theright when you strike the beck--and you'll find a good pool or two. Imay have to go to Lancaster the day after to-morrow, but I shall giveyou a call when I get back. "

With that we parted, as good friends as ever. I observed that my regretat losing him was shared by the boots, who stood beside me on the stepsas his hansom rattled off. 

"I suppose Mr. Rattray stays here always when he comes to town?" said I. 

"No, sir, " said the man, "we've never had him before, not in my time;but I shouldn't mind if he came again. " And he looked twice at the coinin his hand before pocketing it with evident satisfaction. 

Lonely as I was, and wished to be, I think that I never felt myloneliness as I did during the twenty-four hours which intervenedbetween Rattray's departure and my own. They dragged like wet days bythe sea, and the effect was as depressing. I have seldom been at sucha loss for something to do; and in my idleness I behaved like a child, wishing my new friend back again, or myself on the railway with my newfriend, until I blushed for the beanstalk growth of my regard for him, an utter stranger, and a younger man. I am less ashamed of it now: hehad come into my dark life like a lamp, and his going left a darknessdeeper than before. 

In my dejection I took a new view of the night's outrage. It was nocommon burglar's work, for what had I worth stealing? It was the work ofmy unseen enemies, who dogged me in the street; they alone knew why; thedoctor had called these hallucinations, and I had forced myself to agreewith the doctor; but I could not deceive myself in my present mood. I remembered the steps, the steps--the stopping when I stopped--thedrawing away in the crowded streets---the closing up in quieter places. Why had I never looked round? Why? Because till to-day I had thought itmere vulgar curiosity; because a few had bored me, I had imagined themany at my heels; but now I knew--I knew! It was the few again: a fewwho hated me even unto death. 

The idea took such a hold upon me that I did not trouble my head withreasons and motives. Certain persons had designs upon my life; that wasenough for me. On the whole, the thought was stimulating; it set a newvalue on existence, and it roused a certain amount of spirit even in me. I would give the fellows another chance before I left town. They shouldfollow me once more, and this time to some purpose. Last night they hadleft a knife on me; to-night I would have a keepsake ready for them. 

Hitherto I had gone unarmed since my landing, which, perhaps, was nomore than my duty as a civilized citizen. On Black Hill Flats, however, I had formed another habit, of which I should never have broken myselfso easily, but for the fact that all the firearms I ever had werereddening and rotting at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. I now wentout and bought me such a one as I had never possessed before. 

The revolver was then in its infancy; but it did exist; and by duskI was owner of as fine a specimen as could be procured in the city ofLondon. It had but five chambers, but the barrel was ten inches long;one had to cap it, and to put in the powder and the wadded bulletseparately; but the last-named would have killed an elephant. The oakcase that I bought with it cumbers my desk as I write, and, shut, you would think that it had never contained anything more lethal thanfruit-knives. I open it, and there are the green-baize compartments, onewith a box of percussion caps, still apparently full, another that couldnot contain many more wadded-bullets, and a third with a powder-hornwhich can never have been much lighter. Within the lid is a labelbearing the makers' names; the gentlemen themselves are unknown to me, even if they are still alive; nevertheless, after five-and-forty years, let me dip my pen to Messrs. Deane, Adams and Deane!

That night I left this case in my room, locked, and the key in mywaistcoat pocket; in the right-hand side-pocket of my overcoat I carriedmy Deane and Adams, loaded in every chamber; also my right hand, asinnocently as you could wish. And just that night I was not followed! Iwalked across Regent's Park, and I dawdled on Primrose Hill, withoutthe least result. Down I turned into the Avenue Road, and presently wasstrolling between green fields towards Finchley. The moon was up, butnicely shaded by a thin coating of clouds which extended across the sky:it was an ideal night for it. It was also my last night in town, and Idid want to give the beggars their last chance. But they did not evenattempt to avail themselves of it: never once did they follow me: myears were in too good training to make any mistake. And the reason onlydawned on me as I drove back disappointed: they had followed me alreadyto the gunsmith's!

Convinced of this, I entertained but little hope of another midnightvisitor. Nevertheless, I put my light out early, and sat a long timepeeping through my blind; but only an inevitable Tom, with back hunchedup and tail erect, broke the moonlit profile of the back-garden wall;and once more that disreputable music (which none the less had saved mylife) was the only near sound all night. 

I felt very reluctant to pack Deane and Adams away in his case nextmorning, and the case in my portmanteau, where I could not get at it incase my unknown friends took it into their heads to accompany me out oftown. In the hope that they would, I kept him loaded, and in the sameovercoat pocket, until late in the afternoon, when, being very near mynorthern destination, and having the compartment to myself, I locked thetoy away with considerable remorse for the price I had paid for it. Alldown the line I had kept an eye for suspicious characters with an eyeupon me; but even my self-consciousness failed to discover one; and Ireached my haven of peace, and of fresh fell air, feeling, I suppose, much like any other fool who has spent his money upon a white elephant. 

CHAPTER IX. MY CONVALESCENT HOME

The man Braithwaite met me at the station with a spring cart. The veryporters seemed to expect me, and my luggage was in the cart before Ihad given up my ticket. Nor had we started when I first noticed thatBraithwaite did not speak when I spoke to him. On the way, however, amore flagrant instance recalled young Rattray's remark, that the man was"not like other people. " I had imagined it to refer to a mental, nota physical, defect; whereas it was clear to me now that my prospectivelandlord was stone-deaf, and I presently discovered him to be dumb aswell. Thereafter I studied him with some attention during our drive offour or five miles. I called to mind the theory that an innate physicaldeficiency is seldom without its moral counterpart, and I wondered howfar this would apply to the deaf-mute at my side, who was ill-grown, wizened, and puny into the bargain. The brow-beaten face of him wascertainly forbidding, and he thrashed his horse up the hills in adogged, vindictive, thorough-going way which at length made me jumpout and climb one of them on foot. It was the only form of protest thatoccurred to me. 

The evening was damp and thick. It melted into night as we drove. I could form no impression of the country, but this seemed desolateenough. I believe we met no living soul on the high road which wefollowed for the first three miles or more. At length we turned into anarrow lane, with a stiff stone wall on either hand, and this eventuallyled us past the lights of what appeared to be a large farm; it wasreally a small hamlet; and now we were nearing our destination. Gateshad to be opened, and my poor driver breathed hard from the continualgetting down and up. In the end a long and heavy cart-track brought usto the loneliest light that I have ever seen. It shone on the side of ahill--in the heart of an open wilderness--as solitary as a beacon-lightat sea. It was the light of the cottage which was to be my temporaryhome. 

A very tall, gaunt woman stood in the doorway against the inner glow. She advanced with a loose, long stride, and invited me to enter in avoice harsh (I took it) from disuse. I was warming myself before thekitchen fire when she came in carrying my heaviest box as though it hadnothing in it. I ran to take it from her, for the box was full of books, but she shook her head, and was on the stairs with it before I couldintercept her. 

I conceive that very few men are attracted by abnormal strength in awoman; we cannot help it; and yet it was not her strength which firstrepelled me in Mrs. Braithwaite. It was a combination of attributes. Shehad a poll of very dirty and untidy red hair; her eyes were set closetogether; she had the jowl of the traditional prize-fighter. But farmore disagreeable than any single feature was the woman's expression, or rather the expression which I caught her assuming naturally, andbanishing with an effort for my benefit. To me she was strenuouslycivil in her uncouth way. But I saw her give her husband one look, ashe staggered in with my comparatively light portmanteau, which sheinstantly snatched out of his feeble arms. I saw this look again beforethe evening was out, and it was such a one as Braithwaite himself hadfixed upon his horse as he flogged it up the hills. 

I began to wonder how the young squire had found it in his conscience torecommend such a pair. I wondered less when the woman finally usheredme upstairs to my rooms. These were small and rugged, but eminently snugand clean. In each a good fire blazed cheerfully; my portmanteau wasalready unstrapped, the table in the sitting-room already laid; and Icould not help looking twice at the silver and the glass, so bright wastheir condition, so good their quality. Mrs. Braithwaite watched me fromthe door. 

"I doubt you'll be thinking them's our own, " said she. "I wish theywere; t'squire sent 'em in this afternoon. "

"For my use?"

"Ay; I doubt he thought what we had ourselves wasn't good enough. An'it's him 'at sent t' armchair, t'bed-linen, t'bath, an' that therelookin'-glass an' all. "

She had followed me into the bedroom, where I looked with redoubledinterest at each object as she mentioned it, and it was in the glass--amasqueline shaving-glass--that I caught my second glimpse of mylandlady's evil expression--levelled this time at myself. 

I instantly turned round and told her that I thought it very kind of Mr. Rattray, but that, for my part, I was not a luxurious man, and that Ifelt rather sorry the matter had not been left entirely in her hands. She retired seemingly mollified, and she took my sympathy with her, though I was none the less pleased and cheered by my new friend's zealfor my comfort; there were even flowers on my table, without a doubtfrom Kirby Hall. 

And in another matter the squire had not misled me: the woman was anexcellent plain cook. I expected ham and eggs. Sure enough, this was mydish, but done to a turn. The eggs were new and all unbroken, the hamso lean and yet so tender, that I would not have exchanged my humble, hearty meal for the best dinner served that night in London. It made anew man of me, after my long journey and my cold, damp drive. I was forchatting with Mrs. Braithwaite when she came up to clear away. Ithought she might be glad to talk after the life she must lead with herafflicted husband, but it seemed to have had the opposite effect on her. All I elicited was an ambiguous statement as to the distance between thecottage and the hall; it was "not so far. " And so she left me to my pipeand to my best night yet, in the stillest spot I have ever slept inon dry land; one heard nothing but the bubble of a beck; and it seemedvery, very far away. 

A fine, bright morning showed me my new surroundings in their truecolors; even in the sunshine these were not very gay. But gayety was thelast thing I wanted. Peace and quiet were my whole desire, and both werehere, set in scenery at once lovely to the eye and bracing to the soul. 

From the cottage doorstep one looked upon a perfect panorama ofhealthy, open English country. Purple hills hemmed in a broad, green, undulating plateau, scored across and across by the stone walls of thenorth, and all dappled with the shadows of rolling leaden clouds withsilver fringes. Miles away a church spire stuck like a spike out of thehollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed the trees behind. No nearerhabitation could I see. I have mentioned a hamlet which we passed in thespring-cart. It lay hidden behind some hillocks to the left. My landladytold me it was better than half a mile away, and "nothing when you getthere; no shop; no post-office; not even a public--house. "

I inquired in which direction lay the hall. She pointed to the nearesttrees, a small forest of stunted oaks, which shut in the view to theright, after quarter of a mile of a bare and rugged valley. Through thisvalley twisted the beck which I had heard faintly in the night. It ranthrough the oak plantation and so to the sea, some two or three milesfurther on, said my landlady; but nobody would have thought it was sonear. 

"T'squire was to be away to-day, " observed the woman, with the broadvowel sound which I shall not attempt to reproduce in print. "He wasgoing to Lancaster, I believe. "

"So I understood, " said I. "I didn't think of troubling him, if that'swhat you mean. I'm going to take his advice and fish the beck. "

And I proceeded to do so after a hearty early dinner: the keen, chillair was doing me good already: the "perfect quiet" was finding itsway into my soul. I blessed my specialist, I blessed Squire Rattray, Iblessed the very villains who had brought us within each other's ken;and nowhere was my thanksgiving more fervent than in the deep cleftthreaded by the beck; for here the shrewd yet gentle wind passedcompletely overhead, and the silence was purged of oppression by theceaseless symphony of clear water running over clean stones. 

But it was no day for fishing, and no place for the fly, though I wentthrough the form of throwing one for several hours. Here the streammerely rinsed its bed, there it stood so still, in pools of liquidamber, that, when the sun shone, the very pebbles showed their shadowsin the deepest places. Of course I caught nothing; but, towards theclose of the gold-brown afternoon, I made yet another new acquaintance, in the person of a little old clergyman who attacked me pleasantly fromthe rear. 

"Bad day for fishing, sir, " croaked the cheery voice which firstinformed me of his presence. "Ah, I knew it must be a stranger, " hecried as I turned and he hopped down to my side with the activity of amuch younger man. 

"Yes, " I said, "I only came down from London yesterday. I find the spotso delightful that I haven't bothered much about the sport. Still, I'vehad about enough of it now. " And I prepared to take my rod to pieces. 

"Spot and sport!" laughed the old gentleman. "Didn't mean it for apun, I hope? Never could endure puns! So you came down yesterday, younggentleman, did you? And where may you be staying?"

I described the position of my cottage without the slightest hesitation;for this parson did not scare me; except in appearance he had solittle in common with his type as I knew it. He had, however, about theshrewdest pair of eyes that I have ever seen, and my answer only servedto intensify their open scrutiny. 

"How on earth did you come to hear of a God-forsaken place like this?"said he, making use, I thought, of a somewhat stronger expression thanquite became his cloth. 

"Squire Rattray told me of it, " said I. 

"Ha! So you're a friend of his, are you?" And his eyes went through andthrough me like knitting-needles through a ball of wool. 

"I could hardly call myself that, " said I. "But Mr. Rattray has beenvery kind to me. "

"Meet him in town?"

I said I had, but I said it with some coolness, for his tone had droppedinto the confidential, and I disliked it as much as this string ofquestions from a stranger. 

"Long ago, sir?" he pursued. 

"No, sir; not long ago, " I retorted. 

"May I ask your name?" said he. 

"You may ask what you like, " I cried, with a final reversal of all myfirst impressions of this impertinent old fellow; "but I'm hanged ifI tell it you! I am here for rest and quiet, sir. I don't ask you yourname. I can't for the life of me see what right you have to ask me mine, or to question me at all, for that matter. "

He favored me with a brief glance of extraordinary suspicion. It fadedaway in mere surprise, and, next instant, my elderly and reverend friendwas causing me some compunction by coloring like a boy. 

"You may think my curiosity mere impertinence, sir, " said he; "you wouldthink otherwise if you knew as much as I do of Squire Rattray's friends, and how little you resemble the generality of them. You might even feelsome sympathy for one of the neighboring clergy, to whom this godlessyoung man has been for years as a thorn in their side. "

He spoke so gravely, and what he said was so easy to believe, that Icould not but apologize for my hasty words. 

"Don't name it, sir, " said the clergyman; "you had a perfect right toresent my questions, and I enjoy meeting young men of spirit; but notwhen it's an evil spirit, such as, I fear, possesses your friend! I doassure you, sir, that the best thing I have heard of him for years isthe very little that you have told me. As a rule, to hear of him at allin this part of the world, is to wish that we had not heard. I see himcoming, however, and shall detain you no longer, for I don't deny thatthere is no love lost between us. "

I looked round, and there was Rattray on the top of the bank, a longway to the left, coming towards me with a waving hat. An extraordinaryejaculation brought me to the right-about next instant. 

The old clergyman had slipped on a stone in mid-stream, and, as hedragged a dripping leg up the opposite bank, he had sworn an oath worthyof the "godless young man" who had put him to flight, and on whosedemerits he had descanted with so much eloquence and indignation. 

CHAPTER X. WINE AND WEAKNESS

"Sporting old parson who knows how to swear?" laughed Rattray. "Never sawhim in my life before; wondered who the deuce he was. "

"Really?" said I. "He professed to know something of you. "

"Against me, you mean? My dear Cole, don't trouble to perjure yourself. I don't mind, believe me. They're easily shocked, these country clergy, and no doubt I'm a bugbear to 'em. Yet, I could have sworn I'd neverseen this one before. Let's have another look. "

We were walking away together. We turned on the top of the bank. Andthere the old clergyman was planted on the moorside, and watching usintently from under his hollowed hands. 

"Well, I'm hanged!" exclaimed Rattray, as the hands fell and theirowner beat a hasty retreat. My companion said no more; indeed, for someminutes we pursued our way in silence. And I thought that it was with aneffort that he broke into sudden inquiries concerning my journey and mycomfort at the cottage. 

This gave me an opportunity of thanking him for his little attentions. "It was awfully good of you, " said I, taking his arm as though I hadknown him all my life; nor do I think there was another living man withwhom I would have linked arms at that time. 

"Good?" cried he. "Nonsense, my dear sir! I'm only afraid you findit devilish rough. But, at all events, you're coming to dine with meto-night. "

"Am I?" I asked, smiling. 

"Rather!" said he. "My time here is short enough. I don't lose sight ofyou again between this and midnight. "

"It's most awfully good of you, " said I again. 

"Wait till you see! You'll find it rough enough at my place; all myretainers are out for the day at a local show. "

"Then I certainly shall not give you the trouble. "

He interrupted me with his jovial laugh. 

"My good fellow, " he cried, "that's the fun of it! How do you supposeI've been spending the day? Told you I was going to Lancaster, did I?Well, I've been cooking our dinner instead--laying the table--gettingup the wines--never had such a joke! Give you my word, I almost forgot Iwas in the wilderness!"

"So you're quite alone, are you?"

"Yes; as much so as that other beggar who was monarch of all hesurveyed, his right there was none to dispute, from the what-is-it downto the glade--"

"I'll come, " said I, as we reached the cottage. "Only first you must letme make myself decent. "

"You're decent enough!"

"My boots are wet; my hands--"

"All serene! I'll give you five minutes. "

And I left him outside, flourishing a handsome watch, while, on my wayupstairs, I paused to tell Mrs. Braithwaite that I was dining at thehall. She was busy cooking, and I felt prepared for her unpleasantexpression; but she showed no annoyance at my news. I formed theimpression that it was no news to her. And next minute I heard awhispering below; it was unmistakable in that silent cottage, where nota word had reached me yet, save in conversation to which I was myself aparty. 

I looked out of window. Rattray I could no longer see. And I confessthat I felt both puzzled and annoyed until we walked away together, whenit was his arm which was immediately thrust through mine. 

"A good soul, Jane, " said he; "though she made an idiotic marriage, andleads a life which might spoil the temper of an archangel. She was mynurse when I was a youngster, Cole, and we never meet without a yarn. "Which seemed natural enough; still I failed to perceive why they needyarn in whispers. 

Kirby Hall proved startlingly near at hand. We descended the barevalley to the right, we crossed the beck upon a plank, were in theoak-plantation about a minute, and there was the hall upon the fartherside. 

And a queer old place it seemed, half farm, half feudal castle: fowlsstrutting at large about the back premises (which we were compelled toskirt), and then a front door of ponderous oak, deep-set between wallsfully six feet thick, and studded all over with wooden pegs. The facade, indeed, was wholly grim, with a castellated tower at one end, and anumber of narrow, sunken windows looking askance on the wreck andruin of a once prim, old-fashioned, high-walled garden. I thought thatRattray might have shown more respect for the house of his ancestors. It put me in mind of a neglected grave. And yet I could forgive a brightyoung fellow for never coming near so desolate a domain. 

We dined delightfully in a large and lofty hall, formerly used (saidRattray) as a court-room. The old judgment seat stood back against thewall, and our table was the one at which the justices had been wont tosit. Then the chamber had been low-ceiled; now it ran to the roof, andwe ate our dinner beneath a square of fading autumn sky, with I wonderedhow many ghosts looking down on us from the oaken gallery! I wasinterested, impressed, awed not a little, and yet all in a way whichafforded my mind the most welcome distraction from itself and from thepast. To Rattray, on the other hand, it was rather sadly plain that theplace was both a burden and a bore; in fact he vowed it was the dampestand the dullest old ruin under the sun, and that he would sell itto-morrow if he could find a lunatic to buy. His want of sentimentstruck me as his one deplorable trait. Yet even this displayed hischaracteristic merit of frankness. Nor was it at all unpleasant to hearhis merry, boyish laughter ringing round hall and gallery, ere it diedaway against a dozen closed doors. 

And there were other elements of good cheer: a log fire blazing heartilyin the old dog-grate, casting a glow over the stone flags, a reassuringflicker into the darkest corner: cold viands of the very best: and thefinest old Madeira that has ever passed my lips. 

Now, all my life I have been a "moderate drinker" in the most literalsense of that slightly elastic term. But at the sad time of which Iam trying to write, I was almost an abstainer, from the fear, thetemptation--of seeking oblivion in strong waters. To give way then wasto go on giving way. I realized the danger, and I took stern measures. Not stern enough, however; for what I did not realize was my weak andnervous state, in which a glass would have the same effect on me asthree or four upon a healthy man. 

Heaven knows how much or how little I took that evening! I can swearit was the smaller half of either bottle--and the second we neverfinished--but the amount matters nothing. Even me it did not makegrossly tipsy. But it warmed my blood, it cheered my heart, it excitedmy brain, and--it loosened my tongue. It set me talking with a freedomof which I should have been incapable in my normal moments, on a subjectwhereof I had never before spoken of my own free will. And yet the willto--speak--to my present companion--was no novelty. I had felt it at ourfirst meeting in the private hotel. His tact, his sympathy, his handsomeface, his personal charm, his frank friendliness, had one and alltempted me to bore this complete stranger with unsolicited confidencesfor which an inquisitive relative might have angled in vain. And thetemptation was the stronger because I knew in my heart that I shouldnot bore the young squire at all; that he was anxious enough to hear mystory from my own lips, but too good a gentleman intentionally tobetray such anxiety. Vanity was also in the impulse. A vulgar newspaperprominence had been my final (and very genuine) tribulation; but toplease and to interest one so pleasing and so interesting to me, wasanother and a subtler thing. And then there was his sympathy--shall Iadd his admiration?--for my reward. 

I do not pretend that I argued thus deliberately in my heated andexcited brain. I merely hold that all these small reasons and motiveswere there, fused and exaggerated by the liquor which was there as well. Nor can I say positively that Rattray put no leading questions; onlythat I remember none which had that sound; and that, once started, I amafraid I needed only too little encouragement to run on and on. 

Well, I was set going before we got up from the table. I continued inan armchair that my host dragged from a little book-lined room adjoiningthe hall. I finished on my legs, my back to the fire, my hands beatingwildly together. I had told my dear Rattray of my own accord more thanliving man had extracted from me yet. He interrupted me very little;never once until I came to the murderous attack by Santos on the drunkensteward. 

"The brute!" cried Rattray. "The cowardly, cruel, foreign devil! And younever let out one word of that!"

"What was the good?" said I. "They are all gone now--all gone to theiraccount. Every man of us was a brute at the last. There was nothing tobe gained by telling the public that. "

He let me go on until I came to another point which I had hitherto keptto myself: the condition of the dead mate's fingers: the cries that thesight of them had recalled. 

"That Portuguese villain again!" cried my companion, fairly leaping fromthe chair which I had left and he had taken. "It was the work of thesame cane that killed the steward. Don't tell me an Englishman wouldhave done it; and yet you said nothing about that either!"

It was my first glimpse of this side of my young host's character. Nordid I admire him the less, in his spirited indignation, because much ofthis was clearly against myself. His eyes flashed. His face was white. Isuddenly found myself the cooler man of the two. 

"My dear fellow, do consider!" said I. "What possible end could havebeen served by my stating what I couldn't prove against a man whocould never be brought to book in this world? Santos was punished as hedeserved; his punishment was death, and there's an end on't. "

"You might be right, " said Rattray, "but it makes my blood boil to hearsuch a story. Forgive me if I have spoken strongly;" and he paced hishall for a little in an agitation which made me like him better andbetter. "The cold-blooded villain!" he kept muttering; "the infernal, foreign, blood-thirsty rascal! Perhaps you were right; it couldn't havedone any good, I know; but--I only wish he'd lived for us to hang him, Cole! Why, a beast like that is capable of anything: I wonder ifyou've told me the worst even now?" And he stood before me, with candidsuspicion in his fine, frank eyes. 

"What makes you say that?" said I, rather nettled. 

"I shan't tell you if it's going to rile you, old fellow, " was his reply. And with it reappeared the charming youth whom I found it impossibleto resist. "Heaven knows you have had enough to worry you!" he added, inhis kindly, sympathetic voice. 

"So much, " said I, "that you cannot add to it, my dear Rattray. Now, then! Why do you think there was something worse?"

"You hinted as much in town: rightly or wrongly I gathered there wassomething you would never speak about to living man. "

I turned from him with a groan. 

"Ah! but that had nothing to do with Santos. "

"Are you sure?" he cried. 

"No, " I murmured; "it had something to do with him, in a sense; butdon't ask me any more. " And I leaned my forehead on the high oakmantel-piece, and groaned again. 

His hand was upon my shoulder. 

"Do tell me, " he urged. I was silent. He pressed me further. In myfancy, both hand and voice shook with his sympathy. 

"He had a step-daughter, " said I at last. 

"Yes? Yes?"

"I loved her. That was all. "

His hand dropped from my shoulder. I remained standing, stooping, thinking only of her whom I had lost for ever. The silence was intense. I could hear the wind sighing in the oaks without, the logs burningsoftly away at my feet And so we stood until the voice of Rattrayrecalled me from the deck of the Lady Jermyn and my lost love's side. 

"So that was all!"

I turned and met a face I could not read. 

"Was it not enough?" cried I. "What more would you have?"

"I expected some more-foul play!"

"Ah!" I exclaimed bitterly. "So that was all that interested you! No, there was no more foul play that I know of; and if there was, I don'tcare. Nothing matters to me but one thing. Now that you know what thatis, I hope you're satisfied. "

It was no way to speak to one's host. Yet I felt that he had pressed meunduly. I hated myself for my final confidence, and his want of sympathymade me hate him too. In my weakness, however, I was the natural preyof violent extremes. His hand flew out to me. He was about to speak. A moment more and I had doubtless forgiven him. But another soundcame instead and made the pair of us start and stare. It was the softshutting of some upstairs door. 

"I thought we had the house to ourselves?" cried I, my miserable nerveson edge in an instant. 

"So did I, " he answered, very pale. "My servants must have come back. Bythe Lord Harry, they shall hear of this!"

He sprang to a door, I heard his feet clattering up some stone stairs, and in a trice he was running along the gallery overhead; in anotherI heard him railing behind some upper door that he had flung open andbanged behind him; then his voice dropped, and finally died away. I wasleft some minutes in the oppressively silent hall, shaken, startled, ashamed of my garrulity, aching to get away. When he returned it was byanother of the many closed doors, and he found me awaiting him, hat inhand. He was wearing his happiest look until he saw my hat. 

"Not going?" he cried. "My dear Cole, I can't apologize sufficiently formy abrupt desertion of you, much less for the cause. It was my man, just come in from the show, and gone up the back way. I accused him oflistening to our conversation. Of course he denies it; but it reallydoesn't matter, as I'm sorry to say he's much too 'fresh' (as they callit down here) to remember anything to-morrow morning. I let him have it, I can tell you. Varlet! Caitiff! But if you bolt off on the head of it, I shall go back and sack him into the bargain!"

I assured him I had my own reasons for wishing to retire early. He couldhave no conception of my weakness, my low and nervous condition ofbody and mind; much as I had enjoyed myself, he must really let me go. Another glass of wine, then? Just one more? No, I had drunk too muchalready. I was in no state to stand it. And I held out my hand withdecision. 

Instead of taking it he looked at me very hard. 

"The place doesn't suit you, " said he. "I see it doesn't, and I'mdevilish sorry! Take my advice and try something milder; now do, to-morrow; for I should never forgive myself if it made you worseinstead of better; and the air is too strong for lots of people. "

I was neither too ill nor too vexed to laugh outright in his face. 

"It's not the air, " said I; "it's that splendid old Madeira of yours, that was too strong for me, if you like! No, no, Rattray, you don't getrid of me so cheaply-much as you seem to want to!"

"I was only thinking of you, " he rejoined, with a touch of pique thatconvinced me of his sincerity. "Of course I want you to stop, thoughI shan't be here many days; but I feel responsible for you, Cole, and that's the fact. Think you can find your way?" he continued, accompanying me to the gate, a postern in the high garden wall. "Hadn'tyou better have a lantern?"

No; it was unnecessary. I could see splendidly, had the bump of localityand as many more lies as would come to my tongue. I was indeed burningto be gone. 

A moment later I feared that I had shown this too plainly. For his finalhandshake was hearty enough to send me away something ashamed ofmy precipitancy, and with a further sense of having shown himsmall gratitude for his kindly anxiety on my behalf. I would behavedifferently to-morrow. Meanwhile I had new regrets. 

At first it was comparatively easy to see, for the lights of the houseshone faintly among the nearer oaks. But the moon was hidden behindheavy clouds, and I soon found myself at a loss in a terribly dark zoneof timber. Already I had left the path. I felt in my pocket for matches. I had none. 

My head was now clear enough, only deservedly heavy. I was stillquarrelling with myself for my indiscretions and my incivilities, oneand all the result of his wine and my weakness, and this new predicament(another and yet more vulgar result) was the final mortification. Iswore aloud. I simply could not see a foot in front of my face. Once Iproved it by running my head hard against a branch. I was hopelessly andridiculously lost within a hundred yards of the hall!

Some minutes I floundered, ashamed to go back, unable to proceed forthe trees and the darkness. I heard the heck running over its stones. Icould still see an occasional glimmer from the windows I had left. Butthe light was now on this side, now on that; the running water chuckledin one ear after the other; there was nothing for it but to return inall humility for the lantern which I had been so foolish as to refuse. 

And as I resigned myself to this imperative though inglorious course, myheart warmed once more to the jovial young squire. He would laugh, butnot unkindly, at my grotesque dilemma; at the thought of his laughter Ibegan to smile myself. If he gave me another chance I would smoke thatcigar with him before starting home afresh, and remove, front my ownmind no less than from his, all ill impressions. After all it was nothis fault that I had taken too much of his wine; but a far worse offencewas to be sulky in one s cups. I would show him that I was myself againin all respects. I have admitted that I was temporarily, at all events, a creature of extreme moods. It was in this one that I retraced my stepstowards the lights, and at length let myself into the garden by thepostern at which I had shaken Rattray's hand not ten minutes before. 

Taking heart of grace, I stepped up jauntily to the porch. The weedsmuffled my steps. I myself had never thought of doing so, when all atonce I halted in a vague terror. Through the deep lattice windows Ihad seen into the lighted hall. And Rattray was once more seated at histable, a little company of men around him. 

I crept nearer, and my heart stopped. Was I delirious, or raving madwith wine? Or had the sea given up its dead?

CHAPTER XI. I LIVE AGAIN

Squire Rattray, as I say, was seated at the head of his table, wherethe broken meats still lay as he and I had left them; his fingers, Iremember, were playing with a crust, and his eyes fixed upon a distantdoor, as he leant back in his chair. Behind him hovered the nigger ofthe Lady Jermyn, whom I had been the slower to recognize, had not herskipper sat facing me on the squire's right. Yes, there was CaptainHarris in the flesh, eating heartily between great gulps of wine, instead of feeding the fishes as all the world supposed. And nearerstill, nearer me than any, with his back to my window but his chairslued round a little, so that he also could see that door, and I hisprofile, sat Joaquin Santos with his cigarette!

None spoke; all seemed waiting; and all were silent but the captain, whose vulgar champing reached me through the crazy lattice, as I stoodspellbound and petrified without. 

They say that a drowning man lives his life again before the last; butmy own fight with the sea provided me with no such moments of vivid andrapid retrospect as those during which I stood breathless outside thelighted windows of Kirby Hall. I landed again. I was dogged day andnight. I set it down to nerves and notoriety; but took refuge in aprivate hotel. One followed me, engaged the next room, set a watch onall my movements; another came in by the window to murder me in mybed; no party to that, the first one nevertheless turned the outrage toaccount, wormed himself into my friendship on the strength of it, andlured me hither, an easy prey. And here was the gang of them, to meetme! No wonder Rattray had not let me see him off at the station; nowonder I had not been followed that night. Every link I saw in itsright light instantly. Only the motive remained obscure. Suspiciouscircumstances swarmed upon my slow perception: how innocent I had been!Less innocent, however, than wilfully and wholly reckless: what had itmattered with whom I made friends? What had anything mattered to me?What did anything matter--

I thought my heart had snapped!

Why were they watching that door, Joaquin Santos and the young squire?Whom did they await? I knew! Oh, I knew! My heart leaped, my blooddanced, my eyes lay in wait with theirs. Everything began to matteronce more. It was as though the machinery of my soul, long stopped, hadsuddenly been set in motion; it was as though I was born again. 

How long we seemed to wait I need not say. It cannot have been manymoments in reality, for Santos was blowing his rings of smoke in thedirection of the door, and the first that I noticed were but dissolvingwhen it opened--and the best was true! One instant I saw her veryclearly, in the light of a candle which she carried in its silver stick;then a mist blinded me, and I fell on my knees in the rank bed intowhich I had stepped, to give such thanks to the Almighty as this hearthas never felt before or since. And I remained kneeling; for now my facewas on a level with the sill; and when my eyes could see again, therestood my darling before them in the room. 

Like a queen she stood, in the very travelling cloak in which I had seenher last; it was tattered now, but she held it close about her as thougha shrewd wind bit her to the core. Her sweet face was all peeked andpale in the candle-light: she who had been a child was come to womanhoodin a few weeks. But a new spirit flashed in her dear eyes, a newstrength hardened her young lips. She stood as an angel brought to bookby devils; and so noble was her calm defiance, so serene her scorn, that, as I watched and listened; all present fear for her passed out ofmy heart. 

The first sound was the hasty rising of young Rattray; he was at Eva'sside next instant, essaying to lead her to his chair, with a flush whichdeepened as she repulsed him coldly. 

"You have sent for me, and I have come, " said she. "But I prefer not tosit down in your presence; and what you have to say, you will be goodenough to say as quickly as possible, that I may go again before Iam--stifled!"

It was her one hot word; aimed at them all, it seemed to me to fall likea lash on Rattray's cheek, bringing the blood to it like lightning. Butit was Santos who snatched the cigarette from his mouth, and opened uponthe defenceless girl in a torrent of Portuguese, yellow with rage, and avery windmill of lean arms and brown hands in the terrifying rapidity ofhis gesticulations. They did not terrify Eva Denison. When Rattray tooka step towards the speaker, with flashing eyes, it was some word fromEva that checked him; when Santos was done, it was to Rattray that sheturned with her answer. 

"He calls me a liar for telling you that Mr. Cole knew all, " said she, thrilling me with my own name. "Don't you say anything, " she added, asthe young man turned on Santos with a scowl; "you are one as wicked asthe other, but there was a time when I thought differently of you: hischaracter I have always known. Of the two evils, I prefer to speak toyou. "

Rattray bowed, humbly enough, I thought; but my darling's nostrils onlycurled the more. 

"He calls me a liar, " she continued; "so may you all. Since you havefound it out, I admit it freely and without shame; one must be false inthe hands of false fiends like all of you. Weakness is nothing to you;helplessness is nothing; you must be met with your own weapons, and so Ilied in my sore extremity to gain the one miserable advantage within myreach. He says you found me out by making friends with Mr. Cole. Hesays that Mr. Cole has been dining with you in this very room, thisvery night. You still tell the truth sometimes; has that man--thatdemon--told it for once?"

"It is perfectly true, " said Rattray in a low voice. 

"And poor Mr. Cole told you that he knew nothing of your villany?"

"I found out that he knew absolutely nothing--after first thinkingotherwise. "

"Suppose he had known? What would you have done?"

Rattray said nothing. Santos shrugged as he lit a fresh cigarette. Thecaptain went on with his supper. 

"Ashamed to say!" cried Eva Denison. "So you have some shame left still!Well, I will tell you. You would have murdered him, as you murdered allthe rest; you would have killed him in cold blood, as I wish and praythat you would kill me!"

The young fellow faced her, white to the lips. "You have no right tosay that, Miss Denison!" he cried. "I may be bad, but, as I am ready toanswer for my sins, the crime of murder is not among them. "

Well, it is still some satisfaction to remember that my love neverpunished me with such a look as was the young squire's reward for thisprotestation. The curl of the pink nostrils, the parting of the proudlips, the gleam of the sound white teeth, before a word was spoken, were more than I, for one, could have borne. For I did not see the griefunderlying the scorn, but actually found it in my heart to pity thispoor devil of a Rattray: so humbly fell those fine eyes of his, so likea dog did he stand, waiting to be whipped. 

"Yes; you are very innocent!" she began at last, so softly that I couldscarcely hear. "You have not committed murder, so you say; let it standto your credit by all means. You have no blood upon your hands; you sayso; that is enough. No! you are comparatively innocent, I admit. Allyou have done is to make murder easy for others; to get others to do thedirty work, and then shelter them and share the gain; all you need haveon your conscience is every life that was lost with the Lady Jermyn, andevery soul that lost itself in losing them. You call that innocence?Then give me honest guilt! Give me the man who set fire to the ship, andwho sits there eating his supper; he is more of a man than you. Give methe wretch who has beaten men to death before my eyes; there's somethinggreat about a monster like that, there's something to loathe. Hisassistant is only little--mean--despicable!" Loud and hurried in itswrath, low and deliberate in its contempt, all this was uttered with afurious and abnormal eloquence, which would have struck me, loving her, to the ground. On Rattray it had a different effect. His head lifted asshe heaped abuse upon it, until he met her flashing eye with that of aman very thankful to take his deserts and something more; and to mine hewas least despicable when that last word left her lips. When he saw thatit was her last, he took her candle (she had put it down on the ancientsettle against the door), and presented it to her with another bow. Andso without a word he led her to the door, opened it, and bowed yet loweras she swept out, but still without a tinge of mockery in the obeisance. 

He was closing the door after her when Joaquin Santos reached it. 

"Diablo!" cried he. "Why let her go? We have not done with her. "

"That doesn't matter; she is done with us, " was the stern reply. 

"It does matter, " retorted Santos; "what is more, she is mystep-daughter, and back she shall come!"

"She is also my visitor, and I'm damned if you're going to make her!"

An instant Santos stood, his back to me, his fingers working, his neckbrown with blood; then his coat went into creases across the shoulders, and he was shrugging still as he turned away. 

"Your veesitor!" said he. "Your veesitor! Your veesitor!"

Harris laughed outright as he raised his glass; the hot young squirehad him by the collar, and the wine was spilling on the cloth, as I rosevery cautiously and crept back to the path. 

"When rogues fall out!" I was thinking to myself. "I shall save heryet--I shall save my darling!"

Already I was accustomed to the thought that she still lived, and to thebig heart she had set beating in my feeble frame; already the continuedexistence of these villains, with the first dim inkling of theirvillainy, was ceasing to be a novelty in a brain now quickened andprehensile beyond belief. And yet--but a few minutes had I knelt at thewindow--but a few more was it since Rattray and I had shaken hands!

Not his visitor; his prisoner, without a doubt; but alive! alive! and, neither guest nor prisoner for many hours more. O my love! O my heart'sdelight! Now I knew why I was spared; to save her; to snatch her fromthese rascals; to cherish and protect her evermore!

All the past shone clear behind me; the dark was lightness and thecrooked straight. All the future lay clear ahead it presented nodifficulties yet; a mad, ecstatic confidence was mine for the wildest, happiest moments of my life. 

I stood upright in the darkness. I saw her light!

It was ascending the tower at the building's end; now in this window itglimmered, now in the one above. At last it was steady, high up near thestars, and I stole below. 

"Eva! Eva!"

There was no answer. Low as it was, my voice was alarming; it cooledand cautioned me. I sought little stones. I crept back to throw them. Ah God! her form eclipsed that lighted slit in the gray stone tower. Iheard her weeping high above me at her window. 

"Eva! Eva!"

There was a pause, and then a little cry of gladness. 

"Is it Mr. Cole?" came in an eager whisper through her tears. 

"Yes! yes! I was outside the window. I heard everything. "

"They will hear you!" she cried softly, in a steadier voice. 

"No-listen!" They were quarrelling. Rattray's voice was loud and angry. "They cannot hear, " I continued, in more cautious tones; "they thinkI'm in bed and asleep half-a-mile away. Oh, thank God! I'll get you awayfrom them; trust me, my love, my darling!"

In my madness I knew not what I said; it was my wild heart speaking. Some moments passed before she replied. 

"Will you promise to do nothing I ask you not to do?"

"Of course. "

"My life might answer for it--"

"I promise--I promise. "

"Then wait--hide--watch my light. When you see it back in the window, watch with all your eyes! I am going to write and then throw it out. Notanother syllable!"

She was gone; there was a long yellow slit in the masonry once more; herlight burnt faint and far within. 

I retreated among some bushes and kept watch. 

The moon was skimming beneath the surface of a sea of clouds: now theblack billows had silver crests: now an incandescent buoy bobbed amongthem. O for enough light, and no more!

In the hall the high voices were more subdued. I heard the captain'stipsy laugh. My eyes fastened themselves upon that faint and loftylight, and on my heels I crouched among the bushes. 

The flame moved, flickered, and shone small but brilliant on the verysill. I ran forward on tip-toe. A white flake fluttered to my feet. Isecured it and waited for one word; none came; but the window was softlyshut. 

I stood in doubt, the treacherous moonlight all over me now, and oncemore the window opened. 

"Go quickly!"

And again it was shut; next moment I was stealing close by the spotwhere I had knelt. I saw within once more. 

Harris nodded in his chair. The nigger had disappeared. Rattray waslighting a candle, and the Portuguese holding out his hand for thematch. 

"Did you lock the gate, senhor?" asked Santos. 

"No; but I will now. "

As I opened it I heard a door open within. I could hardly let the latchdown again for the sudden trembling of my fingers. The key turned behindme ere I had twenty yards' start. 

Thank God there was light enough now! I followed the beck. I foundmy way. I stood in the open valley, between the oak-plantation and mydesolate cottage, and I kissed my tiny, twisted note again and again ina paroxysm of passion and of insensate joy. Then I unfolded it and heldit to my eyes in the keen October moonshine. 

CHAPTER XII. MY LADY'S BIDDING

Scribbled in sore haste, by a very tremulous little hand, with a pencil, on the flyleaf of some book, my darling's message is still difficult toread; it was doubly so in the moonlight, five-and-forty autumns ago. Myeyesight, however, was then perhaps the soundest thing about me, and ina little I had deciphered enough to guess correctly (as it proved) atthe whole:--

"You say you heard everything just now, and there is no time for furtherexplanations. I am in the hands of villains, but not ill-treated, thoughthey are one as bad as the other. You will not find it easy to rescueme. I don't see how it is to be done. You have promised not to doanything I ask you not to do, and I implore you not to tell a soul untilyou have seen me again and heard more. You might just as well kill me ascome back now with help. 

"You see you know nothing, though I told them you knew all. And so youshall as soon as I can see you for five minutes face to face. In themeantime do nothing--know nothing when you see Mr. Rattray--unless youwish to be my death. 

"It would have been possible last night, and it may be again to-morrownight. They all go out every night when they can, except Jose, who isleft in charge. They are out from nine or ten till two or three; if theyare out to-morrow night my candle will be close to the window as I shallput it when I have finished this. You can see my window from over thewall. If the light is in front you must climb the wall, for they willleave the gate locked. I shall see you and will bribe Jose to let meout for a turn. He has done it before for a bottle of wine. I can managehim. Can I trust to you? If you break your promise--but you will not?One of them would as soon kill me as smoke a cigarette, and the rest areunder his thumb. I dare not write more. But my life is in your hands. 

"EVA DENISON. "

"Oh! beware of the woman Braithwaite; she is about the worst of thegang. "

I could have burst out crying in my bitter discomfiture, mortification, and alarm: to think that her life was in my hands, and that it depended, not on that prompt action which was the one course I had contemplated, but on twenty-four hours of resolute inactivity! I would not think it. I refused the condition. It took away my one prop, my one stay, thatprospect of immediate measures which alone preserved in me such coolnessas I had retained until now. I was cool no longer; where I had reliedon practical direction I was baffled and hindered and driven mad; on myhonor believe I was little less for some moments, groaning, cursing, and beating the air with impotent fists--in one of them my poor love'sletter crushed already to a ball. 

Danger and difficulty I had been prepared to face; but the task that Iwas set was a hundred-fold harder than any that had whirled through myteeming brain. To sit still; to do nothing; to pretend I knew nothing;an hour of it would destroy my reason--and I was invited to waittwenty-four!

No; my word was passed; keep it I must. She knew the men, she must knowbest; and her life depended on my obedience: she made that so plain. Obey I must and would; to make a start, I tottered over the plank thatspanned the beck, and soon I saw the cottage against the moonlit sky. I came up to it. I drew back in sudden fear. It was alight upstairs anddown, and the gaunt strong figure of the woman Braithwaite stood outas I had seen it first, in the doorway, with the light showing warmlythrough her rank red hair. 

"Is that you, Mr. Cole?" she cried in a tone that she reserved for me;yet through the forced amiability there rang a note of genuine surprise. She had been prepared for me never to return at all!

My knees gave under me as I forced myself to advance; but my wits tooknew life from the crisis, and in a flash I saw how to turn my weaknessinto account. I made a false step on my way to the door; when I reachedit I leant heavily against the jam, and I said with a slur that I feltunwell. I had certainly been flushed with wine when I left Rattray; itwould be no bad thing for him to hear that I had arrived quite tipsy atthe cottage; should he discover I had been near an hour on the way, herewas my explanation cut and dried. 

So I shammed a degree of intoxication with apparent success, and JaneBraithwaite gave me her arm up the stairs. My God, how strong it was, and how weak was mine!

Left to myself, I reeled about my bedroom, pretending to undress; thenout with my candles, and into bed in all my clothes, until the cottageshould be quiet. Yes, I must lie still and feign sleep, with every nerveand fibre leaping within me, lest the she-devil below should suspectme of suspicions! It was with her I had to cope for the nextfour-and-twenty hours; and she filled me with a greater present terrorthan all those villains at the hall; for had not their poor littlehelpless captive described her as "about the worst of the gang?"

To think that my love lay helpless there in the hands of those wretches;and to think that her lover lay helpless here in the supervision of thisvile virago!

It must have been one or two in the morning when I stole to mysitting-room window, opened it, and sat down to think steadily, with thecounterpane about my shoulders. 

The moon sailed high and almost full above the clouds; these weredispersing as the night wore on, and such as remained were of abeautiful soft tint between white and gray. The sky was too light forstars, and beneath it the open country stretched so clear and far thatit was as though one looked out at noonday through slate-colored glass. Down the dewy slope below my window a few calves fed with toothlessmouthings; the beck was very audible, the oak-trees less so; but forthese peaceful sounds the stillness and the solitude were equallyintense. 

I may have sat there like a mouse for half an hour. The reason was thatI had become mercifully engrossed in one of the subsidiary problems:whether it would be better to drop from the window or to trust to thecreaking stairs. Would the creaking be much worse than the thud, andthe difference worth the risk of a sprained ankle? Well worth it, I atlength decided; the risk was nothing; my window was scarce a dozen feetfrom the ground. How easily it could be done, how quickly, how safely inthis deep, stillness and bright moonlight! I would fall so lightly onmy stocking soles; a single soft, dull thud; then away under the moonwithout fear or risk of a false step; away over the stone walls to themain road, and so to the nearest police-station with my tale; and beforesunrise the villains would be taken in their beds, and my darling wouldbe safe!

I sprang up softly. Why not do it now? Was I bound to keep my rash, blind promise? Was it possible these murderers would murder her?I struck a match on my trousers, I lit a candle, I read her lettercarefully again, and again it maddened and distracted me. I struck myhands together. I paced the room wildly. Caution deserted me, and I madenoise enough to wake the very mute; lost to every consideration but thatof the terrifying day before me, the day of silence and of inactivity, that I must live through with an unsuspecting face, a cool head, a civiltongue! The prospect appalled me as nothing else could or did; nay, thesudden noise upon the stairs, the knock at my door, and the sense thatI had betrayed myself already even now all was over--these came as arelief after the haunting terror which they interrupted. 

I flung the door open, and there stood Mrs. Braithwaite, as fullydressed as myself. 

"You'll not be very well sir?"

"No, I'm not. "

"What's t' matter wi' you?"

This second question was rude and fierce with suspicion: the real womanrang out in it, yet its effect on me was astonishing: once again was Iinspired to turn my slip into a move. 

"Matter?" I cried. "Can't you see what's the matter; couldn't you seewhen I came in? Drink's the matter! I came in drunk, and now I'm mad. Ican't stand it; I'm not in a fit state. Do you know nothng of me? Havethey told you nothing? I'm the only man that was saved from the LadyJermyn, the ship that was burned to the water's edge with every soul butme. My nerves are in little ends. I came down here for peace and quietand sleep. Do you bow that I have hardly slept for two months? And nowI shall never sleep again! O my God I shall die for want of it! The winehas done it. I never should have touched a drop. I can't stand it; Ican't sleep after it; I shall kill myself if I get no sleep. Do youhear, you woman? I shall kill myself in your house if I don't get tosleep!"

I saw her shrink, virago as she was. I waved my arms, I shrieked inher face. It was not all acting. Heaven knows how true it was about thesleep. I was slowly dying of insomnia. I was a nervous wreck. She musthave heard it. Now she saw it for herself. 

No; it was by no means all acting. Intending only to lie, I foundmyself telling little but the strictest truth, and longing for sleep aspassionately as though I had nothing to keep me awake. And yet, while myheart cried aloud in spite of me, and my nerves relieved themselves inthis unpremeditated ebullition, I was all the time watching its effectas closely as though no word of it had been sincere. 

Mrs. Braithwaite seemed frightened; not at all pitiful; and as I calmeddown she recovered her courage and became insolent. I had spoilt hernight. She had not been told she was to take in a raving lunatic. Shewould speak to Squire Rattray in the morning. 

"Morning?" I yelled after her as she went. "Send your husband to thenearest chemist as soon as it's dawn; send him for chloral, chloroform, morphia, anything they've got and as much of it as they'll let him have. I'll give you five pounds if you get me what'll send me to sleep allto-morrow--and to-morrow night!"

Never, I feel sure, were truth and falsehood more craftily interwoven;yet I had thought of none of it until the woman was at my door, while ofmuch I had not thought at all. It had rushed from my heart and from mylips. And no sooner was I alone than I burst into hysterical tears, onlyto stop and compliment myself because they sounded genuine--as thoughthey were not! Towards morning I took to my bed in a burning fever, andlay there, now congratulating myself upon it, because when night camethey would all think me so secure; and now weeping because the nightmight find me dying or dead. So I tossed, with her note clasped in myhand underneath the sheets; and beneath my very body that stout weaponthat I had bought in town. I might not have to use it, but I wasfatalist enough to fancy that I should. In the meantime it helped me tolie still, my thoughts fixed on the night, and the day made easy for meafter all. 

If only I could sleep!

About nine o'clock Jane Braithwaite paid me a surly visit; in half anhour she was back with tea and toast and an altered mien. She not onlylit my fire, but treated me the while to her original tone of almostfervent civility and respect and determination. Her vagaries soon ceasedto puzzle me: the psychology of Jane Braithwaite was not recondite. Inthe night it had dawned upon her that Rattray had found me harmless andwas done with me, therefore there was no need for her to put herself outany further on my account. In the morning, finding me really ill, shehad gone to the hall in alarm; her subsequent attentions were an act ofobedience; and in their midst came Rattray himself to my bedside. 

CHAPTER XIII. THE LONGEST DAY OF MY LIFE

The boy looked so blithe and buoyant, so gallant and still so frank, that even now I could not think as meanly of him as poor Eva did. Arogue he must be, but surely not the petty rogue that she had made himout. Yet it was dirty work that he had done by me; and there I had tolie and take his kind, false, felon's hand in mine. 

"My poor dear fellow, " he cried, "I'm most sorry to find you like this. But I was afraid of it last night. It's all this infernally strong air!"

How I longed to tell him what it was, and to see his face! The thoughtof Eva alone restrained me, and I retorted as before, in a tone I stroveto make as friendly, that it was his admirable wine and nothing else. 

"But you took hardly any. "

"I shouldn't have touched a drop. I can't stand it. Instead of soothingme it excites me to the verge of madness. I'm almost over the verge--forwant of sleep--my trouble ever since the trouble. "

Again I was speaking the literal truth, and again congratulating myselfas though it were a lie: the fellow looked so distressed at my state;indeed I believe that his distress was as genuine as mine, and hissentiments as involved. He took my hand again, and his brow wrinkled atits heat. He asked for the other hand to feel my pulse. I had to drop myletter to comply. 

"I wish to goodness there was something I could do for you, " he said. "Would you--would you care to see a doctor?"

I shook my head, and could have smiled at his visible relief. 

"Then I'm going to prescribe for you, " he said with decision. "It's theplace that doesn't agree with you, and it was I who brought you to theplace; therefore it's for me to get you out of it as quick as possible. Up you get, and I'll drive you to the station myself!"

I had another work to keep from smiling: he was so ingenuouslydisingenuous. There was less to smile at in his really nervous anxietyto get me away. I lay there reading him like a book: it was not myhealth that concerned him, of course: was it my safety? I told him helittle knew how ill I was--an inglorious speech that came hard, thoughnot by any means untrue. "Move me with this fever on me?" said I; "itwould be as much as my miserable life is worth. "

"I'm afraid, " said he, "that it may be as much as your life's worth tostay on here!" And there was such real fear, in his voice and eyes, that it reconciled me there and then to the discomfort of a big revolverbetween the mattress and the small of my back. "We must get you outof it, " he continued, "the moment you feel fit to stir. Shall we sayto-morrow?"

"If you like, " I said, advisedly; "and if I can get some sleep to-day. "

"Then to-morrow it is! You see I know it's the climate, " he added, jumping from tone to tone; "it couldn't have been those two or threeglasses of sound wine. "

"Shall I tell you what it is?" I said, looking him full in the face, with eyes that I dare say were wild enough with fever and insomnia. "It's the burning of the Lady Jermyn!" I cried. "It's the faces and theshrieks of the women; it's the cursing and the fighting of the men; it'sboat-loads struggling in an oily sea; it's husbands and wives jumpingoverboard together; it's men turned into devils, it's hell-fireafloat--"

"Stop! stop!" he whispered, hoarse as a crow. I was sitting up with myhot eyes upon him. He was white as the quilt, and the bed shook with histrembling. I had gone as far as was prudent, and I lay back with a glowof secret satisfaction. 

"Yes, I will stop, " said I, "and I wouldn't have begun if you hadn'tfound it so difficult to understand my trouble. Now you know what itis. It's the old trouble. I came up here to forget it; instead of thatI drink too much and tell you all about it; and the two things togetherhave bowled me over. But I'll go to-morrow; only give me something toput me asleep till then. "

"I will!" he vowed. "I'll go myself to the nearest chemist, and he shallgive me the very strongest stuff he's got. Good-by, and don't you stirtill I come back--for your own sake. I'll go this minute, and I'll ridelike hell!" And if ever two men were glad to be rid of each other, theywere this young villain and myself. 

But what was his villany? It was little enough that I had overheardat the window, and still less that poor Eva had told me in her hurriedlines. All I saw clearly was that the Lady Jermyn and some hundred soulshad perished by the foulest of foul play; that, besides Eva and myself, only the incendiaries had escaped; that somehow these wretches had madea second escape from the gig, leaving dead men and word of their owndeath behind them in the boat. And here the motive was as much a mysteryto me as the means; but, in my present state, both were also mattersof supreme indifference. My one desire was to rescue my love from herloathsome captors; of little else did I pause to think. Yet Rattray'svisit left its own mark on my mind; and long after he was gone I laypuzzling over the connection between a young Lancastrian, of goodname, of ancient property, of great personal charm, and a crime ofunparalleled atrocity committed in cold blood on the high seas. Thathis complicity was flagrant I had no room to doubt, after Eva's ownindictment of him, uttered to his face and in my hearing. Was it thenthe usual fraud on the underwriters, and was Rattray the inevitableaccomplice on dry land? I could think of none but the conventionalmotive for destroying a vessel. Yet I knew there must be another and asubtler one, to account not only for the magnitude of the crime, but forthe pains which the actual perpetrators had taken to conceal the factof their survival, and for the union of so diverse a trinity as SenhorSantos, Captain Harris, and the young squire. 

It must have been about mid-day when Rattray reappeared, ruddy, spurred, and splashed with mud; a comfort to sick eyes, I declare, in spiteof all. He brought me two little vials, put one on the chimney-piece, poured the other into my tumbler, and added a little water. 

"There, old fellow, " said he; "swallow that, and if you don't get somesleep the chemist who made it up is the greatest liar unhung. "

"What is it?' I asked, the glass in my hand, and my eyes on those of mycompanion. 

"I don't know, " said he. "I just told them to make up the strongestsleeping-draught that was safe, and I mentioned something about yourcase. Toss it off, man; it's sure to be all right. "

Yes, I could trust him; he was not that sort of villain, for all thatEva Denison had said. I liked his face as well as ever. I liked his eye, and could have sworn to its honesty as I drained the glass. Even had itbeen otherwise, I must have taken my chance or shown him all; as it was, when he had pulled down my blind, and shaken my pillow, and he gaveme his hand once more, I took it with involuntary cordiality. I onlygrieved that so fine a young fellow should have involved himself in sovillainous a business; yet for Eva's sake I was glad that he had; formy mind failed (rather than refused) to believe him so black as she hadpainted him. 

The long, long afternoon that followed I never shall forget. The opiateracked my head; it did not do its work; and I longed to sleep tillevening with a longing I have never known before or since. Everythingseemed to depend upon it; I should be a man again, if only I couldfirst be a log for a few hours. But no; my troubles never left me for aninstant; and there I must lie, pretending that they had! For the otherdraught was for the night; and if they but thought the first one hadtaken due effect, so much the less would they trouble their heads aboutme when they believed that I had swallowed the second. 

Oh, but it was cruel! I lay and wept with weakness and want of sleep;ere night fell I knew that it would find me useless, if indeed my reasonlingered on. To lie there helpless when Eva was expecting me, that wouldbe the finishing touch. I should rise a maniac if ever I rose atall. More probably I would put one of my five big bullets into my ownsplitting head; it was no small temptation, lying there in a doubleagony, with the loaded weapon by my side. 

Then sometimes I thought it was coming; and perhaps for an instant wouldbe tossing in my hen-coop; then back once more. And I swear thatmy physical and mental torments, here in my bed, would have beenincomparably greater than anything I had endured on the sea, but for thesaving grace of one sweet thought. She lived! She lived! And the God whohad taken care o me, a castaway, would surely deliver her also fromthe hands of murderers and thieves. But not through me--I lay weak andhelpless--and my tears ran again and yet again as I felt myself growinghourly weaker. 

I remember what a bright fine day it was, with the grand open countryall smiles beneath a clear, almost frosty sky, once when I got up ontip-toe and peeped out. A keen wind whistled about the cottage; I feltit on my feet as I stood; but never have I known a more perfect andinvigorating autumn day. And there I must lie, with the manhood ebbingOut of me, the manhood that I needed so for the night! I crept back intobed. I swore that I would sleep. Yet there I lay, listening sometimes tothat vile woman's tread below; sometimes to mysterious whispers, betweenwhom I neither knew nor cared; anon to my watch ticking by my side, tothe heart beating in my body, hour after hour--hour after hour. I prayedas I have seldom prayed. I wept as I have never wept. I railed andblasphemed--not with my lips, because the woman must think I wasasleep--but so much the more viciously in my heart. 

Suddenly it turned dark. There were no gradations--not even a tropicaltwilight. One minute I aw the sun upon the blind; the next--thank God!Oh, thank God! No light broke any longer through the blind; just a faintand narrow glimmer stole between it and the casement; and the light thathad been bright golden was palest silver now. 

It was the moon. I had been in dreamless sleep for hours. 

The joy of that discovery! The transport of waking to it, and wakingrefreshed! The swift and sudden miracle that it seemed! I shall never, never forget it, still less the sickening thrill of fear which wascruelly quick to follow upon my joy. The cottage was still as the tomb. What if I had slept too long!

With trembling hand I found my watch. 

Luckily I had wound it in the early morning. I now carried it to thewindow, drew back the blind, and held it in the moonlight. It was notquite ten o'clock. And yet the cottage was so still--so still. 

I stole to the door, opened it by cautious degrees, and saw thereflection of a light below. Still not a sound could I hear, save therapid drawing of my own breath, and the startled beating of my ownheart. 

I now felt certain that the Braithwaites were out, and dressed hastily, making as little noise as possible, and still hearing absolutely nonefrom below. Then, feeling faint with hunger, though a new being after mysleep, I remembered a packet of sandwiches which I had not opened on myjourney north. These I transferred from my travelling-bag (where theyhad lain forgotten to my jacket pocket), before drawing down the blind, leaving the room on tip-toe, and very gently fastening the door behindme. On the stairs, too, I trod with the utmost caution, feeling the wallwith my left hand (my right was full), lest by any chance I mightbe mistaken in supposing I had the cottage to myself. In spite of mycaution there came a creak at every step. And to my sudden horror Iheard a chair move in the kitchen below. 

My heart and I stood still together. But my right hand tightened onstout wood, my right forefinger trembled against thin steel. The soundwas not repeated. And at length I continued on my way down, my teethset, an excuse on my lips, but determination in every fibre of my frame. 

A shadow lay across the kitchen floor; it was that of the deaf mute, ashe stood on a chair before the fire, supporting himself on the chimneypiece with one puny arm, while he reached overhead with the other. Istood by for an instant, glorying in the thought that he could not hearme; the next, I saw what it was he was reaching up for--a bell-mouthedblunderbuss--and I knew the little devil for the impostor that he was. 

"You touch it, " said I, "and you'll drop dead on that hearth. "

He pretended not to hear me, but he heard the click of the splendidspring which Messrs. Deane and Adams had put into that early revolver oftheirs, and he could not have come down much quicker with my bullet inhis spine. 

"Now, then, " I said, "what the devil do you mean by shamming deaf anddumb?"

"I niver said I was owt o' t' sort, " he whimpered, cowering behind thechair in a sullen ague. 

"But you acted it, and I've a jolly good mind to shoot you dead!"(Remember, I was so weak myself that I thought my arm would break frompresenting my five chambers and my ten-inch barrel; otherwise I shouldbe sorry to relate how I bullied that mouse of a man. ) "I may let youoff, " I continued, "if you answer questions. Where's your wife?"

"Eh, she'll be back directly!" said Braithwaite, with some tact; but hislook was too cunning to give the warning weight. "I've a bullet to sparefor her, " said I, cheerfully; "now, then, where is she?"

"Gone wi' the oothers, for owt I knaw. "

"And where are the others gone?"

"Where they allus go, ower to t' say. "

"Over to the sea, eh? We're getting on! What takes them there?"

"That's more than I can tell you, sir, " said Braithwaite, with so muchemphasis and so little reluctance as to convince me that for once atleast he had spoken the truth. There was even a spice of malice in histone. I began to see possibilities in the little beast. 

"Well, " I said, "you're a nice lot! I don't know what your game is, anddon't want to. I've had enough of you without that. I'm off to-night. "

"Before they get back?" asked Braithwaite, plainly in doubt about hisduty, and yet as plainly relieved to learn the extent of my intention. 

"Certainly, " said I; "why not? I'm not particularly anxious to see yourwife again, and you may ask Mr. Rattray from me why the devil he ledme to suppose you were deaf and dumb? Or, if you like, you needn't sayanything at all about it, " I added, seeing his thin jaw fall; "tell himI never found you out, but just felt well enough to go, and went. Whendo you expect them back?"

"It won't be yet a bit, " said he. 

"Good! Now look here. What would you say to these?" And I showed him acouple of sovereigns: I longed to offer him twenty, but feared to excitehis suspicions. "These are yours if you have a conveyance at the end ofthe lane--the lane we came up the night before last--in an hour's time. "

His dull eyes glistened; but a tremor took him from top to toe, and heshook his head. 

"I'm ill, man!" I cried. "If I stay here I'll die! Mr. Rattray knowsthat, and he wanted me to go this morning; he'll be only too thankful tofind me gone. "

This argument appealed to him; indeed, I was proud of it. 

"But I was to stop an' look after you, " he mumbled; "it'll get me intotrooble, it will that!"

I took out three more sovereigns; not a penny higher durst I go. 

"Will five pounds repay you? No need to tell your wife it was five, youknow! I should keep four of them all to myself. "

The cupidity of the little wretch was at last overcoming his abjectcowardice. I could see him making up his miserable mind. And I stillflatter myself that I took only safe (and really cunning) steps toprecipitate the process. To offer him more money would have beenmadness; instead, I poured it all back into my pocket. 

"All right!" I cried; "you're a greedy, cowardly, old idiot, and I'lljust save my money. " And out I marched into the moonlight, very briskly, towards the lane; he was so quick to follow me that I had no fears ofthe blunderbuss, but quickened my step, and soon had him running at myheels. 

"Stop, stop, sir! You're that hasty wi' a poor owd man. " So he whimperedas he followed me like the little cur he was. 

"I'm hanged if I stop, " I answered without looking back; and had himalmost in tears before I swung round on him so suddenly that he yelpedwith fear. "What are you bothering me for?" I blustered. "Do you want meto wring your neck?"

"Oh, I'll go, sir! I'll go, I'll go, " he moaned. 

"I've a good mind not to let you. I wouldn't if I was fit to walk fivemiles. "

"But I'll roon 'em, sir! I will that! I'll go as fast as iver I can!"

"And have a conveyance at the road-end of the lane as near an hour henceas you possibly can?"

"Why, there, sir!" he cried, crassly inspired; "I could drive you in ourown trap in half the time. "

"Oh, no, you couldn't! I--I'm not fit to be out at all; it must be aclosed conveyance; but I'll come to the end of the lane to save time, so let him wait there. You needn't wait yourself; here's a sovereignof your money, and I'll leave the rest in the jug in my bedroom. There!It's worth your while to trust me, I think. As for my luggage, I'llwrite to Mr. Rattray about that. But I'll be shot if I spend anothernight on his property. "

I was rid of him at last; and there I stood, listening to his headlongsteps, until they stumbled out of earshot down the lane; then back tothe cottage, at a run myself, and up to my room to be no worse than myword. The sovereigns plopped into the water and rang together atthe bottom of the jug. In another minute I was hastening through theplantation, in my hand the revolver that had served me well already, andwas still loaded and capped in all five chambers. 

CHAPTER XIV. IN THE GARDEN

It so happened that I met nobody at all; but I must confess that myluck was better than my management. As I came upon the beck, a new soundreached me with the swirl. It was the jingle of bit and bridle; the beatof hoofs came after; and I had barely time to fling myself flat, whentwo horsemen emerged from the plantation, riding straight towards me inthe moonlight. If they continued on that course they could not failto see me as they passed along the opposite bank. However, to myunspeakable relief, they were scarce clear of the trees when they turnedtheir horses' heads, rode them through the water a good seventy yardsfrom where I lay, and so away at a canter across country towards theroad. On my hands and knees I had a good look at them as they bobbed upand down under the moon; and my fears subsided in astonished curiosity. For I have already boasted of my eyesight, and I could have sworn thatneither Rattray nor any one of his guests was of the horsemen; yet theback and shoulders of one of these seemed somehow familiar to me. Notthat I wasted many moments over the coincidence, for I had other thingsto think about as I ran on to the hall. 

I found the rear of the building in darkness unrelieved from within; onthe other hand, the climbing moon beat so full upon the garden wall, itwas as though a lantern pinned me as I crept beneath it. In passing Ithought I might as well try the gate; but Eva was right; it was locked;and that made me half inclined to distrust my eyes in the matter of thetwo horsemen, for whence could they have come, if not from the hall?In any case I was well rid of them. I now followed the wall some littledistance, and then, to see over it, walked backwards until I was all butin the beck; and there, sure enough, shone my darling's candle, close asclose against the diamond panes of her narrow, lofty window! It broughtthose ready tears back to my foolish, fevered eyes. But for sentimentthere was no time, and every other emotion was either futile orpremature. So I mastered my full heart, I steeled, my wretched nerves, and braced my limp muscles for the task that lay before them. 

I had a garden wall to scale, nearly twice my own height, and withoutnotch or cranny in the ancient, solid masonry. I stood against it on mytoes, and I touched it with my finger-tips as high up as possible. Somefour feet severed them from the coping that left only half a sky abovemy upturned eyes. 

I do not know whether I have made it plain that the house was notsurrounded by four walls, but merely filled a breach in one of thefour, which nipped it (as it were) at either end. The back entrance wasapproachable enough, but barred or watched, I might be very sure. It isever the vulnerable points which are most securely guarded, and it wasmy one comfort that the difficult way must also be the safe way, if onlythe difficulty could be overcome. How to overcome it was the problem. I followed the wall right round to the point at which it abutted on thetower that immured my love; the height never varied; nor could my handsor eyes discover a single foot-hole, ledge, or other means of mountingto the top. 

Yet my hot head was full of ideas; and I wasted some minutes in tryingto lift from its hinges a solid, six-barred, outlying gate, that myweak arms could hardly stir. More time went in pulling branches from theoak-trees about the beck, where the latter ran nearest to the moonlitwall. I had an insane dream of throwing a long forked branch overthe coping, and so swarming up hand-over-hand. But even to me theimpracticability of this plan came home at last. And there I stood in abreathless lather, much time and strength thrown away together; and thecandle burning down for nothing in that little lofty window; and therunning water swirling noisily over its stones at my back. 

This was the only sound; the wind had died away; the moonlit valleylay as still as the dread old house in its midst but for the splash andgurgle of the beck. I fancied this grew louder as I paused and listenedin my helplessness. All at once--was it the tongue of Nature telling methe way, or common gumption returning at the eleventh hour? I ran downto the water's edge, and could have shouted for joy. Great stones lay inequal profusion on bed and banks. I lifted one of the heaviest in bothhands. I staggered with it to the wall. I came back for another; forsome twenty minutes I was so employed; my ultimate reward a fine heap ofboulders against the wall. 

Then I began to build; then mounted my pile, clawing the wall to keepmy balance. My fingers were still many inches from the coping. I jumpeddown and gave another ten minutes to the back-breaking work of carryingmore boulders from the water to the wall. Then I widened my cairn below, so that I could stand firmly before springing upon the pinnacle withwhich I completed it. I knew well that this would collapse under me ifI allowed my weight to rest more than an instant upon it. And so at lastit did; but my fingers had clutched the coping in time; had grabbed iteven as the insecure pyramid crumbled and left me dangling. 

Instantly exerting what muscle I had left, and the occasion gave me, I succeeded in pulling myself up until my chin was on a level with myhands, when I flung an arm over and caught the inner coping. The otherarm followed; then a leg; and at last I sat astride the wall, pantingand palpitating, and hardly able to credit my own achievement. One greatdifficulty had been my huge revolver. I had been terribly frightened itmight go off, and had finally used my cravat to sling it at the backof my neck. It had shifted a little, and I was working it round again, preparatory to my drop, when I saw the light suddenly taken from thewindow in the tower, and a kerchief waving for one instant in its place. So she had been waiting and watching for me all these hours! I droppedinto the garden in a very ecstasy of grief and rapture, to think that Ihad been so long in coming to my love, but that I had come at last. AndI picked myself up in a very frenzy of fear lest, after all, I shouldfail to spirit her from this horrible place. 

Doubly desolate it looked in the rays of that bright October moon. Skulking in the shadow of the wall which had so long baffled me, Ilooked across a sharp border of shade upon a chaos, the more strikingfor its lingering trim design. The long, straight paths were barnacledwith weeds; the dense, fine hedges, once prim and angular, had fattenedout of all shape or form; and on the velvet sward of other days youmight have waded waist high in rotten hay. Towards the garden end thisrank jungle merged into a worse wilderness of rhododendrons, the tallestI have ever seen. On all this the white moon smiled, and the grim houseglowered, to the eternal swirl and rattle of the beck beyond its walls. 

Long enough I stood where I had dropped, listening with all my beingfor some other sound; but at last that great studded door creakedand shivered on its ancient hinges, and I heard voices arguing in thePortuguese tongue. It was poor Eva wheedling that black rascal Jose. I saw her in the lighted porch; the nigger I saw also, shrugging andgesticulating for all the world like his hateful master; yet giving in, I felt certain, though I could not understand a word that reached me. 

And indeed my little mistress very soon sailed calmly out, followed byfinal warnings and expostulations hurled from the step: for the blackstood watching her as she came steadily my way, now raising her head tosniff the air, now stooping to pluck up a weed, the very picture of aprisoner seeking the open air for its own sake solely. I had a keen eyeapiece for them as I cowered closer to the wall, revolver in hand. Butere my love was very near me (for she would stand long moments gazingever so innocently at the moon), her jailer had held a bottle to thelight, and had beaten a retreat so sudden and so hasty that I expectedhim back every moment, and so durst not stir. Eva saw me, however, and contrived to tell me so without interrupting the air that she washumming as she walked. 

"Follow me, " she sang, "only keep as you are, keep as you are, close tothe wall, close to the wall. "

And on she strolled to her own tune, and came abreast of me withoutturning her head; so I crept in the shadow (my ugly weapon tucked out ofsight), and she sauntered in the shine, until we came to the end ofthe garden, where the path turned at right angles, running behind therhododendrons; once in their shelter, she halted and beckoned me, andnext instant I had her hands in mine. 

"At last!" was all that I could say for many a moment, as I stood theregazing into her dear eyes, no hero in my heroic hour, but the biggerlove-sick fool than ever. "But quick--quick--quick!" I added, as shebrought me to my senses by withdrawing her hands. "We've no time tolose. " And I looked wildly from wall to wall, only to find them asbarren and inaccessible on this side as on the other. 

"We have more time than you think, " were Eva's first words. "We can donothing for half-an-hour. "

"Why not?"

"I'll tell you in a minute. How did you manage to get over?"

"Brought boulders from the beck, and piled 'em up till I could reach thetop. "

I thought her eyes glistened. 

"What patience!" she cried softly. "We must find a simpler way ofgetting out--and I think I have. They've all gone, you know, but Jose. "

"All three?"

"The captain has been gone all day. "

Then the other two must have been my horse-men, very probably in somedisguise; and my head swam with the thought of the risk that I had runat the very moment when I thought myself safest. Well, I would havefinished them both! But I did not say so to Eva. I did not mentionthe incident, I was so fearful of destroying her confidence in me. Apologizing, therefore, for my interruption, without explaining it, Ibegged her to let me hear her plan. 

It was simple enough. There was no fear of the others returning beforemidnight; the chances were that they would be very much later; andnow it was barely eleven, and Eva had promised not to stay out abovehalf-an-hour. When it was up Jose would come and call her. 

"It is horrid to have to be so cunning!" cried little Eva, with an angryshudder; "but it's no use thinking of that, " she was quick enough toadd, "when you have such dreadful men to deal with, such fiends! And Ihave had all day to prepare, and have suffered till I am so desperate Iwould rather die to-night than spend another in that house. No; let mefinish! Jose will come round here to look for me. But you and I willbe hiding on the other side of these rhododendrons. And when we hear himhere we'll make a dash for it across the long grass. Once let us get thedoor shut and locked in his face, and he'll be in a trap. It will takehim some time to break in; time enough to give us a start; what's more, when he finds us gone, he'll do what they all used to do in any doubt. "

"What's that?"

"Say nothing till it's found out; then lie for their lives; and it wastheir lives, poor creatures on the Zambesi!" She was silent a moment, her determined little face hard--set upon some unforgotten horror. "Once we get away, I shall be surprised if it's found out till morning, "concluded Eva, without a word as to what I was to do with her; neither, indeed, had I myself given that question a moment's consideration. 

"Then let's make a dash for it now!" was all I said or thought. 

"No; they can't come yet, and Jose is strong and brutal, and Ihave heard how ill you are. That you should have come to menotwithstanding--" and she broke off with her little hands lyingso gratefully on my shoulders, that I know not how I refrained fromcatching her then and there to my heart. Instead, I laughed and saidthat my illness was a pure and deliberate sharp, and my presence thereits direct result. And such was the virtue in my beloved's voice, themagic of her eyes, the healing of her touch, that I was scarce consciousof deceit, but felt a whole man once more as we two stood together inthe moonlight. 

In a trance I stood there gazing into her brave young eyes. In atrance I suffered her to lead me by the hand through the rank, denserhododendrons. And still entranced I crouched by her side near thefurther side, with only unkempt grass-plot and a weedy path between usand that ponderous door, wide open still, and replaced by a section ofthe lighted hail within. On this we fixed our attention with mingleddread and impatience, those contending elements of suspense; but theblack was slow to reappear; and my eyes stole home to my sweet girl'sface, with its glory of moonlit curls, and the eager, resolute, embittered look that put the world back two whole months, and EvaDenison upon the Lady Jermyn's poop, in the ship's last hours. But itwas not her look alone; she had on her cloak, as the night before, but with me (God bless her!) she found no need to clasp herself in itsfolds; and underneath she wore the very dress in which she had sung atour last concert, and been rescued in the gig. It looked as though shehad worn it ever since. The roses were crushed and soiled, the tulle alltorn, and tarnished some strings of beads that had been gold: a tatterof Chantilly lace hung by a thread: it is another of the relics that Ihave unearthed in the writing of this narrative. 

"I thought men never noticed dresses?" my love said suddenly, a pleasedlight in her eyes (I thought) in spite of all. "Do you really rememberit?"

"I remember every one of them, " I said indignantly; and so I did. 

"You will wonder why I wear it, " said Eva, quickly. "It was the firstthat came that terrible night. They have given me many since. But Iwon't wear one of them--not one!"

How her eyes flashed! I forgot all about Jose. 

"I suppose you know why they hadn't room for you in the gig?" she wenton. 

"No, I don't know, and I don't care. They had room for you, " said I;"that's all I care about. " And to think she could not see I loved her!

"But do you mean to say you don't know that these--murderers--set fireto the ship?"

"No--yes! I heard you say so last night. "

"And you don't want to know what for?"

Out of politeness I protested that I did; but, as I live, all I wantedto know just then was whether my love loved me--whether she evercould--whether such happiness was possible under heaven!

"You remember all that mystery about the cargo?" she continued eagerly, her pretty lips so divinely parted!

"It turned out to be gunpowder, " said I, still thinking only of her. 

"No--gold!"

"But it was gunpowder, " I insisted; for it was my incorrigible passionfor accuracy which had led up to half our arguments on the voyage; butthis time Eva let me off. 

"It was also gold: twelve thousand ounces from the diggings. That wasthe real mystery. Do you mean to say you never guessed?"

"No, by Jove I didn't!" said I. She had diverted my interest at last. Iasked her if she had known on board. 

"Not until the last moment. I found out during the fire. Do you rememberwhen we said good-by? I was nearly telling you then. "

Did I remember! The very letter of that last interview was cut deep inmy heart; not a sleepless night had I passed without rehearsing it wordfor word and look for look; and sometimes, when sorrow had spent itself, and the heart could bleed no more, vain grief had given place to vainerspeculation, and I had cudgelled my wakeful brains for the meaning ofthe new and subtle horror which I had read in my darling's eyes at thelast. Now I understood; and the one explanation brought such a tribein its train, that even the perilous ecstasy of the present moment wastemporarily forgotten in the horrible past. 

"Now I know why they wouldn't have me in the gig!" I cried softly. 

"She carried four heavy men's weight in gold. "

"When on earth did they get it aboard?"

"In provision boxes at the last; but they had been filling the boxes forweeks. "

"Why, I saw them doing it!" I cried. "But what about the gig? Who pickedyou up?"

She was watching that open door once more, and she answered with notableindifference, "Mr. Rattray. "

"So that's the connection!" said I; and I think its very simplicity waswhat surprised me most. 

"Yes; he was waiting for us at Ascension. "

"Then it was all arranged?"

"Every detail. "

"And this young blackguard is as bad as any of them!"

"Worse, " said she, with bitter brevity. Nor had I ever seen her look sohard but once, and that was the night before in the old justice hall, when she told Rattray her opinion of him to his face. She had now thesame angry flush, the same set mouth and scornful voice; and I tookit finally into my head that she was unjust to the poor devil, villainthough he was. With all his villainy I declined to believe him as badas the others. I told her so in as many words. And in a moment we werearguing as though we were back on the Lady Jermyn with nothing else todo. 

"You may admire wholesale murderers and thieves, " said Eva. "I do not. "

"Nor I. My point is simply that this one is not as bad as the rest. Ibelieve he was really glad for my sake when he discovered that I knewnothing of the villainy. Come now, has he ever offered you any personalviolence?"

"Me? Mr. Rattray? I should hope not, indeed!"

"Has he never saved you from any?"

"I--I don't know. "

"Then I do. When you left them last night there was some talk ofbringing you back by force. You can guess who suggested that--and whoset his face against it and got his way. You would think the better ofRattray had you heard what passed. "

"Should I?" she asked half eagerly, as she looked quickly round at me;and suddenly I saw her eyes fill. "Oh, why will you speak about him?"she burst out. "Why must you defend him, unless it's to go against me, as you always did and always will! I never knew anybody like you--never!I want you to take me away from these wretches, and all you do is todefend them!"

"Not all, " said I, clasping her hand warmly in mine. "Not all--not all!I will take you away from them, never fear; in another hour God grantyou may be out of their reach for ever!"

"But where are we to go?" she whispered wildly. "What are you to do withme? All my friends think me dead, and if they knew I was not it wouldall come out. "

"So it shall, " said I; "the sooner the better; if I'd had my way itwould all be out already. "

I see her yet, my passionate darling, as she turned upon me, whiter thanthe full white moon. 

"Mr. Cole, " said she, "you must give me your sacred promise that so faras you are concerned, it shall never come out at all!"

"This monstrous conspiracy? This cold blooded massacre?"

And I crouched aghast. 

"Yes; it could do no good; and, at any rate, unless you promise I remainwhere I am. "

"In their hands?"

"Decidedly--to warn them in time. Leave them I would, but betraythem--never!"

What could I say? What choice had I in the face of an alternative soheadstrong and so unreasonable? To rescue Eva from these miscreants Iwould have let every malefactor in the country go unscathed: yet thecondition was a hard one; and, as I hesitated, my love went on her kneesto me, there in the moonlight among the rhododendrons. 

"Promise--promise--or you will kill me!" she gasped. "They may deserveit richly, but I would rather be torn in little pieces than--than havethem--hanged!"

"It is too good for most of them. "

"Promise!"

"To hold my tongue about them all?"

"Yes--promise!"

"Promise!"

"When a hundred lives were sacrificed--"

"Promise!"

"I can't, " I said. "It's wrong. "

"Then good-by!" she cried, starting to her feet. 

"No--no--" and I caught her hand. 

"Well, then?"

"I--promise. "

CHAPTER XV. FIRST BLOOD

So I bound myself to a guilty secrecy for Eva's sake, to save her fromthese wretches, or if you will, to win her for myself. Nor did itstrike me as very strange, after a moment's reflection, that she shouldintercede thus earnestly for a band headed by her own mother's widower, prime scoundrel of them all though she knew him to be. The onlysurprise was that she had not interceded in his name; that I should haveforgotten, and she should have allowed me to forget, the very existenceof so indisputable a claim upon her loyalty. This, however, made it alittle difficult to understand the hysterical gratitude with which myunwilling promise was received. Poor darling! she was beside herselfwith sheer relief. She wept as I had never seen her weep before. Sheseized and even kissed my hands, as one who neither knew nor cared whatshe did, surprising me so much by her emotion that this expression of itpassed unheeded. I was the best friend she had ever had. I was her onegood friend in all the world; she would trust herself to me; and if Iwould but take her to the convent where she had been brought up, shewould pray for me there until her death, but that would not be verylong. 

All of which confused me utterly; it seemed an inexplicable breakdownin one who had shown such nerve and courage hitherto, and so hearty aloathing for that damnable Santos. So completely had her presence ofmind forsaken her that she looked no longer where she had been gazinghitherto. And thus it was that neither of us saw Jose until we heardhim calling, "Senhora Evah! Senhora Evah!" with some rapid sentences inPortuguese. 

"Now is our time, " I whispered, crouching lower and clasping a smallhand gone suddenly cold. "Think of nothing now but getting out of this. I'll keep my word once we are out; and here's the toy that's going toget us out. " And I produced my Deane and Adams with no small relish. 

A little trustful pressure was my answer and my reward; meanwhile theblack was singing out lustily in evident suspicion and alarm. 

"He says they are coming back, " whispered Eva; "but that's impossible. "

"Why?"

"Because if they were he couldn't see them, and if he heard them hewould be frightened of their hearing him. But here he comes!"

A shuffling quick step on the path; a running grumble of unmistakablethreats; a shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses through the leaves, very near us for an instant, then hidden by the shrubbery as he passedwithin a few yards of our hiding-place. A diminuendo of theshuffling steps; then a cursing, frightened savage at one end of therhododendrons, and we two stealing out at the other, hand in hand, andbent quite double, into the long neglected grass. 

"Can you run for it?" I whispered. 

"Yes, but not too fast, for fear we trip. '

"Come on, then!"

The lighted open doorway grew greater at every stride. 

"He hasn't seen us yet--"

"No, I hear him threatening me still. "

"Now he has, though!"

A wild whoop proclaimed the fact, and upright we tore at top speedthrough the last ten yards of grass, while the black rushed down one ofthe side paths, gaining audibly on us over the better ground. But ourstart had saved us, and we flew up the steps as his feet ceased toclatter on the path; he had plunged into the grass to cut off thecorner. 

"Thank God!" cried Eva. "Now shut it quick. "

The great door swung home with a mighty clatter, and Eva seized the keyin both hands. 

"I can't turn it!"

To lose a second was to take a life, and unconsciously I was stickingat that, perhaps from no higher instinct than distrust of my aim. Ourpursuer, however, was on the steps when I clapped my free hand on top ofthose little white straining ones, and by a timely effort bent both themand the key round together; the ward shot home as Jose hurled himselfagainst the door. Eva bolted it. But the thud was not repeated, and Igathered myself together between the door and the nearest window, for bynow I saw there was but one thing for us. The nigger must be disabled, if I could manage such a nicety; if not, the devil take his own. 

Well, I was not one tick too soon for him. My pistol was not cockedbefore the crash came that I was counting on, and with it a shower ofsmall glass driving across the six-foot sill and tinkling on the flags. Next came a black and bloody face, at which I could not fire. I hadto wait till I saw his legs, when I promptly shattered one of them atdisgracefully short range. The report was as deafening as one upon thestage; the hall filled with white smoke, and remained hideous with thebellowing of my victim. I searched him without a qualm, but threatsof annihilation instead, and found him unarmed but for that very knifewhich Rattray had induced me to hand over to him in town. I had a grimsatisfaction in depriving him of this, and but small compunction inturning my back upon his pain. 

"Come, " I said to poor Eva, "don't pity him, though I daresay he's themost pitiable of the lot; show me the way through, and I'll follow withthis lamp. "

One was burning on the old oak table. I carried it along a narrowpassage, through a great low kitchen where I bumped my head against theblack oak beams; and I held it on high at a door almost as massive asthe one which we had succeeded in shutting in the nigger's face. 

"I was afraid of it!" cried Eva, with a sudden sob. 

"What is it?"

"They've taken away the key!"

Yes, the keen air came through an empty keyhole; and my lamp, heldclose, not only showed that the door was locked, but that the lock wasone with which an unskilled hand might tamper for hours without result. I dealt it a hearty kick by way of a test. The heavy timber did notbudge; there was no play at all at either lock or hinges; nor did I seehow I could spend one of my four remaining bullets upon the former, withany chance of a return. 

"Is this the only other door?"

"Then it must be a window. "

"All the back ones are barred. "

"Securely?"

"Yes. "

"Then we've no choice in the matter. "

And I led the way back to the hall, where the poor black devil layblubbering in his blood. In the kitchen I found the bottle of wine(Rattray's best port, that they were trying to make her take for herhealth) with which Eva had bribed him, and I gave it to him beforelaying hands on a couple of chairs. 

"What are you going to do?"'

"Go out the way we came. "

"But the wall?"

"Pile up these chairs, and as many more as we may need, if we can't openthe gate. "

But Eva was not paying attention any longer, either to me or to Jose;his white teeth were showing in a grin for all his pain; her eyes werefixed in horror on the floor. 

"They've come back, " she gasped. "The underground passage! Hark--hark!"

There was a muffled rush of feet beneath our own, then a dull but verydistinguishable clatter on some invisible stair. 

"Underground passage!" I exclaimed, and in my sheer disgust I forgotwhat was due to my darling. "Why on earth didn't you tell me of itbefore?"

"There was so much to tell you! It leads to the sea. Oh, what shall wedo? You must hide--upstairs--anywhere!" cried Eva, wildly. "Leave themto me--leave them to me. "

"I like that, " said I; and I did; but I detested myself for the tears mywords had drawn, and I prepared to die for them. 

"They'll kill you, Mr. Cole!"

"It would serve me right; but we'll see about it. "

And I stood with my revolver very ready in my right hand, while withthe other I caught poor Eva to my side, even as a door flew open, and Rattray himself burst upon us, a lantern in his hand, and theperspiration shining on his handsome face in its light. 

I can see him now as he stood dumfounded on the threshold of the hall;and yet, at the time, my eyes sped past him into the room beyond. 

It was the one I have described as being lined with books; there wasa long rent in this lining, where the books had opened with a door, through which Captain Harris, Joaquin Santos, and Jane Braithwaitefollowed Rattray in quick succession, the men all with lanterns, thewoman scarlet and dishevelled even for her. It was over the squire'sshoulders I saw their faces; he kept them from passing him in thedoorway by a free use of his elbows; and when I looked at him again, hisblack eyes were blazing from a face white with passion, and they werefixed upon me. 

"What the devil brings you here?" he thundered at last. 

"Don't ask idle questions, " was my reply to that. 

"So you were shamming to-day!"

"I was taking a leaf out of your book. "

"You'll gain nothing by being clever!" sneered the squire, takinga threatening step forward. For at the last moment I had tucked myrevolver behind my back, not only for the pleasure, but for the obviousadvantage of getting them all in front of me and off their guard. Ihad no idea that such eyes as Rattray's could be so fierce: they weredancing from me to my companion, whom their glitter frightened into anattempt to disengage herself from me; but my arm only tightened abouther drooping figure. 

"I shall gain no more than I expect, " said I, carelessly. "And I knowwhat to expect from brave gentlemen like you! It will be better thanyour own fate, at all events; anything's better than being taken henceto the place of execution, and hanged by the neck until you're dead, allthree of you in a row, and your bodies buried within the precincts ofthe prison!"

"The very thing for him, " murmured Santos. "The--very--theeng!"

"But I'm so soft-hearted, " I went insanely on, "that I should be sorryto see that happen to such fine fellows as you are. Come out of that, you little fraud behind there!" It was my betrayer skulking in theroom. "Come out and line up with the rest! No, I'm not going to see youfellows dance on nothing; I've another kind of ball apiece for you, andone between 'em for the Braithwaites!"

Well, I suppose I always had a nasty tongue in me, and rather enjoyedmaking play with it on provocation; but, if so, I met with my desertsthat night. For the nigger of the Lady Jermyn lay all but hid behind Evaand me; if they saw him at all, they may have thought him drunk; but, asfor myself, I had fairly forgotten his existence until the very momentcame for showing my revolver, when it was twisted out of my graspinstead, and a ball sang under my arm as the brute fell back exhaustedand the weapon clattered beside him. Before I could stoop for it therewas a dead weight on my left arm, and Squire Rattray was over the tableat a bound, with his arms jostling mine beneath Eva Denison's senselessform. 

"Leave her to me, " he cried fiercely. "You fool, " he added in a lowerkey, "do you think I'd let any harm come to her?"

I looked him in the bright and honest eyes that had made me trust himin the beginning. And I did not utterly distrust him yet. Rather was theguile on my side as I drew back and watched Rattray lift the young girltenderly, and slowly carry her to the door by which she had entered andleft the hall just twenty-four hours before. I could not take my eyesoff them till they were gone. And when I looked for my revolver, it alsohad disappeared. 

Jose had not got it--he lay insensible. Santos was whispering to Harris. Neither of them seemed armed. I made sure that Rattray had picked it upand carried it off with Eva. I looked wildly for some other weapon. Twounarmed men and a woman were all I had to deal with, for Braithwaitehad long since vanished. Could I but knock the worthless life out of themen, I should have but the squire and his servants to deal with; and inthat quarter I still had my hopes of a bloodless battle and a treaty ofwar. 

A log fire was smouldering in the open grate. I darted to it, and had aheavy, half-burned brand whirling round my head next instant. Harris wasthe first within my reach. He came gamely at me with his fists. I sprangupon him, and struck him to the ground with one blow, the sparks flyingfar and wide as my smoking brand met the seaman's skull. Santos was uponme next instant, and him, by sheer luck, I managed to serve the same;but I doubt whether either man was stunned; and I was standing ready forthem to rise, when I felt myself seized round the neck from behind, anda mass of fluffy hair tickling my cheek, while a shrill voice set up alusty scream for the squire. 

I have said that the woman Braithwaite was of a sinister strength; but Ihad little dreamt how strong she really was. First it was her armsthat wound themselves about my neck, long, sinuous, and supple as thetentacles of some vile monster; then, as I struggled, her thumbs were onmy windpipe like pads of steel. Tighter she pressed, and tighter yet. Myeyeballs started; my tongue lolled; I heard my brand drop, and througha mist I saw it picked up instantly. It crashed upon my skull as I stillstruggled vainly; again and again it came down mercilessly in the sameplace; until I felt as though a sponge of warm water had been squeezedover my head, and saw a hundred withered masks grinning suddenexultation into mine; but still the lean arm whirled, and the splintersflew, till I was blind with my blood and the seven senses were beatenout of me. 

CHAPTER XVI. A DEADLOCK

It must have been midnight when I opened my eyes; a clock was strikingas though it never would stop. My mouth seemed fire; a pungent flavorfilled my nostrils; the wineglass felt cold against my teeth. "That'smore like it!" muttered a voice close to my ear. An arm was withdrawnfrom under my shoulders. I was allowed to sink back upon some pillows. And now I saw where I was. The room was large and poorly lighted. I layin my clothes on an old four-poster bed. And my enemies were standingover me in a group. 

"I hope you are satisfied!" sneered Joaquin Santos, with a flourish ofhis eternal cigarette. 

"I am. You don't do murder in my house, wherever else you may do it. "

"And now better lid 'im to the nirrest polissstation; or weel you goand tell the poliss yourself?" asked the Portuguese, in the same tone ofmordant irony. 

"Ay, ay, " growled Harris; "that's the next thing!"

"No, " said Rattray; "the next thing's for you two to leave him to me. "

"We'll see you damned!" cried the captain. 

"No, no, my friend, " said Santos, with a shrug; "let him have his way. He is as fond of his skeen as you are of yours; he'll come round to ourway in the end. I know this Senhor Cole. It is necessary for 'im to die. But it is not necessary this moment; let us live them together for aleetle beet. "

"That's all I ask, " said Rattray. 

"You won't ask it twice, " rejoined Santos, shrugging. "I know thisSenhor Cole. There is only one way of dilling with a man like that. Besides, he 'as 'alf-keeled my good Jose; it is necessary for 'im todie. "

"I agree with the senhor, " said Harris, whose forehead was starredwith sticking-plaster. "It's him or us, an' we're all agen you, squire. You'll have to give in, first or last. "

And the pair were gone; their steps grew faint in the corridor; when wecould no longer hear them, Rattray closed the door and quietly lockedit. Then he turned to me, stern enough, and pointed to the door with ahand that shook. 

"You see how it is?"

"Perfectly. "

"They want to kill you!"

"Of course they do. "

"It's your own fault; you've run yourself into this. I did my best tokeep you out of it. But in you come, and spill first blood. "

"I don't regret it, " said I. 

"Oh, you're damned mule enough not to regret anything!" cried Rattray. "I see the sort you are; yet but for me, I tell you plainly, you'd be adead man now. "

"I can't think why you interfered. "

"You've heard the reason. I won't have murder done here if I can preventit; so far I have; it rests with you whether I can go on preventing itor not. "

"With me, does it?"

He sat down on the side of the bed. He threw an arm to the far side ofmy body, and he leaned over me with savage eyes now staring into mine, now resting with a momentary gleam of pride upon my battered head. I putup my hand; it lit upon a very turban of bandages, and at that I triedto take his hand in mine. He shook it off, and his eyes met mine morefiercely than before. 

"See here, Cole, " said he; "I don t know how the devil you got wind ofanything to start with, and I don't care. What I do know is that you'vemade bad enough a long chalk worse for all concerned, and you'll have toget yourself out of the mess you've got yourself into, and there's onlyone way. I suppose Miss Denison has really told you everything thistime? What's that? Oh, yes, she's all right again; no thanks to you. Nowlet's hear what she did tell you. It'll save time. "

I repeated the hurried disclosures made by Eva in the rhododendrons. Henodded grimly in confirmation of their truth. 

"Yes, those are the rough facts. The game was started in Melbourne. Mypart was to wait at Ascension till the Lady Jermyn signalled herself, follow her in a schooner we had bought and pick up the gig with the goldaboard. Well, I did so; never mind the details now, and never mind thebloody massacre the others had made of it before I came up. God knows Iwas never a consenting party to that, though I know I'm responsible. I'm in this thing as deep as any of them. I've shared the risks and I'mgoing to share the plunder, and I'll swing with the others if it evercomes to that. I deserve it hard enough. And so here we are, we threeand the nigger, all four fit to swing in a row, as you were fool enoughto tell us; and you step in and find out everything. What's to be done?You know what the others want to do. I say it rests with you whetherthey do it or not. There's only one other way of meeting the case. "

"What's that?"

"Be in it yourself, man! Come in with me and split my share!"

I could have burst out laughing in his handsome, eager face; the goodfaith of this absurd proposal was so incongruously apparent; and soobviously genuine was the young villain's anxiety for my consent. Becomeaccessory after the fact in such a crime! Sell my silence for a price! Iconcealed my feelings with equal difficulty and resolution. I had plansof my own already, but I must gain time to think them over. Nor could Iafford to quarrel with Rattray meanwhile. 

"What was the haul?" I asked him, with the air of one not unprepared toconsider the matter. 

"Twelve thousand ounces!"

"Forty-eight thousand pounds, about?"

"Yes-yes. "

"And your share?"

"Fourteen thousand pounds. Santos takes twenty, and Harris and Ifourteen thousand each. "

"And you offer me seven?"

"I do! I do!"

He was becoming more and more eager and excited. His eyes were brighterthan I had ever seen them, but slightly bloodshot, and a coppery flushtinged his clear, sunburnt skin. I fancied he had been making somewhatfree with the brandy. But loss of blood had cooled my brain; and, perhaps, natural perversity had also a share in the composure which grewupon me as it deserted my companion. 

"Why make such a sacrifice?" said I, smiling. "Why not let them do asthey like?"

"I've told you why! I'm not so bad as all that. I draw the line atbloody murder! Not a life should have been lost if I'd had my way. Besides, I've done all the dirty work by you, Cole; there's been nohelp for it. We didn't know whether you knew or not; it made all thedifference to us; and somebody had to dog you and find out how much youdid know. I was the only one who could possibly do it. God knows how Idetested the job! I'm more ashamed of it than of worse things. I had toworm myself into your friendship; and, by Jove, you made me think youdid know, but hadn't let it out, and might any day. So then I got you uphere, where you would be in our power if it was so; surely you can seeevery move? But this much I'll swear--I had nothing to do with Josebreaking into your room at the hotel; they went behind me there, cursethem! And when at last I found out for certain, down here, that you knewnothing after all, I was never more sincerely thankful in my life. Igive you my word it took a load off my heart. "

"I know that, " I said. "I also know who broke into my room, and I'm gladI'm even with one of you. "

"It's done you no good, " said Rattray. "Their first thought was to putyou out of the way, and it's more than ever their last. You see the sortof men you've got to deal with; and they're three to one, counting thenigger; but if you go in with me they'll only be three to two. "

He was manifestly anxious to save me in this fashion. And I suppose thatmost sensible men, in my dilemma, would at least have nursed or playedupon good-will so lucky and so enduring. But there was always a twist inme that made me love (in my youth) to take the unexpected course; and itamused me the more to lead my young friend on. 

"And where have you got this gold?" I asked him, in a low voice sopromising that he instantly lowered his, and his eyes twinkled naughtilyinto mine. 

"In the old tunnel that runs from this place nearly to the sea, " saidhe. "We Rattrays have always been a pretty warm lot, Cole, and in theold days we were the most festive smugglers on the coast; this tunnel'sa relic of 'em, although it was only a tradition till I came into theproperty. I swore I'd find it, and when I'd done so I made the newconnection which you shall see. I'm rather proud of it. And I won't sayI haven't used the old drain once or twice after the fashion of my rudeforefathers; but never was it such a godsend as it's been this time. ByJove, it would be a sin if you didn't come in with us, Cole; but for thelives these blackguards lost the thing's gone splendidly; it would be asin if you went and lost yours, whereas, if you come in, the two of uswould be able to shake off those devils: we should be too strong for'em. "

"Seven thousand pounds!" I murmured. "Forty-eight thousand between us!"

"Yes, and nearly all of it down below, at this end of the tunnel, andthe rest where we dropped it when we heard you were trying to bolt. We'dgot it all at the other end, ready to pop aboard the schooner that'slying there still, if you turned out to know anything and to have toldwhat you knew to the police. There was always the possibility of that, you see; we simply daren't show our noses at the bank until we knew howmuch you knew, and what you'd done or were thinking of doing. As it is, we can take 'em the whole twelve thousand ounces, or rather I can, assoon as I like, in broad daylight. I'm a lucky digger. It's all right. Everybody knows I've been out there. They'll have to pay me over thecounter; and if you wait in the cab, by the Lord Harry, I'll pay youyour seven thousand first! You don't deserve it, Cole, but you shallhave it, and between us we'll see the others to blazes!"

He jumped up all excitement, and was at the door next instant. 

"Stop!" I cried. "Where are you going?"

"Downstairs to tell them. "

"Tell them what?"

"That you're going in with me, and it's all right. "

"And do you really think I am?"

He had unlocked the door; after a pause I heard him lock it again. ButI did not see his face until he returned to the bedside. And then itfrightened me. It was distorted and discolored with rage and chagrin. 

"You've been making a fool of me!" he cried fiercely. 

"No, I have been considering the matter, Rattray. "

"And you won't accept my offer?"

"Of course I won't. I didn't say I'd been considering that. "

He stood over me with clenched fists and starting eyes. 

"Don't you see that I want to save your life?" he cried. "Don't you seethat this is the only way? Do you suppose a murder more or less makesany difference to that lot downstairs? Are you really such a fool as todie rather than hold your tongue?"

"I won't hold it for money, at all events, " said I. "But that's what Iwas coming to. "

"Very well!" he interrupted. "You shall only pretend to touch it. All Iwant is to convince the others that it's against your interest to split. Self-interest is the one motive they understand. Your bare word would begood enough for me. "

"Suppose I won't give my bare word?" said I, in a gentle manner which Idid not mean to be as irritating as it doubtless was. Yet his proposalsand his assumptions were between them making me irritable in my turn. 

"For Heaven's sake don't be such an idiot, Cole!" he burst out in apassion. "You know I'm against the others, and you know what they want, yet you do your best to put me on their side! You know what they are, and yet you hesitate! For the love of God be sensible; at least give meyour word that you'll hold your tongue for ever about all you know. "

"All right, " I said. "I'll give you my word--my sacred promise, Rattray--on one condition. "

"What's that?"

"That you let me take Miss Denison away from you, for good and all!"

His face was transformed with fury: honest passion faded from it andleft it bloodless, deadly, sinister. 

"Away from me?" said Rattray, through his teeth. 

"From the lot of you. "

"I remember! You told me that night. Ha, ha, ha! You were in love withher--you--you!"

"That has nothing to do with it, " said I, shaking the bed with my angerand my agitation. 

"I should hope not! You, indeed, to look at her!"

"Well, " I cried, "she may never love me; but at least she doesn't loatheme as she loathes you--yes, and the sight of you, and your very name!"

So I drew blood for blood; and for an instant I thought he was going tomake an end of it by incontinently killing me himself. His fists flewout. Had I been a whole man on my legs, he took care to tell me what hewould have done, and to drive it home with a mouthful of the oaths whichwere conspicuously absent from his ordinary talk. 

"You take advantage of your weakness, like any cur, " he wound up. 

"And you of your strength--like the young bully you are!" I retorted. 

"You do your best to make me one, " he answered bitterly. "I try to standby you at all costs. I want to make amends to you, I want to preventa crime. Yet there you lie and set your face against a compromise; andthere you lie and taunt me with the thing that's gall and wormwood to mealready. I know I gave you provocation. And I know I'm rightly served. Why do you suppose I went into this accursed thing at all? Not for thegold, my boy, but for the girl! So she won't look at me. And it servesme right. But--I say--do you really think she loathes me, Cole?"

"I don't see how she can think much better of you than of the crimein which you've had a hand, " was my reply, made, however, with as muchkindness as I could summon. "The word I used was spoken in anger, " saidI; for his had disappeared; and he looked such a miserable, handsome dogas he stood there hanging his guilty head--in the room, I fancied, wherehe once had lain as a pretty, innocent child. 

"Cole, " said he, "I'd give twice my share of the damned stuff never tohave put my hand to the plough; but go back I can't; so there's an endof it. "

"I don't see it, " said I. "You say you didn't go in for the gold? Thengive up your share; the others'll jump at it; and Eva won't think theworse of you, at any rate. "

"But what's to become of her if I drop out?

"You and I will take her to her friends, or wherever she wants to go. "

"No, no!" he cried. "I never yet deserted my pals, and I'm not going tobegin. "

"I don't believe you ever before had such pals to desert, " was my replyto that. "Quite apart from my own share in the matter, it makes mepositively sick to see a fellow like you mixed up with such a crew insuch a game. Get out of it, man, get out of it while you can! Now's yourtime. Get out of it, for God's sake!"

I sat up in my eagerness. I saw him waver. And for one instant a greathope fluttered in my heart. But his teeth met. His face darkened. Heshook his head. 

"That's the kind of rot that isn't worth talking, and you ought to knowit, " said he. "When I begin a thing I go through with it, though itlands me in hell, as this one will. I can't help that. It's too late togo back. I'm going on and you're going with me, Cole, like a sensiblechap!"

I shook my head. 

"Only on the one condition. "

"You--stick--to--that?" he said, so rapidly that the words ran into one, so fiercely that his decision was as plain to me as my own. 

"I do, " said I, and could only sigh when he made yet one more effort topersuade me, in a distress not less apparent than his resolution, andnot less becoming in him. 

"Consider, Cole, consider!"

"I have already done so, Rattray. "

"Murder is simply nothing to them!"

"It is nothing to me either. "

"Human life is nothing!"

"No; it must end one day. "

"You won't give your word unconditionally?"

"No; you know my condition. "

He ignored it with a blazing eye, his hand upon the door. 

"You prefer to die, then?" "Infinitely. "

"Then die you may, and be damned to you!"

CHAPTER XVII. THIEVES FALL OUT

The door slammed. It was invisibly locked and the key taken out. Ilistened for the last of an angry stride. It never even began. But aftera pause the door was unlocked again, and Rattray re-entered. 

Without looking at me, he snatched the candle from the table on which itstood by the bedside, and carried it to a bureau at the opposite sideof the room. There he stood a minute with his back turned, the candle, I fancy, on the floor. I saw him putting something in either jacketpocket. Then I heard a dull little snap, as though he had shut somesmall morocco case; whatever it was, he tossed it carelessly back intothe bureau; and next minute he was really gone, leaving the candleburning on the floor. 

I lay and heard his steps out of earshot, and they were angry enoughnow, nor had he given me a single glance. I listened until there wasno more to be heard, and then in an instant I was off the bed and onmy feet. I reeled a little, and my head gave me great pain, but greaterstill was my excitement. I caught up the candle, opened the unlockedbureau, and then the empty case which I found in the very front. 

My heart leapt; there was no mistaking the depressions in the case. Itwas a brace of tiny pistols that Rattray had slipped into his jacketpockets. 

Mere toys they must have been in comparison with my dear Deane andAdams; that mattered nothing. I went no longer in dire terror of mylife; indeed, there was that in Rattray which had left me feeling fairlysafe, in spite of his last words to me, albeit I felt his fears on mybehalf to be genuine enough. His taking these little pistols (ofcourse, there were but three chambers left loaded in mine) confirmed myconfidence in him. 

He would stick at nothing to defend me from the violence of hisbloodthirsty accomplices. But it should not come to that. My legs weregrowing firmer under me. I was not going to lie there meekly withoutmaking at least an effort at self-deliverance. If it succeeded--theidea came to me in a flash--I would send Rattray an ultimatum from thenearest town; and either Eva should be set instantly and unconditionallyfree, or the whole matter be put unreservedly in the hands of the localpolice. 

There were two lattice windows, both in the same immensely thick wall;to my joy, I discovered that they overlooked the open premises at theback of the hall, with the oak-plantation beyond; nor was the distanceto the ground very great. It was the work of a moment to tear the sheetsfrom the bed, to tie the two ends together and a third round the mullionby which the larger window was bisected. I had done this, and had letdown my sheets, when a movement below turned my heart to ice. The nighthad clouded over. I could see nobody; so much the greater was my alarm. 

I withdrew from the window, leaving the sheets hanging, in the hope thatthey also might be invisible in the darkness. I put out the candle, and returned to the window in great perplexity. Next moment I stoodaghast--between the devil and the deep sea. I still heard a somethingdown below, but a worse sound came to drown it. An unseen hand was veryquietly trying the door which Rattray had locked behind him. 

"Diablo!" came to my horrified ears, in a soft, vindictive voice. 

"I told ye so, " muttered another; "the young swab's got the key. "

There was a pause, in which it would seem that Joaquin Santos had hisear at the empty keyhole. 

"I think he must be slipping, " at last I heard him sigh. "It was notnecessary to awaken him in this world. It is a peety. "

"One kick over the lock would do it, " said Harris; "only the youngswab'll hear. "

"Not perhaps while he is dancing attendance on the senhora. Was it notgood to send him to her? If he does hear, well, his own turn will comethe queecker, that is all. But it would be better to take them one at atime; so keeck away, my friend, and I will give him no time to squil. "

While my would-be murderers were holding this whispered colloquy, I hadstood half-petrified by the open window; unwilling to slide down thesheets into the arms of an unseen enemy, though I had no idea whichof them it could be; more hopeful of slipping past my butchers in thedarkness, and so to Rattray and poor Eva; but not the less eagerlylooking for some hiding-place in the room. The best that offered was arecess in the thick wall between the two windows, filled with hangingclothes: a narrow closet without a door, which would shelter me wellenough if not too curiously inspected. Here I hid myself in the end, after a moment of indecision which nearly cost me my life. The coats andtrousers still shook in front of me when the door flew open at the firstkick, and Santos stood a moment in the moonlight, looking for the bed. With a stride he reached it, and I saw the gleam of a knife from where Istood among the squire's clothes; it flashed over my bed, and was still. 

"He is not 'ere!"

"He heard us, and he's a-hiding. "

"Make light, my friend, and we shall very soon see. "

Harris did so. 

"Here's a candle, " said Santos; "light it, and watch the door. Perro maldicto! What have we here?"

I felt certain he had seen me, but the candle passed within a yard of myfeet, and was held on high at the open window. 

"We are too late!" said Santos. "He's gone!"

"Are you sure

"Look at this sheet. "

"Then the other swab knew of it, and we'll settle with him. "

"Yes, yes. But not yet, my good friend--not yet. We want his asseestancein getting the gold back to the sea; he will be glad enough to give it, now that his pet bird has flown; after that--by all mins. You shall cuthis troth, and I will put one of 'is dear friend's bullets in 'im for myown satisfaction. "

There was a quick step on the stairs-in the corridor. 

"I'd like to do it now, " whispered Harris; "no time like the present. "

"Not yet, I tell you!"

And Rattray was in the room, a silver-mounted pistol in each hand; thesight of these was a surprise to his treacherous confederates, as even Icould see. 

"What the devil are you two doing here?" he thundered. 

"We thought he was too quite, " said Santos. "You percive the rizzon. "

And he waved from empty bed to open window, then held the candle closeto the tied sheet, and shrugged expressively. 

"You thought he was too quiet!" echoed Rattray with fierce scorn. "Youthought I was too blind--that's what you mean. To tell me that MissDenison wished to see me, and Miss Denison that I wished to speak toher! As if we shouldn't find you out in about a minute! But a minute wasbetter than nothing, eh? And you've made good use of your minute, haveyou. You've murdered him, and you pretend he's got out? By God, if youhave, I'll murder you! I've been ready for this all night!"

And he stood with his back to the window, his pistols raised, and hishead carried proudly--happily--like a man whose self-respect was comingback to him after many days. Harris shrank before his fierce eyesand pointed barrels. The Portuguese, however, had merely given acharacteristic shrug, and was now rolling the inevitable cigarette. 

"Your common sense is almost as remarkable as your sense of justice, myfriend, " said he. "You see us one, two, tree meenutes ago, and you seeus now. You see the empty bed, the empty room, and you imagine that inone, two, tree meenutes we have killed a man and disposed of his body. Truly, you are very wise and just, and very loyal also to your friends. You treat a dangerous enemy as though he were your tween-brother. Youlet him escape--let him, I repit--and then you threaten to shoot thosewho, as it is, may pay for your carelessness with their lives. We havebeen always very loyal to you, Senhor Rattray. We have leestened to youradvice, and often taken it against our better judgment. We are here, notbecause we think it wise, but because you weeshed it. Yet at the firsttemptation you turn upon us, you point your peestols at your friends. "

"I don't believe in your loyalty, " rejoined Rattray. "I believe youwould shoot me sooner than I would you. The only difference would bethan I should be shot in the back!"

"It is untrue, " said Santos, with immense emotion. "I call the saints towitness that never by thought or word have I been disloyal to you"--andthe blasphemous wretch actually crossed himself with a trembling, skinnyhand. "I have leestened to you, though you are the younger man. I havegeeven way to you in everything from the moment we were so fullish as toset foot on this accursed coast; that also was your doeeng; and it willbe your fault if ivil comes of it. Yet I have not complained. Herein your own 'ouse you have been the master, I the guest. So far fromplotting against you, show me the man who has heard me brith onetreacherous word behind your back; you will find it deeficult, friendRattray; what do you say, captain?"

"Me?" cried Harris, in a voice bursting with abuse. And what the captainsaid may or may not be imagined. It cannot be set down. 

But the man who ought to have spoken--the man who had such a chance asfew men have off the stage--who could have confounded these villainsin a breath, and saved the wretched Rattray at once from them andfrom himself--that unheroic hero remained ignobly silent in his homelyhiding-place. And, what is more, he would do the same again!

The rogues had fallen out; now was the time for honest men. They allthought I had escaped; therefore they would give me a better chance thanever of still escaping; and I have already explained to what purposeI meant to use my first hours of liberty. That purpose I hold to havejustified any ingratitude that I may seem now to have displayed towardsthe man who had undoubtedly stood between death and me. Was not EvaDenison of more value than many Rattrays? And it was precisely inrelation with this pure young girl that I most mistrusted the squire:obviously then my first duty was to save Eva from Rattray, not Rattrayfrom these traitors. 

Not that I pretend for a moment to have been the thing I never was: youare not so very grateful to the man who pulls you out of the mud when hehas first of all pushed you in; nor is it chivalry alone which spursone to the rescue of a lovely lady for whom, after all, one would ratherlive than die. Thus I, in my corner, was thinking (I will say) of Evafirst; but next I was thinking of myself; and Rattray's blood be on hisown hot head! I hold, moreover, that I was perfectly right in all this;but if any think me very wrong, a sufficient satisfaction is in storefor them, for I was very swiftly punished. 

The captain's language was no worse in character than in effect: the bedwas bloody from my wounded head, all tumbled from the haste with whichI had quitted it, and only too suggestive of still fouler play. Rattraystopped the captain with a sudden flourish of one of his pistols, thesilver mountings making lightning in the room; then he called upon thepair of them to show him what they had done with me; and to my horror, Santos invited him to search the room. The invitation was accepted. Yetthere I stood. It would have been better to step forward even then. YetI cowered among his clothes until his own hand fell upon my collar, andforth I was dragged to the plain amazement of all three. 

Santos was the first to find his voice. 

"Another time you will perhaps think twice before you spik, friendsquire. "

Rattray simply asked me what I had been doing in there, in a white flameof passion, and with such an oath that I embellished the truth for himin my turn. 

"Trying to give you blackguards the slip, " said I. 

"Then it was you who let down the sheet?"

"Of course it was. "

"All right! I'm done with you, " said he; "that settles it. I make you anoffer. You won't accept it. I do my best; you do your worst; but I'll beshot if you get another chance from me!"

Brandy and the wine-glass stood where Rattray must have set them, on anoak stool beside the bed; as he spoke he crossed the room, filledthe glass till the spirit dripped, and drained it at a gulp. He wastwitching and wincing still when he turned, walked up to Joaquin Santos, and pointed to where I stood with a fist that shook. 

"You wanted to deal with him, " said Rattray; "you're at liberty to doso. I'm only sorry I stood in your way. "

But no answer, and for once no rings of smoke came from those shrivelledlips: the man had rolled and lighted a cigarette since Rattray entered, but it was burning unheeded between his skinny fingers. I had hisattention, all to myself. He knew the tale that I was going to tell. He was waiting for it; he was ready for me. The attentive droop of hishead; the crafty glitter in his intelligent eyes; the depth andbreadth of the creased forehead; the knowledge of his resource, theconsciousness of my error, all distracted and confounded me so that myspeech halted and my voice ran thin. I told Rattray every syllable thatthese traitors had been saying behind his back, but I told it all veryill; what was worse, and made me worse, I was only too well aware of myown failure to carry conviction with my words. 

"And why couldn't you come out and say so, " asked Rattray, as even I knewthat he must. "Why wait till now?"

"Ah, why!" echoed Santos, with a smile and a shake of the head; asuspicious tolerance, an ostentatious truce, upon his parchment face. And already he was sufficiently relieved to suck his cigarette alightagain. 

"You know why, " I said, trusting to bluff honesty with the one of themwho was not rotten to the core: "because I still meant escaping. "

"And then what?" asked Rattray fiercely. 

"You had given me my chance, " I said; "I hould have given you yours. "

"You would, would you? Very kind of you, Mr. Cole!"

"No, no, " said Santos; "not kind, but clever! Clever, spicious, andqueeck-weeted beyond belif! Senhor Rattray, we have all been in thedark; we thought we had fool to die with, but what admirable knave theyoung man would make! Such readiness, such resource, with his tongueor with his peestol; how useful would it be to us! I am glad you havedecided to live him to me, friend Rattray, for I am quite come round toyour way of thinking. It is no longer necessary for him to die!"

"You mean that?" cried Rattray keenly. 

"Of course I min it. You were quite right. He must join us. But he willwhen I talk to him. "

I could not speak. I was fascinated by this wretch: it was reptile andrabbit with us. Treachery I knew he meant; my death, for one; my deathwas certain; and yet I could not speak. 

"Then talk to him, for God's sake, " cried Rattray, "and I shall be onlytoo glad if you can talk some sense into him. I've tried, and failed. "

"I shall not fail, " said Santos softly. "But it is better that he has aleetle time to think over it calmly; better steel for 'im to slip uponit, as you say. Let us live 'im for the night, what there is of it; timeenough in the morning. "

I could hardly believe my ears; still I knew that it was treachery, alltreachery; and the morning I should never see. 

"But we can't leave him up here, " said Rattray; "it would mean one of uswatching him all night. "

"Quite so, " said Santos. "I will tell you where we could live him, however, if you will allow me to wheesper one leetle moment. "

They drew aside; and, as I live, I thought that little moment was tobe Rattray's last on earth. I watched, but nothing happened; on thecontrary, both men seemed agreed, the Portuguese gesticulating, theEnglishman nodding, as they stood conversing at the window. Their faceswere strangely reassuring. I began to reason with myself, to rid my mindof mere presentiment and superstition. If these two really were at oneabout me (I argued) there might be no treachery after all. When I cameto think of it, Rattray had been closeted long enough with me to awakethe worst suspicions in the breasts of his companions; now that thesewere allayed, there might be no more bloodshed after all (if, forexample, I pretended to give in), even though Santos had not cared whoseblood was shed a few minutes since. That was evidently the character ofthe wretch: to compass his ends or to defend his person he would takelife with no more compunction than the ordinary criminal takes money;but (and hence) murder for murder's sake was no amusement to him. 

My confidence was further restored by Captain Harris; ever a grossruffian, with no refinements to his rascality, he had been at the brandybottle after Rattray's example; and now was dozing on the latter's bed, taking his watch below when he could get it, like the good seaman hehad been. I was quite sorry for him when the conversation at the windowceased suddenly, and Rattray roused the captain up. 

"Watches aft!" said he. "We want that mattress; you can bring it along, while I lead the way with the pillows and things. Come on, Cole!"

"Where to?" I asked, standing firm. 

"Where there's no window for you to jump out of, old boy, and no clothesof mine for you to hide behind. You needn't look so scared; it's as dryas a bone, as cellars go. And it's past three o'clock. And you've justgot to come. "

CHAPTER XVIII. A MAN OF MANY MURDERS

It was a good-sized wine-cellar, with very little wine in it; only onefull bin could I discover. The bins themselves lined but two of thewalls, and most of them were covered in with cobwebs, close-drawn likemosquito-curtains. The ceiling was all too low: torpid spiders hungin disreputable parlors, dead to the eye, but loathsomely alive at aninvoluntary touch. Rats scuttled when we entered, and I had not beenlong alone when they returned to bear me company. I am not a naturalhistorian, and had rather face a lion with the right rifle than a ratwith a stick. My jailers, however, had been kind enough to leave me alantern, which, set upon the ground (like my mattress), would afford awarning, if not a protection, against the worst; unless I slept; and asyet I had not lain down. The rascals had been considerate enough, moreespecially Santos, who had a new manner for me with his revised opinionof my character; it was a manner almost as courtly as that which hadembellished his relations with Eva Denison, and won him my early regardat sea. Moreover, it was at the suggestion of Santos that they haddetained me in the hall, for much-needed meat and drink, on the waydown. Thereafter they had conducted me through the book-lined door of myundoing, down stone stairs leading to three cellar doors, one of whichthey had double-locked upon me. 

As soon as I durst I was busy with this door; but to no purpose; it wasa slab of solid oak, hung on hinges as massive as its lock. It galledme to think that but two doors stood between me and the secret tunnel tothe sea: for one of the other two must lead to it. The first, however, was all beyond me, and I very soon gave it up. There was also avery small grating which let in a very little fresh air: the massivefoundations had been tunnelled in one place; a rude alcove was theresult, with this grating at the end and top of it, some seven feetabove the earth floor. Even had I been able to wrench away the bars, itwould have availed me nothing, since the aperture formed the segment ofa circle whose chord was but a very few inches long. I had neverthelessa fancy for seeing the stars once more and feeling the breath of heavenupon my bandaged temples, which impelled me to search for that whichshould add a cubit to my stature. And at a glance I descried twopacking-cases, rather small and squat, but the pair of them togetherthe very thing for me. To my amazement, however, I could at first moveneither one nor the other of these small boxes. Was it that I was weakas water, or that they were heavier than lead? At last I managed to getone of them in my arms--only to drop it with a thud. A side started;a thin sprinkling of yellow dust glittered on the earth. I fetched thelantern: it was gold-dust from Bendigo or from Ballarat. 

To me there was horror unspeakable, yet withal a morbid fascination, in the spectacle of the actual booty for which so many lives had beensacrificed before my eyes. Minute followed minute in which I looked atnothing, and could think of nothing, but the stolen bullion at my feet;then I gathered what of the dust I could, pocketed it in pinches to hidemy meddlesomeness, and blew the rest away. The box had dropped very muchwhere I had found it; it had exhausted my strength none the less, andI was glad at last to lie down on the mattress, and to wind my body inRattray's blankets. 

I shuddered at the thought of sleep: the rats became so lively themoment I lay still. One ventured so near as to sit up close to thelantern; the light showed its fat white belly, and the thing itself waslike a dog begging, as big to my disgusted eyes. And yet, in the midstof these horrors (to me as bad as any that had preceded them), natureovercame me, and for a space my torments ceased. 

"He is aslip, " a soft voice said. 

"Don't wake the poor devil, " said another. 

"But I weesh to spik with 'im. Senhor Cole! Senhor Cole!"

I opened my eyes. Santos looked of uncanny stature in the low yellowlight, from my pillow close to the earth. Harris turned away at myglance; he carried a spade, and began digging near the boxes withoutmore ado, by the light of a second lantern set on one of them: his backwas to me from this time on. Santos shrugged a shoulder towards thecaptain as he opened a campstool, drew up his trousers, and seatedhimself with much deliberation at the foot of my mattress. 

"When you 'ave treasure, " said he, "the better thing is to bury it, Senhor Cole. Our young friend upstairs begs to deefer; but he isslipping; it is peety he takes such quantity of brandy! It is leetlewikness of you Engleesh; we in Portugal never touch it, save as aliqueur; therefore we require less slip. Friend squire upstairs is atthis moment no better than a porker. Have I made mistake? I thought itwas the same word in both languages; but I am glad to see you smile, Senhor Cole; that is good sign. I was going to say, he is so fast aslipup there, that he would not hear us if we were to shoot each otherdead!"

And he gave me his paternal smile, benevolent, humorous, reassuring; butI was no longer reassured; nor did I greatly care any more what happenedto me. There is a point of last, as well as one of least resistance, andI had reached both points at once. 

"Have you shot him dead?" I inquired, thinking that if he had, thiswould precipitate my turn. But he was far from angry; the parchmentface crumpled into tolerant smiles; the venerable head shook a playfulreproval, as he threw away the cigarette that I am tired of mentioning, and put the last touch to a fresh one with his tongue. 

"What question?" said he; "reely, Senhor Cole! But you are quite right:I would have shot him, or cut his troth" (and he shrugged indifferenceon the point), "if it had not been for you; and yet it would have beenyour fault! I nid not explain; the poseetion must have explained itselfalready; besides, it is past. With you two against us--but it is past. You see, I have no longer the excellent Jose. You broke his leg, badman. I fear it will be necessary to destroy 'im. " Santos made a pause;then inquired if he shocked me. 

"Not a bit, " said I, neither truly nor untruly; "you interest me. " Andthat he did. 

"You see, " he continued, "I have not the respect of you Engleesh for'uman life. We will not argue it. I have at least some respect forprejudice. In my youth I had myself such prejudices; but one loses themon the Zambesi. You cannot expect one to set any value upon the life ofa black nigger; and when you have keeled a great many Kaffirs, by thelash, with the crocodiles, or what-not, then a white man or two makesless deeference. I acknowledge there were too many on board that sheep;but what was one to do? You have your Engleesh proverb about the deadmen and the stories; it was necessary to make clin swip. You see theresult. "

He shrugged again towards the boxes; but this time, being remindedof them (I supposed), he rose and went over to see how Harris wasprogressing. The captain had never looked round; neither did he look atSantos. "A leetle dipper, " I heard the latter say, "and, perhaps, a feweenches--" but I lost the last epithet. It followed a glance over theshoulder in my direction, and immediately preceded the return of Santosto his camp-stool. 

"Yes, it is always better to bury treasure, " said he once more; but histone was altered; it was more contemplative; and many smoke-rings camefrom the shrunk lips before another word; but through them all, his darkeyes, dull with age, were fixed upon me. 

"You are a treasure!" he exclaimed at last, softly enough, but quicklyand emphatically for him, and with a sudden and most diabolical smile. 

"So you are going to bury me?"

I had suspected it when first I saw the spade; then not; but since thevisit to the hole I had made up my mind to it. 

"Bury you? No, not alive, " said Santos, in his playfully reprovingtone. "It would be necessary to deeg so dip!" he added through his fewremaining teeth. 

"Well, " I said, "you'll swing for it. That's something. "

Santos smiled again, benignantly enough this time: in contemplationalso: as an artist smiles upon his work. I was his!

"You live town, " said he; "no one knows where you go. You come downhere; no one knows who you are. Your dear friend squire locks you upfor the night, but dreenks too much and goes to slip with the key in hispocket; it is there when he wakes; but the preesoner, where is he? He isgone, vanished, escaped in the night, and, like the base fabreec of yourown poet's veesion, he lives no trace--is it trace?--be'ind! A leetleearth is so easily bitten down; a leetle more is so easily carried upinto the garden; and a beet of nice strong wire might so easily befound in a cellar, and afterwards in the lock! No, Senhor Cole, I do notexpect to 'ang. My schims have seldom one seengle flaw. There was justone in the Lady Jermyn; there was--Senhor Cole! If there is one thistime, and you will be so kind as to point it out, I will--I will run thereesk of shooting you instead of--"

A pinch of his baggy throat, between the fingers and thumbs of bothhands, foreshadowed a cleaner end; and yet I could look at him; nay, itwas more than I could do not to look upon that bloodless face, with thetwo dry blots upon the parchment, that were never withdrawn from mine. 

"No you won't, messmate! If it's him or us for it, let a bullet do it, and let it do it quick, you bloody Spaniard! You can't do the otherwithout me, and my part's done. "

Harris was my only hope. I had seen this from the first, but my appealI had been keeping to the very end. And now he was leaving me before aword would come! Santos had gone over to my grave, and there was Harrisat the door!

"It is not dip enough, " said the Portuguese. 

"It's as deep as I mean to make it, with you sittin' there talkin' aboutit. "

And the door stood open. 

"Captain!" I screamed. "For Christ's sake, captain!"

He stood there, trembling, yet even now not looking my way. 

"Did you ever see a man hanged?" asked Santos, with a vile eye for eachof us. "I once hanged fifteen in a row; abominable thifs. And I oncepoisoned nearly a hundred at one banquet; an untrustworthy tribe; butthe hanging was the worse sight and the worse death. Heugh! There wasone man--he was no stouter than you are captain--"

But the door slammed; we heard the captain on the stairs; there was arustle from the leaves outside, and then a silence that I shall notattempt to describe. 

And, indeed, I am done with this description: as I live to tell the tale(or spoil it, if I choose) I will make shorter work of this particularbusiness than I found it at the time. Perverse I may be in old age asin my youth; but on that my agony--my humiliating agony--I declineto dwell. I suffer it afresh as I write. There are the cobwebs on theceiling, a bloated spider crawling in one: a worse monster is gloatingover me: those dull eyes of his, and my own pistol-barrel, cover me inthe lamp-light. The crucifix pin is awry in his cravat; that is becausehe has offered it me to kiss. As a refinement (I feel sure) my revolveris not cocked; and the hammer goes up--up--

He missed me because a lantern was flashed into his eyes through thegrating. He wasted the next ball in firing wildly at the light. Andthe last chamber's load became suddenly too precious for my person; forthere were many voices overhead; there were many feet upon the stairs. 

Harris came first--head-first--saw me still living as he reeled--hurledhimself upon the boxes and one of these into the hole--all far quickerthan my pen can write it. The manoeuvre, being the captain's, explaineditself: on his heels trod Rattray, with one who brought me to my feetlike the call of silver trumpets. 

"The house is surrounded, " says the squire, very quick and quiet; "isthis your doing, Cole?"

"I wish it was, " said I; "but I can't complain; it's saved my life. "And I looked at Santos, standing dignified and alert, my still smokingpistol in his hand. 

"Two things to do, " says Rattray--"I don't care which. " He strode acrossthe cellar and pulled at the one full bin; something slid out, it was abinful of empty bottles, and this time they were allowed to crash uponthe floor; the squire stood pointing to a manhole at the back of thebin. "That's one alternative, " said he; "but it will mean leaving thismuch stuff at least, " pointing to the boxes, "and probably all the restat the other end. The other thing's to stop and fight!"

"I fight, " said Santos, stalking to the door. "Have you no moreammunition for me, friend Cole? Then I must live you alive; adios, senhor!"

Harris cast a wistful look towards the manhole, not in cowardice, Ifancy, but in sudden longing for the sea, the longing of a poor devilof a sailor-man doomed to die ashore. I am still sorry to remember thatRattray judged him differently. "Come on, skipper, " said he; "it's allor none aboard the lugger, and I think it will be none. Up you go; waita second in the room above, and I'll find you an old cutlass. I shan'tbe longer. " He turned to me with a wry smile. "We're not half-armed, " hesaid; "they've caught us fairly on the hop; it should be fun! Good-by, Cole; I wish you'd had another round for that revolver. Good-by, Eva!"

And he held out his hand to our love, who had been watching him all thistime with eyes of stone; but now she turned her back upon him withouta word. His face changed; the stormlight of passion and remorse playedupon it for an instant; he made a step towards her, wheeled abruptly, and took me by the shoulder instead. 

"Take care of her, Cole, " said he. "Whatever happens--take care of her. "

I caught him at the foot of the stairs. I do not defend what I did. ButI had more ammunition; a few wadded bullets, caps, and powder-charges, loose in a jacket pocket; and I thrust them into one of his, upon asudden impulse, not (as I think) altogether unaccountable, albeit (as Ihave said) so indefensible. 

My back was hardly turned an instant. I had left a statue of unforgivingcoldness. I started round to catch in my arms a half-fainting, grief-stricken form, shaken with sobs that it broke my heart to hear. Iplaced her on the camp-stool. I knelt down and comforted her as well asI could, stroking her hands, my arm about her heaving shoulders, withthe gold-brown hair streaming over them. Such hair as it was! So muchlonger than I had dreamt. So soft--so fine--my soul swam with the sightand touch of it. Well for me that there broke upon us from above sucha sudden din as turned my hot blood cold! A wild shout of surprise; anensuing roar of defiance; shrieks and curses; yells of rage and pain;and pistol-shot after pistol-shot as loud as cannon in the confinedspace. 

I know now that the battle in the hall was a very brief affair; whileit lasted I had no sense of time; minutes or moments, they were (Godforgive me!) some of the very happiest in all my life. My joy was asprofound as it was also selfish and incongruous. The villains were beingrouted; of that there could be no doubt or question. I hoped Rattraymight escape, but for the others no pity stirred in my heart, and evenmy sneaking sympathy with the squire could take nothing from the joythat was in my heart. Eva Denison was free. I was free. Our oppressorswould trouble us no more. We were both lonely; we were both young; wehad suffered together and for each other. And here she lay in my arms, her head upon my shoulder, her soft bosom heaving on my own! My bloodran hot and cold by turns. I forgot everything but our freedom and mylove. I forgot my sufferings, as I would have you all forget them. Iam not to be pitied. I have been in heaven on earth. I was there thatnight, in my great bodily weakness, and in the midst of blood-shed, death, and crime. 

"They have stopped!" cried Eva suddenly. "It is over! Oh, if he isdead!"

And she sat upright, with bright eyes starting from a deathly face. I donot think she knew that she had been in my arms at all: any more than Iknew that the firing had ceased before she told me. Excited voices werestill raised overhead; but some sounded distant, yet more distinct, coming through the grating from the garden; and none were voices that weknew. One poor wretch, on the other hand, we heard plainly groaning tohis death; and we looked in each other's eyes with the same thought. 

"That's Harris, " said I, with, I fear, but little compassion in my toneor in my heart just then. 

"Where are the others?" cried Eva piteously. 

"God knows, " said I; "they may be done for, too. "

"If they are!"

"It's better than the death they would have lived to die. "

"But only one of them was a wilful murderer! Oh, Mr. Cole--Mr. Cole--goand see what has happened; come back and tell me! I dare not come. Iwill stay here and pray for strength to bear whatever news you may bringme. Go quickly. I will--wait--and pray!"

So I left the poor child on her knees in that vile cellar, white faceand straining hands uplifted to the foul ceiling, sweet lips quiveringwith prayer, eyelids reverently lowered, and the swift tears flowingfrom beneath them, all in the yellow light of the lantern that stoodburning by her side. How different a picture from that which awaited meoverhead!

CHAPTER XIX. MY GREAT HOUR

The library doors were shut, and I closed the secret one behind mebefore opening the other and peering out through a wrack of bluishsmoke; and there lay Captain Harris, sure enough, breathing his last inthe arms of one constable, while another was seated on the table with avery wry face, twisting a tourniquet round his arm, from which the bloodwas dripping like raindrops from the eaves. A third officer stood in theporch, issuing directions to his men without. 

"He's over the wall, I tell you! I saw him run up our ladder. After himevery man of you--and spread!"

I looked in vain for Rattray and the rest; yet it seemed as if onlyone of them had escaped. I was still looking when the man in the porchwheeled back into the hall, and instantly caught sight of me at my door. 

"Hillo! here's another of them, " cried he. "Out you come, young fellow!Your mates are all dead men. "

"They're not my mates. "

"Never mind; come you out and let's have a look at you. "

I did so, and was confronted by a short, thickset man, who recognized mewith a smile, but whom I failed to recognize. 

"I might have guessed it was Mr. Cole, " said he. "I knew you were heresomewhere, but I couldn't make head or tail of you through the smoke. "

"I'm surprised that you can make head or tail of me at all, " said I. 

"Then you've quite forgotten the inquisitive parson you met out fishing?You see I found out your name for myself!"

"So it was a detective!"

"It was and is, " said the little man, nodding. "Detective or InspectorRoyds, if you're any the wiser. 

"What has happened? Who has escaped?" "Your friend Rattray; but he won'tget far. "

"What of the Portuguese and the nigger?"

I forgot that I had crippled Jose, but remembered with my words, andwondered the more where he was. 

"I'll show you, " said Royds. "It was the nigger let us in. We heard himgroaning round at the back--who smashed his leg? One of our men was atthat cellar grating; there was some of them down there; we wanted tofind our way down and corner them, but the fat got in the fire too soon. Can you stand something strong? Then come this way. "

He led me out into the garden, and to a tangled heap lying in themoonlight, on the edge of the long grass. The slave had fallen on topof his master; one leg lay swathed and twisted; one black hand had butpartially relaxed upon the haft of a knife (the knife) that stood uphilt-deep in a blacker heart. And in the hand of Santos was still therevolver (my Deane and Adams) which had sent its last ball through thenigger's body. 

"They slipped out behind us, all but the one inside, " said Royds, ruefully; "I'm hanged if I know yet how it happened--but we were on themnext second. Before that the nigger had made us hide him in the grass, but the old devil ran straight into him, and the one fired as the otherstruck. It's the worst bit of luck in the whole business, and I'm ratherdisappointed on the whole. I've been nursing the job all this week; hadmy last look round this very evening, with one of these officers, andonly rode back for more to make sure of taking our gentlemen alive. Andwe've lost three out of four of 'em, and have still to lay hands onthe gold! I suppose you didn't know there was any aboard?" he askedabruptly. 

"Not before to-night. "

"Nor did we till the Devoren came in with letters last week, a hundredand thirty days out. She should have been in a month before you, but shegot amongst the ice around the Horn. There was a letter of advice aboutthe gold, saying it would probably go in the Lady Jermyn; and anotherabout Rattray and his schooner, which had just sailed; the younggentleman was known to the police out there. "

"Do you know where the schooner is?"

"Bless you, no, we've had no time to think about her; the man had beenseen about town, and we've done well to lay hands on him in the time. "

"You will do better still when you do lay hands on him, " said I, wresting my eyes from the yellow dead face of the foreign scoundrel. The moon shone full upon his high forehead, his shrivelled lips, dank intheir death agony, and on the bauble with the sacred device that he worealways in his tie. I recovered my property from the shrunken fingers, and so turned away with a harder heart than I ever had before or sincefor any creature of Almighty God. 

Harris had expired in our absence. 

"Never spoke, sir, " said the constable in whose arms we had left him. 

"More's the pity. Well, cut out at the back and help land the younggent, or we'll have him giving us the slip too. He may double back, but I'm watching out for that. Which way should you say he'd head, Mr. Cole?"

"Inland, " said I, lying on the spur of the moment, I knew not why. "Tryat the cottage where I've been staying. "

"We have a man posted there already. That woman is one of the gang, and we've got her safe. But I'll take your advice, and have that sidescoured whilst I hang about the place. "

And he walked through the house, and out the back way, at the officer'sheels; meanwhile the man with the wounded arm was swaying where he satfrom loss of blood, and I had to help him into the open air before atlast I was free to return to poor Eva in her place of loathsome safety. 

I had been so long, however, that her patience was exhausted, and as Ireturned to the library by one door, she entered by the other. 

"I could bear it no longer. Tell me--the worst!"

"Three of them are dead. "

"Which three?"

She had crossed to the other door, and would not have me shut it. SoI stood between her and the hearth, on which lay the captain's corpse, with the hearthrug turned up on either side to cover it. 

"Harris for one, " said I. "Outside lie Jose and--"

"Quick! Quick!"

"Senhor Santos. "

Her face was as though the name meant nothing to her. 

"And Mr. Rattray?" she cried. "And Mr. Rattray--"

"Has escaped for the present. He seems to have cut his way through thepolice and got over the wall by a ladder they left behind them. They arescouring the country--Miss Denison! Eva! My poor love!"

She had broken down utterly in a second fit of violent weeping; and asecond time I took her in my arms, and stood trying in my clumsy way tocomfort her, as though she were a little child. A lamp was burning inthe library, and I recognized the arm-chair which Rattray had drawnthence for me on the night of our dinner--the very night before! I ledEva back into the room, and I closed both doors. I supported my poorgirl to the chair, and once more I knelt before her and took her handsin mine. My great hour was come at last: surely a happy omen that it wasalso the hour before the dawn. 

"Cry your fill, my darling, " I whispered, with the tears in my ownvoice. "You shall never have anything more to cry for in this world! Godhas been very good to us. He brought you to me, and me to you. He hasrescued us for each other. All our troubles are over; cry your fill; youwill never have another chance so long as I live, if only you will letme live for you. Will you, Eva? Will you? Will you?"

She drew her hands from mine, and sat upright in the chair, looking atme with round eyes; but mine were dim; astonishment was all that Icould read in her look, and on I went headlong, with growing impetus andpassion. 

"I know I am not much, my darling; but you know I was not always what myluck, good and bad, has left me now, and you will make a new man ofme so soon! Besides, God must mean it, or He would not have thrown ustogether amid such horrors, and brought us through them together still. And you have no one else to take care of you in the world! Won't you letme try, Eva? Say that you will!"

"Then--you--owe me?" she said slowly, in a low, awe-struck voice thatmight have told me my fate at once; but I was shaking all over in theintensity of my passion, and for the moment it was joy enough to be ableat last to tell her all. 

"Love you?" I echoed. "With every fibre of my being! With every atom ofmy heart and soul and body! I love you well enough to live to a hundredfor you, or to die for you to-night!"

"Well enough to--give me up?" she whispered. 

I felt as though a cold hand had checked my heart at its hottest, butI mastered myself sufficiently to face her question and to answer it ashonestly as I might. 

"Yes!" I cried; "well enough even to do that, if it was for yourhappiness; but I might be rather difficult to convince about that. "

"You are very strong and true, " she murmured. "Yes, I can trust you asI have never trusted anybody else! But--how long have you been sofoolish?" And she tried very hard to smile. 

"Since I first saw you; but I only knew it on the night of the fire. Till that night I resisted it like an idiot. Do you remember how we usedto argue? I rebelled so against my love! I imagined that I had lovedonce already and once for all. But on the night of the fire I knew thatmy love for you was different from all that had gone before or wouldever come again. I gave in to it at last, and oh! the joy of giving in!I had fought against the greatest blessing of my life, and I never knewit till I had given up fighting. What did I care about the fire? Iwas never happier--until now! You sang through my heart like the windthrough the rigging; my one fear was that I might go to the bottomwithout telling you my love. When I asked to say a few last words to youon the poop, it was to tell you my love before we parted, that you mightknow I loved you whatever came. I didn't do so, because you seemedso frightened, poor darling! I hadn't it in my heart to add to yourdistress. So I left you without a word. But I fought the sea for daystogether simply to tell you what I couldn't die without telling you. When they picked me up, it was your name that brought back my sensesafter days of delirium. When I heard that you were dead, I longed todie myself. And when I found you lived after all, the horror of yoursurroundings was nothing to be compared with the mere fact that youlived; that you were unhappy and in danger was my only grief, but it wasnothing to the thought of your death; and that I had to wait twenty-fourhours without coming to you drove me nearer to madness than ever I wason the hen-coop. That's how I love you, Eva, " I concluded; "that's how Ilove and will love you, for ever and ever, no matter what happens. "

Those sweet gray eyes of hers had been fixed very steadily upon me allthrough this outburst; as I finished they filled with tears, and my poorlove sat wringing her slender fingers, and upbraiding herself as thoughshe were the most heartless coquette in the country. 

"How wicked I am!" she moaned. "How ungrateful I must be! You offer methe unselfish love of a strong, brave man. I cannot take it. I have nolove to give you in return. "

"But some day you may, " I urged, quite happily in my ignorance. "Itwill come. Oh, surely it will come, after all that we have gone throughtogether!"

She looked at me very steadily and kindly through her tears. 

"It has come, in a way, " said she; "but it is not your way, Mr. Cole. Ido love you for your bravery and your--love--but that will not quite dofor either of us. "

"Why not?" I cried in an ecstasy. "My darling, it will do for me! Itis more than I dared to hope for; thank God, thank God, that you shouldcare for me at all!"

She shook her head. 

"You do not understand, " she whispered. 

"I do. I do. You do not love me as you want to love. "

"As I could love--"

"And as you will! It will come. It will come. I'll bother you no moreabout it now. God knows I can afford to leave well alone! I am only toohappy--too thankful--as it is!"

And indeed I rose to my feet every whit as joyful as though she hadaccepted me on the spot. At least she had not rejected me; nay, sheconfessed to loving me in a way. What more could a lover want? Yet therewas a dejection in her drooping attitude which disconcerted me in thehour of my reward. And her eyes followed me with a kind of stony remorsewhich struck a chill to my bleeding heart. 

I went to the door; the hall was still empty, and I shut it again with ashudder at what I saw before the hearth, at all that I had forgottenin the little library. As I turned, another door opened--the door madeinvisible by the multitude of books around and upon it--and young SquireRattray stood between my love and me. 

His clear, smooth skin was almost as pale as Eva's own, but pale brown, the tint of rich ivory. His eyes were preternaturally bright. And theynever glanced my way, but flew straight to Eva, and rested on her veryhumbly and sadly, as her two hands gripped the arms of the chair, andshe leant forward in horror and alarm. 

"How could you come back?" she cried. "I was told you had escaped!"

"Yes, I got away on one of their horses. "

"I pictured you safe on board!"

"I very nearly was. "

"Then why are you here?"

"To get your forgiveness before I go. "

He took a step forward; her eyes and mine were riveted upon him; and Istill wonder which of us admired him the more, as he stood there in hispride and his humility, gallant and young, and yet shamefaced and sad. 

"You risk your life--for my forgiveness?" whispered Eva at last. "Riskit? I'll give myself up if you'll take back some of the things you saidto me--last night--and before. "

There was a short pause. 

"Well, you are not a coward, at all events!"

"Nor a murderer, Eva!"

"God forbid. "

"Then forgive me for everything else that I have been--to you!"

And he was on his knees where I had knelt scarce a minute before; norcould I bear to watch them any longer. I believed that he loved her inhis own way as sincerely as I did in mine. I believed that she detestedhim for the detestable crime in which he had been concerned. I believedthat the opinion of him which she had expressed to his face, in myhearing, was her true opinion, and I longed to hear her mitigate it everso little before he went. He won my sympathy as a gallant who valueda kind word from his mistress more than life itself. I hoped earnestlythat that kind word would be spoken. But I had no desire to wait to hearit. I felt an intruder. I would leave them alone together for the lasttime. So I walked to the door, but, seeing a key in it, I changedmy mind, and locked it on the inside. In the hall I might become theunintentional instrument of the squire's capture, though, so far as myears served me, it was still empty as we had left it. I preferred to runno risks, and would have a look at the subterranean passage instead. 

"I advise you to speak low, " I said, "and not to be long. The place isalive with the police. If they hear you all will be up. "

Whether he heard me I do not know. I left him on his knees still, andEva with her face hidden in her hands. 

The cellar was a strange scene to revisit within an hour of mydeliverance from that very torture-chamber. It had been something morebefore I left it, but in it I could think only of the first occupant ofthe camp-stool. The lantern still burned upon the floor. There was themattress, still depressed where I had lain face to face with insolentdeath. The bullet was in the plaster; it could not have missed by thebreadth of many hairs. In the corner was the shallow grave, dug byHarris for my elements. And Harris was dead. And Santos was dead. Butlife and love were mine. 

I would have gone through it all again!

And all at once I was on fire to be back in the library; so much so, that half a minute at the manhole, lantern in hand, was enough for me;and a mere funnel of moist brown earth--a terribly low arch propped withbeams--as much as I myself ever saw of the subterranean conduit betweenKirby House and the sea. But I understood that the curious may traverseit for themselves to this day on payment of a very modest fee. 

As for me, I returned as I had come after (say) five minutes' absence;my head full once more of Eva, and of impatient anxiety for the wildyoung squire's final flight; and my heart still singing with the joy ofwhich my beloved's kindness seemed a sufficient warranty. Poor egotist!Am I to tell you what I found when I came up those steep stairs to thechamber where I had left him on his knees to her? Or can you guess?

He was on his knees no more, but he held her in his arms, and as Ientered he was kissing the tears from her wet, flushed cheek. Hereyelids drooped; she was pale as the dead without, so pale that hereyebrows looked abnormally and dreadfully dark. She did not cling tohim. Neither did she resist his caresses, but lay passive in his arms asthough her proper paradise was there. And neither heard me enter; it wasas though they had forgotten all the world but one another. 

"So this is it, " said I very calmly. I can hear my voice as I write. 

They fell apart on the instant. Rattray glared at me, yet I saw that hiseyes were dim. Eva clasped her hands before her, and looked me steadilyin the face. But never a word. 

"You love him?" I said sternly. 

The silence of consent remained unbroken. 

"Villain as he is?" I burst out. 

And at last Eva spoke. 

"I loved him before he was one, " said she. "We were engaged. "

She looked at him standing by, his head bowed, his arms folded; nextmoment she was very close to me, and fresh tears were in her eyes. But Istepped backward, for I had had enough. 

"Can you not forgive me?"

"Oh, dear, yes. "

"Can't you understand?"

"Perfectly, " said I. 

"You know you said--"

"I have said so many things!"

"But this was that you--you loved me well enough to--give me up. "

And the silly ego in me--the endless and incorrigible I--imagined herpouting for a withdrawal of those brave words. 

"I not only said it, " I declared, "but I meant every word of it. "

None the less had I to turn from her to hide my anguish. I leaned myelbows on the narrow stone chimney-piece, which, with the grate belowand a small mirror above, formed an almost solitary oasis in the fourwalls of books. In the mirror I saw my face; it was wizened, drawn, oldbefore its time, and merely ugly in its sore distress, merely repulsivein its bloody bandages. And in the mirror also I saw Rattray, handsome, romantic, audacious, all that I was not, nor ever would be, and I"understood" more than ever, and loathed my rival in my heart. 

I wheeled round on Eva. I was not going to give her up--to him. I wouldtell her so before him--tell him so to his face. But she had turnedaway; she was listening to some one else. Her white forehead glistened. There were voices in the hall. 

"Mr. Cole! Mr. Cole! Where are you, Mr. Cole?"

I moved over to the locked door. My hand found the key. I turned roundwith evil triumph in my heart, and God knows what upon my face. Rattraydid not move. With lifted hands the girl was merely begging him to go bythe door that was open, down the stair. He shook his head grimly. Withan oath I was upon them. 

"Go, both of you!" I whispered hoarsely. "Now--while you can--and I canlet you. Now! Now!"

Still Rattray hung back. 

I saw him glancing wistfully at my great revolver lying on the tableunder the lamp. I thrust it upon him, and pushed him towards the door. 

"You go first. She shall follow. You will not grudge me one last word?Yes, I will take your hand. If you escape--be good to her!"

He was gone. Without, there was a voice still calling me; but now itsounded overhead. 

"Good-by, Eva, " I said. "You have not a moment to lose. "

Yet those divine eyes lingered on my ugliness. 

"You are in a very great hurry, " said she, in the sharp little voice ofher bitter moments. 

"You love him; that is enough. "

"And you, too!" she cried. "And you, too!"

And her pure, warm arms were round my neck; another instant, and shewould have kissed me, she! I know it. I knew it then. But it was morethan I would bear. As a brother! I had heard that tale before. Back Istepped again, all the man in me rebelling. 

"That's impossible, " said I rudely. 

"It isn't. It's true. I do love you--for this!"

God knows how I looked!

"And I mayn't say good-by to you, " she whispered. "And--and I loveyou--for that!"

"Then you had better choose between us, " said I. 

CHAPTER XX. THE STATEMENT OF FRANCIS RATTRAY

In the year 1858 I received a bulky packet bearing the stamp of theArgentine Republic, a realm in which, to the best of my belief, I hadnot a solitary acquaintance. The superscription told me nothing. Inmy relations with Rattray his handwriting had never come under myobservation. Judge then of my feelings when the first thing I read washis signature at the foot of the last page. 

For five years I had been uncertain whether he was alive or dead. I hadheard nothing of him from the night we parted in Kirby Hall. All I knewwas that he had escaped from England and the English police; his lettergave no details of the incident. It was an astonishing letter; my breathwas taken on the first close page; at the foot of it the tears were inmy eyes. And all that part I must pass over without a word. I have nevershown it to man or woman. It is sacred between man and man. 

But the letter possessed other points of interest--of almost universalinterest--to which no such scruples need apply; for it cleared upcertain features of the foregoing narrative which had long beenmysteries to all the world; and it gave me what I had tried in vainto fathom all these years, some explanation, or rather history, ofthe young Lancastrian's complicity with Joaquin Santos in the foulenterprise of the Lady Jermyn. And these passages I shall reproduce wordfor word; partly because of their intrinsic interest; partly for suchnew light as they day throw on this or that phase of the foregoingnarrative; and, lastly, out of fairness to (I hope) the most gallant andmost generous youth who ever slipped upon the lower slopes of Avemus. 

Wrote Rattray:

"You wondered how I could have thrown in my lot with such a man. You maywonder still, for I never yet told living soul. I pretended I had joinedhim of my own free will. That was not quite the case. The facts were asfollows:

"In my teens (as I think you know) I was at sea. I took my second mate'scertificate at twenty, and from that to twenty-four my voyages were farbetween and on my own account. I had given way to our hereditary passionfor smuggling. I kept a 'yacht' in Morecambe Bay, and more French brandythan I knew what to do with in my cellars. It was exciting for a time, but the excitement did not last. In 1851 the gold fever broke out inAustralia. I shipped to Melbourne as third mate on a barque, andI deserted for the diggings in the usual course. But I was never asuccessful digger. I had little luck and less patience, and I have nodoubt that many a good haul has been taken out of claims previouslyabandoned by me; for of one or two I had the mortification of hearingwhile still in the Colony. I suppose I had not the temperament for thework. Dust would not do for me--I must have nuggets. So from Bendigo Idrifted to the Ovens, and from the Ovens to Ballarat. But I did no moregood on one field than on another, and eventually, early in 1853, I castup in Melbourne again with the intention of shipping home in the firstvessel. But there were no crews for the homeward-bounders, and whilewaiting for a ship my little stock of gold dust gave out. I becamedestitute first--then desperate. Unluckily for me, the beginning of '53was the hey-day of Captain Melville, the notorious bushranger. He wasa young fellow of my own age. I determined to imitate his exploits. Icould make nothing out there from an honest life; rather than starveI would lead a dishonest one. I had been born with lawless tendencies;from smuggling to bushranging was an easy transition, and about thelatter there seemed to be a gallantry and romantic swagger which put iton the higher plane of the two. But I was not born to be a bushrangereither. I failed at the very first attempt. I was outwitted by my firstvictim, a thin old gentleman riding a cob at night on the Geelong road. 

"'Why rob me?' said he. 'I have only ten pounds in my pocket, and thepunishment will be the same as though it were ten thousand. '

"'I want your cob, ' said I (for I was on foot); 'I'm a starving Jack, and as I can't get a ship I'm going to take to the bush. '

"He shrugged his shoulders. 

"'To starve there?' said he. 'My friend, it is a poor sport, thisbushranging. I have looked into the matter on my own account. You notonly die like a dog, but you live like one too. It is not worth while. No crime is worth while under five figures, my friend. A starving Jack, eh? Instead of robbing me of ten pounds, why not join me and take tenthousand as your share of our first robbery? A sailor is the very man Iwant!'

"I told him that what I wanted was his cob, and that it was no use histrying to hoodwink me by pretending he was one of my sort, because Iknew very well that he was not; at which he shrugged again, and slowlydismounted, after offering me his money, of which I took half. He shookhis head, telling me I was very foolish, and I was coolly mounting (forhe had never offered me the least resistance), with my pistols in mybelt, when suddenly I heard one cocked behind me. 

"'Stop!' said he. 'It's my turn! Stop, or I shoot you dead!' The tableswere turned, and he had me at his mercy as completely as he had been atmine. I made up my mind to being marched to the nearest police-station. But nothing of the kind. I had misjudged my man as utterly as youmisjudged him a few months later aboard the Lady Jermyn. He took meto his house on the outskirts of Melbourne, a weather-board bungalow, scantily furnished, but comfortable enough. And there he seriouslyrepeated the proposal he had made me off-hand in the road. Only he putit a little differently. Would I go to the hulks for attempting to robhim of five pounds, or would I stay and help him commit a robbery, ofwhich my share alone would be ten or fifteen thousand? You know whichI chose. You know who this man was. I said I would join him. He made meswear it. And then he told me what his enterprise was: there is no needfor me to tell you; nor indeed had it taken definite shape at this time. Suffice it that Santos had wind that big consignments of Austrailiangold were shortly to be shipped home to England; that he, like myself, had done nothing on the diggings, where he had looked to make hisfortune, and out of which he meant to make it still. 

"It was an extraordinary life that we led in the bungalow, I the guest, he the host, and Eva the unsuspecting hostess and innocent daughterof the house. Santos had failed on the fields, but he had succeeded inmaking valuable friends in Melbourne. Men of position and of influencespent their evenings on our veranda, among others the Melbourne agentfor the Lady Jermyn, the likeliest vessel then lying in the harbor, andthe one to which the first consignment of gold-dust would be entrustedif only a skipper could be found to replace the deserter who tookyou out. Santos made up his mind to find one. It took him weeks, buteventually he found Captain Harris on Bendigo, and Captain Harris washis man. More than that he was the man for the agent; and the LadyJermyn was once more made ready for sea. 

"Now began the complications. Quite openly, Santos had bought theschooner Spindrift, freighted her with wool, given me the command, andvowed that he would go home in her rather than wait any longer for theLady Jermyn. At the last moment he appeared to change his mind, and Isailed alone as many days as possible in advance of the ship, as hadbeen intended from the first; but it went sorely against the grain whenthe time came. I would have given anything to have backed out of theenterprise. Honest I might be no longer; I was honestly in love with EvaDenison. Yet to have backed out would have been one way of losing herfor ever. Besides, it was not the first time I had run counter to thelaw, I who came of a lawless stock; but it would be the first time I haddeserted a comrade or broken faith with one. I would do neither. In fora penny, in for a pound. 

"But before my God I never meant it to turn out as it did; though Iadmit and have always admitted that my moral responsibility is butlittle if any the less on that account. Yet I was never a consentingparty to wholesale murder, whatever else I was. The night before Isailed, Santos and the captain were aboard with me till the small hours. They promised me that every soul should have every chance; that nothingbut unforeseen accident could prevent the boats from making Ascensionagain in a matter of hours; that as long as the gig was supposed to belost with all hands, nothing else mattered. So they promised, and thatHarris meant to keep his promise I fully believe. That was not a wantonruffian; but the other would spill blood like water, as I told you atthe hall, and as no man now knows better than yourself. He was notoriouseven in Portuguese Africa on account of his atrocious treatment of theblacks. It was a favorite boast of his that he once poisoned a wholevillage; and that he himself tampered with the Lady Jermyn's boats youcan take my word, for I have heard him describe how he left it to thelast night, and struck the blows during the applause at the concert onthe quarter-deck. He said it might have come out about the gold in thegig, during the fire. It was safer to run no risks. 

"The same thing came into play aboard the schooner. Never shall I forgetthe horror of that voyage after Santos came aboard! I had a crew ofeight hands all told, and two he brought with him in the gig. Of coursethey began talking about the gold; they would have their share or splitwhen they got ashore; and there was mutiny in the air, with the stewardand the quarter-master of the Lady Jermyn for ring-leaders. Santosnipped it in the bud with a vengeance! He and Harris shot every manof them dead, and two who were shot through the heart they washed anddressed and set adrift to rot in the gig with false papers! God knowshow we made Madeira; we painted the old name out and a new name in, onthe way; and we shipped a Portuguese crew, not a man of whom could speakEnglish. We shipped them aboard the Duque de Mondejo's yacht Braganza;the schooner Spindrift had disappeared from the face of the waters forever. And with the men we took in plenty of sour claret and cigarettes;and we paid them well; and the Portuguese sailor is not inquisitiveunder such conditions. 

"And now, honestly, I wished I had put a bullet through my head beforejoining in this murderous conspiracy; but retreat was impossible, evenif I had been the man to draw back after going so far; and I had a stillstronger reason for standing by the others to the bitter end. I couldnot leave our lady to these ruffians. On the other hand, neither could Itake her from them, for (as you know) she justly regarded me as the mostflagrant ruffian of them all. It was in me and through me that she wasdeceived, insulted, humbled, and contaminated; that she should ever haveforgiven me for a moment is more than I can credit or fathom to thishour. . . So there we were. She would not look at me. And I would notleave her until death removed me. Santos had been kind enough to herhitherto; he had been kind enough (I understand) to her mother beforeher. It was only in the execution of his plans that he showed hisNapoleonic disregard for human life; and it was precisely herein thatI began to fear for the girl I still dared to love. She took up anattitude as dangerous to her safety as to our own. She demanded to beset free when we came to land. Her demand was refused. God forgive me, it had no bitterer opponent than myself! And all we did was to hardenher resolution; that mere child threatened us to our faces, never shallI forget the scene! You know her spirit: if we would not set her free, she would tell all when we landed. And you remember how Santos used toshrug? That was all he did then. It was enough for me who knew him. Fordays I never left them alone together. Night after night I watched hercabin door. And she hated me the more for never leaving her alone! I hadto resign myself to that. 

"The night we anchored in Falmouth Bay, thinking then of taking our goldstraight to the Bank of England, as eccentric lucky diggers--that nightI thought would be the last for one or other of us. He locked her inher cabin. He posted himself outside on the settee. I sat watching himacross the table. Each had a hand in his pocket, each had a pistol inthat hand, and there we sat, with our four eyes locked, while Harriswent ashore for papers. He came back in great excitement. What withstopping at Madeira, and calms, and the very few knots we could knockout of the schooner at the best of times, we had made a seven or eightweeks' voyage of it from Ascension--where, by the way, I had arrivedonly a couple of days before the Lady Jermyn, though I had nearly amonth's start of her. Well, Harris came back in the highest state ofexcitement: and well he might: the papers were full of you, and of theburning of the Lady Jermyn!

"Now mark what happened. You know, of course, as well as I do; but Iwonder if you can even yet realize what it was to us! Our prisonerhears that you are alive, and she turns upon Santos and tells him he iswelcome to silence her, but it will do us ne good now, as you know thatthe ship was wilfully burned, and with what object. It is the singleblow she can strike in self-defence; but a shrewder one could scarcelybe imagined. She had talked to you, at the very last; and by that timeshe did know the truth. What more natural than that she should confideit to you? She had had time to tell you enough to hang the lot of us;and you may imagine our consternation on hearing that she had told youall she knew! From the first we were never quite sure whether to believeit or not. That the papers breathed no suspicion of foul play wasneither here nor there. Scotland Yard might have seen to that. Thenwe read of the morbid reserve which was said to characterize all yourutterances concerning the Lady Jermyn. What were we to do? What we nolonger dared to do was to take our gold-dust straight to the Bank. Whatwe did, you know. 

"We ran round to Morecambe Bay, and landed the gold as we Rattrays hadlanded lace and brandy from time immemorial. We left Eva in charge ofJane Braithwaite, God only knows how much against my will, but we werein a corner, it was life or death with us, and to find out how much youknew was a first plain necessity. And the means we took were the onlymeans in our power; nor shall I say more to you on that subject than Isaid five years ago in my poor old house. That is still the one part ofthe whole conspiracy of which I myself am most ashamed. 

"And now it only remains for me to tell you why I have written all thisto you, at such great length, so long after the event. My wife wishedit. The fact is that she wants you to think better of me than I deserve;and I--yes--I confess that I should like you not to think quite as illof me as you must have done all these years. I was villain enough, butdo not think I am unpunished. 

"I am an outlaw from my country. I am morally a transported felon. Onlyin this no-man's land am I a free man; let me but step across the borderand I am worth a little fortune to the man who takes me. And we have hada hard time here, though not so hard as I deserved; and the hardest partof all. . . "

But you must guess the hardest part: for the letter ended as it began, with sudden talk of his inner life, and tentative inquiry after mine. Inits entirety, as I say, I have never shown it to a soul; there was justa little more that I read to my wife (who could not hear enough abouthis); then I folded up the letter, and even she has never seen thepassages to which I allude. 

And yet I am not one of those who hold that the previous romancesof married people should be taboo between them in after life. On thecontrary, much mutual amusement, of an innocent character, may bederived from a fair and free interchange upon the subject; and this iswhy we, in our old age (or rather in mine), find a still unfailing topicin the story of which Eva Denison was wayward heroine and Frank Rattraythe nearest approach to a hero. Sometimes these reminiscences lead toan argument; for it has been the fate of my life to become attached toargumentative persons. I suppose because I myself hate arguing. Onthe day that I received Rattray's letter we had one of our warmestdiscussions. I could repeat every word of it after forty years. 

"A good man does not necessarily make a good husband, " I innocentlyremarked. 

"Why do you say that?" asked my wife, who never would let ageneralization pass unchallenged. 

"I was thinking of Rattray, " said I. "The most tolerant of judges couldscarcely have described him as a good man five years ago. Yet I can seethat he has made an admirable husband. On the whole, and if you can't beboth, it is better to be the good husband!"

It was this point that we debated with so much ardor. My wife would takethe opposite side; that is her one grave fault. And I must introducepersonalities; that, of course, is among the least of mine. I comparedmyself with Rattray, as a husband, and (with some sincerity) to my owndisparagement. I pointed out that he was an infinitely more fascinatingcreature, which was no hard saying, for that epithet at least I havenever earned. And yet it was the word to sting my wife. 

"Fascinating, perhaps!" said she. "Yes, that is the very word;but--fascination is not love!"

And then I went to her, and stroked her hair (for she had hung her headin deep distress), and kissed the tears from her eyes. And I swore thather eyes were as lovely as Eva Denison's, that there seemed even moregold in her glossy brown hair, that she was even younger to look at. Andat the last and craftiest compliment my own love looked at me throughher tears, as though some day or other she might forgive me. 

"Then why did you want to give me up to him?" said she.