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+Project Gutenberg Etext of Dead Men Tell No Tales, by EW Hornung
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+Dead Men Tell No Tales
+
+by E. W. Hornung
+
+April, 1999  [Etext #1703]
+
+
+Project Gutenberg Etext of Dead Men Tell No Tales, by EW Hornung
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+This Etext prepared by an anonymous Project Gutenberg volunteer.
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+
+
+
+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, except
+falling out of love.  Especially was this the case in the days
+when the wooden clippers did finely to land you in Sydney or in
+Melbourne under the four full months.  We all saw far too much of
+each other, unless, indeed, we were to see still more.  Our
+superficial attractions mutually exhausted, we lost heart and
+patience in the disappointing strata which lie between the surface
+and the bed-rock of most natures.  My own experience was confined
+to the round voyage of the Lady Jermyn, in the year 1853.  It was
+no common experience, as was only too well known at the time.  And
+I may add that I for my part had not the faintest intention of
+falling in love on board; nay, after all these years, let me confess
+that I had good cause to hold myself proof against such weakness.
+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
+nineteen years 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 name was still unknown to her, and yet I recollect
+being quite fascinated by her frankness and self-possession.  She
+was exquisitely young, and yet ludicrously old for her years; had
+been admirably educated, chiefly abroad, and, as we were soon to
+discover, possessed accomplishments which would have made the
+plainest old maid a popular personage on board ship.  Miss Denison,
+however, was as beautiful as she was young, with the bloom of ideal
+health upon her perfect skin.  She had a wealth of lovely hair, with
+strange elusive strands of gold among the brown, that drowned her
+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,
+lay sleeping somewhere in the depths of her grave, gray eyes.
+
+We were at sea together so many weeks.  I cannot think what I was
+made of then!
+
+It was in the brave old days of Ballarat and Bendigo, when ship
+after ship went out black with passengers and deep with stores, to
+bounce home with a bale or two of wool, and hardly hands enough to
+reef topsails in a gale.  Nor was this the worst; for not the crew
+only, but, in many cases, captain and officers as well, would join
+in the stampede to the diggings; and we found Hobson's Bay the
+congested asylum of all manner of masterless and deserted vessels.
+I have a lively recollection of our skipper's indignation when
+the pilot informed him of this disgraceful fact.  Within a fortnight,
+however, I met the good man face to face upon the diggings.  It is
+but fair to add that the Lady Jermyn lost every officer and man in
+the same way, and that the captain did obey tradition to the extent
+of being the last to quit his ship.  Nevertheless, of all who sailed
+by her in January, I alone was ready to return at the beginning of
+the following July.
+
+I had been to Ballarat.  I had given the thing a trial.  For the
+most odious weeks I had been a licensed digger on Black Hill Flats;
+and I had actually failed to make running expenses.  That, however,
+will surprise you the less when I pause to declare that I have paid
+as much as four shillings and sixpence for half a loaf of execrable
+bread; that my mate and I, between us, seldom took more than a few
+pennyweights of gold-dust in any one day; and never once struck pick
+into nugget, big or little, though we had the mortification of
+inspecting the "mammoth masses" of which we found the papers full
+on landing, and which had brought the gold-fever to its height during
+our very voyage.  With me, however, as with many a young fellow who
+had turned his back on better things, the malady was short-lived.  We
+expected to make our fortunes out of hand, and we had reckoned
+without the vermin and the villainy which rendered us more than ever
+impatient of delay.  In my fly-blown blankets I dreamt of London
+until I hankered after my chambers and my club more than after much
+fine gold.  Never shall I forget my first hot bath on getting back to
+Melbourne; it cost five shillings, but it was worth five pounds, and
+is altogether my pleasantest reminiscence of Australia.
+
+There was, however, one slice of luck in store for me.  I found the
+dear old Lady Jermyn on the very eve of sailing, with a new captain,
+a new crew, a handful of passengers (chiefly steerage), and nominally
+no cargo at all.  I felt none the less at home when I stepped over
+her familiar side.
+
+In the cuddy we were only five, but a more uneven quintette I defy
+you to convene.  There was a young fellow named Ready, packed out
+for his health, and hurrying home to die among friends.  There was
+an outrageously lucky digger, another invalid, for he would drink
+nothing but champagne with every meal and at any minute of the day,
+and I have seen him pitch raw gold at the sea-birds by the hour
+together.  Miss Denison was our only lady, and her step-father, with
+whom she was travelling, was the one man of distinction on board.
+He was a Portuguese of sixty or thereabouts, Senhor Joaquin Santos
+by name; at first it was incredible to me that he had no title, so
+noble was his bearing; but very soon I realized that he was one of
+those to whom adventitious honors can add no lustre.  He treated
+Miss Denison as no parent ever treated a child, with a gallantry
+and a courtliness quite beautiful to watch, and not a little
+touching in the light of the circumstances under which they were
+travelling together.  The girl had gone straight from school to her
+step-father's estate on the Zambesi, where, a few months later, her
+mother had died of the malaria.  Unable to endure the place after
+his wife's death, Senhor Santos had taken ship to Victoria, there
+to seek fresh fortune with results as indifferent as my own.  He
+was now taking Miss Denison back to England, to make her home with
+other relatives, before he himself returned to Africa (as he once
+told me) to lay his bones beside those of his wife.  I hardly know
+which of the pair I see more plainly as I write - the young girl
+with her soft eyes and her sunny hair, or the old gentleman with
+the erect though wasted figure, the noble forehead, the steady eye,
+the parchment skin, the white imperial, and the eternal cigarette
+between his shrivelled lips.
+
+No need to say that I came more in contact with the young girl.
+She was not less charming in my eyes because she provoked me
+greatly as I came to know her intimately.  She had many irritating
+faults.  Like most young persons of intellect and inexperience, she
+was hasty and intolerant in nearly all her judgments, and rather
+given to being critical in a crude way.  She was very musical,
+playing the guitar and singing in a style that made our shipboard
+concerts vastly superior to the average of their order; but I have
+seen her shudder at the efforts of less gifted folks who were
+also doing their best; and it was the same in other directions where
+her superiority was less specific.  The faults which are most
+exasperating in another are, of course, one's own faults; and I
+confess that I was very critical of Eva Denison's criticisms.  Then
+she had a little weakness for exaggeration, for unconscious egotism
+in conversation, and I itched to tell her so.  I felt so certain
+that the girl had a fine character underneath, which would rise to
+noble heights in stress or storm: all the more would I long now to
+take her in hand and mould her in little things, and anon to take
+her in my arms just as she was.  The latter feeling was resolutely
+crushed.  To be plain, I had endured 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 my
+tale.  I lay the pen down, and a hundred of her sayings ring in my
+ears, with my own contradictious comments, that I was doomed so soon
+to repent; a hundred visions of her start to my eyes; and there is
+the trade-wind singing in the rigging, and loosening a tress of my
+darling's hair, 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 ever after.  Yet at the time I must argue with her
+- with her!  When all my courage should have gone to love-making,
+I was plucking it up to sail as near as I might to plain
+remonstrance!  I little dreamt how the ghost of every petty word
+was presently to return and torture me.
+
+So it is that I can see her and hear her now on a hundred separate
+occasions beneath the awning beneath the stars on deck below at noon
+or night but plainest of all in the evening of the day we signalled
+the Island of Ascension, at the close of that last concert on the
+quarter-deck. The watch are taking down the extra awning; they are
+removing the bunting and the foot-lights. The lanterns are trailed
+forward before they are put out; from the break of the poop we watch
+the vivid shifting patch of deck that each lights up on its way. The
+stars are very sharp in the vast violet dome above our masts; they
+shimmer on the sea; and our trucks describe minute orbits among the
+stars, for the trades have yet to fail us, and every inch of canvas
+has its fill of the gentle steady wind. It is a heavenly night.
+The peace of God broods upon His waters. No jarring note offends
+the ear. In the forecastle a voice is 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  who sang it again and again to
+please the crew  she alone is at war with our little 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
+our bluff old man, and it is not the spirit of contrariety alone
+which makes me invariably take his part. Coarse he may be, and not
+one whom the owners would have chosen to command the Lady Jermyn; a
+good seaman none the less, who brought us round the Horn in foul
+weather without losing stitch 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 his part; 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 a
+school-girl - you have all but told me so before to-day! If I were
+a man - 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 at fault. 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
+must say I thought it was a silly question to put.  It was the same
+the other evening about the cargo. If the skipper says we're in
+ballast why not believe him?  Why repeat steerage gossip, about
+mysterious cargoes, at the cuddy table?  Captains are always touchy
+about that sort of thing.  I wasn't surprised at his letting out."
+
+My poor love stares at me in the starlight.  Her great eyes flash
+their scorn.  Then she gives a little smile - and then a little nod
+- more scornful than all the rest.
+
+"You never are surprised, are you, Mr. Cole?" says she.  "You were
+not surprised when the wretch used horrible language in front of me!
+You were not surprised when it was a - dying man - whom he abused!"
+
+I try to soothe her.  I agree heartily with her disgust at the
+epithets employed in her hearing, and towards an invalid, by the
+irate skipper.  But I ask her to make allowances for a rough,
+uneducated man, rather clumsily touched upon his tender spot.  I
+shall conciliate her presently; the divine pout (so childish it was!)
+is fading from her lips; the starlight is on the tulle and lace and
+roses of her pretty evening dress, with its festooned skirts and
+obsolete flounces; and I am watching her, ay, and worshipping her,
+though I do not know it yet.  And as 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's the 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 the men, 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
+he too 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 I can remember.  That man only married my poor mother.  He
+sympathizes with Captain Harris - against me; no father would do
+that.  Look at them together now!  And you take his side, too; oh!
+I have no patience with any 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 to pacing the weather side of the poop - and so often
+afterwards!  So often, and with such unavailing bittertness !
+
+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 had better cause.  The Portuguese, however, saluted me
+with his customary courtesy, and I thought there was a grave twinkle
+in his steady eye.
+
+"Are you in deesgrace also, friend Cole?" he inquired in his all
+but perfect English.
+
+"More or less," said I ruefully.
+
+He gave the shrug of his country - that delicate gesture which is
+done almost entirely with the back - a subtlety beyond the power
+of British shoulders.
+
+"The senhora is both weelful and pivish," said he, mixing the two
+vowels which (with the aspirate) were his only trouble with our
+tongue.  "It is great grif to me to see her growing so unlike her
+sainted mother!"
+
+He sighed, and I saw his delicate fingers forsake the cigarette
+they were rolling to make the sacred sign upon his breast.  He was
+always smoking one cigarette and making another; as he lit the new
+one the glow fell upon a strange pin that he wore, a pin with a
+tiny crucifix inlaid in mosaic.  So the religious cast of Senhor
+Santos was brought twice home to me in the same moment, though, to
+be sure, I had often been struck by it before.  And it depressed me
+to think that so sweet a child as Eva Denison should have spoken
+harshly of so good a man as her step-father, simply because he had
+breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse old salt like Captain
+Harris.
+
+I turned in, however, and I cannot say the matter kept me awake in
+the separate state-room which was one luxury of our empty saloon.
+Alas?  I was 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
+were telling me I was late for breakfast.  I started up and sought
+him wildly in the darkness.
+
+"You're joking," was my first thought and utterance; for now he was
+lighting my candle, and blowing out the match with a care that
+seemed in itself a contradiction.
+
+"I wish I were," he answered.  "Listen to that!"
+
+He pointed to my cabin ceiling; it quivered and creaked; and all at
+once I was as a deaf man healed.
+
+One gets inured to noise at sea, but to this day it passes me how
+even I could have slept an instant in the abnormal din which I now
+heard raging above my head.  Sea-boots stamped; bare feet pattered;
+men bawled; women shrieked; 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
+only just been discovered; they may get it under.  The panic's the
+worst part at present, and we're out of that."
+
+But was Eva Denison?  Breathlessly I put the question; his answer
+was reassuring.  Miss Denison was with her step-father on the poop.
+"And both of 'em as cool as cucumbers," added Ready.
+
+They could not have been cooler than this young man, with death at
+the bottom of his bright and sunken eyes.  He was of the type which
+is all muscle and no constitution; athletes one year, dead men the
+next; but until this moment the athlete had been to me a mere and
+incredible tradition.  In the afternoon I had seen his lean knees
+totter under the captain's fire.  Now, at midnight - the exact time
+by my watch - it was as if his shrunken limbs had expanded in his
+clothes; he seemed hardly to know 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't know when I felt in better fettle.  If only they get it under!
+I've not looked like this all the voyage."
+
+And he admired himself while I dressed in hot haste: a fine young
+fellow; not at all the natural egotist, but cast for death by the
+doctors, and keenly incredulous in his bag of skin.  It revived
+one's confidence to hear him talk.  But he forgot himself in an
+instant, and gave me a lead through the saloon with a boyish
+eagerness that made me actually suspicious as I ran.  We were
+nearing the Line.  I recalled the excesses of my last crossing,
+and I prepared for some vast hoax at the last 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 starting eyes of others, that
+such lust and such dread consumed me in my turn, so that my veins
+seemed filled with fire and ice.
+
+To be fair to those others, I think that the first wild panic was
+subsiding even then; at least there was a lull, and even a reaction
+in the right direction on the part of the males in the second class
+and steerage.  A huge Irishman at their head, they were passing
+buckets towards the after-hold; the press of people hid the hatchway
+from us until we gained the poop; but we heard the buckets spitting
+and a hose-pipe hissing into the flames below; and we saw the column
+of white vapor rising steadily from their midst.
+
+At the break of the poop stood Captain Harris, his legs planted wide
+apart, very vigorous, very decisive, very profane.  And I must
+confess that the shocking oaths which had brought us round the Horn
+inspired a kind of confidence in me now.  Besides, even from the
+poop I could see no flames.  But the night was as beautiful as it
+had been an hour or two back; the stars as brilliant, the breeze
+even more balmy, the sea even more calm; and we were hove-to already,
+against the worst.
+
+In this hour of peril the poop was very properly invaded by all
+classes of passengers, in all manner of incongruous apparel, in all
+stages of fear, rage, grief and hysteria; as we made our way among
+this motley nightmare throng, I took Ready by the arm.
+
+"The skipper's a brute," said I, "but he's the right brute in the
+right place to-night, Ready !"
+
+"I hope he may be," was the reply.  "But we were off our course
+this afternoon; and we were off it again during the concert, as
+sure as we're not 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 aboard which we're none of us supposed to know anything about."
+
+The latter piece of gossip was, indeed, all over the ship; but this
+allusion to it struck me as foolishly irrelevant and frivolous.  As
+to the other matter, I suggested that the officers would have had
+more to say 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 second mate's certificate between them, and they're frightened out
+of their souls."
+
+"Well, anyhow, the skipper isn't that."
+
+"No; he's drunk; he can shout straight, but you should hear him try
+to speak."
+
+I made my way aft without rejoinder.  "Invalid's pessimism," was my
+private comment.  And yet the sick man was whole for the time being;
+the virile spirit was once more master of the recreant members; and
+it was with illogical relief that I found those I sought standing
+almost unconcernedly beside the binnacle.
+
+My little friend was, indeed, pale enough, and her eyes great with
+dismay; but she stood splendidly calm, in her travelling cloak and
+bonnet, and with all my soul I hailed the hardihood with which I
+had rightly credited my love.  Yes!  I loved her then.  It had come
+home to me at last, and I no longer denied it in my heart.  In my
+innocence and my joy 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 another instant), and bursting to tell her so
+with my lips.
+
+But there also stood Senhor Santos, almost precisely as I had seen
+him last, cigarette, tie-pin, and all.  He wore an overcoat, however,
+and leaned upon a massive ebony cane, while he carried his daughter's
+guitar in 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 very favoring glance.
+
+"You don't think it serious?" I asked him abruptly, my heart still
+bounding with the most incongruous joy.
+
+He gave me his ambiguous shrug; and then, "A fire at sea is surely
+sirrious," 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 old
+diamond of a skipper is the right man in the right place after all.
+A tight man in a tight place, eh?" and I laughed like an idiot in
+their calm grave faces.
+
+"Senhor Cole is right," said Santos, "although his 'ilarity sims a
+leetle out of place.  But you must never spik against Captain 'Arrees
+again, menma."
+
+"I never will," the poor child said; yet I saw her wince whenever
+the captain raised that hoarse voice of his in more and more
+blasphemous exhortation; 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 was an answering start to one on his part.  The cigarette was
+snatched from his lips.  There was a commotion forward, and a cry
+came aft, from mouth to mouth:
+
+"The flames! The flames !"
+
+I turned, and caught their reflection on the white column of smoke
+and steam.  I ran forward, and saw them curling and leaping in the
+hell-mouth of the hold.
+
+The quarter-deck now staged a lurid scene: that blazing trap-door
+in its midst; and each man there a naked demon madly working to
+save his roasting skin.  Abaft the mainmast the deck-pump was being
+ceaselessly worked by relays of the passengers; dry blankets were
+passed forward, soaking blankets were passed aft, and flung flat
+into the furnace one after another.  These did more good than the
+pure water: the pillar of smoke became blacker, denser: we were at
+a crisis; a sudden hush denoted it; even our hoarse skipper stood
+dumb.
+
+I had rushed down into the waist of the ship - blushing for my
+delay - and already I was tossing blankets with the rest.  Looking
+up in an enforced pause, I saw Santos whispering in the skipper's
+ear, with the expression of a sphinx but no lack of foreign
+gesticulation - behind them a fringe of terror-stricken faces,
+parted at that instant by two more figures, as wild and strange as
+any in that wild, strange scene.  One was our luckless lucky digger,
+the other a gigantic Zambesi nigger, who for days had been told off
+to watch him; this was the servant (or rather the slave) of Senhor
+Santos.
+
+The digger planted himself before the captain.  His face was
+reddened by a fire as consuming as that within the bowels of our
+gallant ship.  He had 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
+a special effort at distinctness, however, that I was smiling one
+instant, and giving thanks the next that Eva Denison had not come
+forward with her guardian.  Meanwhile the skipper had exchanged a
+glance with Senhor Santos, 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.
+With a yell the drunken maniac rushed to the rail.  The nigger was
+at his heels - he was too late.  Uttering another and more piercing
+shriek, the madman was overboard at a bound; one of his bundles
+preceded him; the other 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
+our tongues.  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?  Not me, because we have!  Keep your heads and listen to me.
+There's two good boats on the davits amidships; the chief will take
+one, the second officer the other; and there ain't no reason why
+every blessed one of you shouldn't sleep in Ascension to-morrow
+night.  As for me, let me see every soul off of my ship and perhaps
+I may follow; but by the God that made you, look alive!  Mr. Arnott
+- Mr. McClellan - man them boats and lower away.  You can't get quit
+o' the ship too soon, an' I don't mind tellin' you why.  I'll tell
+you the worst, an' then you'll know.  There's been a lot o' gossip
+goin', gossip about my cargo.  I give out as I'd none but ship's
+stores and ballast, an' I give out a lie.  I don't mind tellin' you
+now.  I give out a cussed lie, but I give it out for the good o' the
+ship!  What was the use o' frightenin' folks?  But where's the sense
+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
+the cunning to reproduce it on paper; and if it had, it would shrink
+from the task.  Mild men became brutes, brutal men, devils, women
+- God help them! - shrieking beldams for the most part.  Never shall
+I forget them with their streaming hair, their screaming open mouths,
+and the cruel ascending fire glinting on their starting eyeballs!
+
+Pell-mell they tumbled down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they raced
+amidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling
+through the seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon
+it, one over another, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong
+into the flames.  A handful remained on the poop, cowering and
+undone with terror.  Upon these turned Captain Harris, as Ready
+and I, stemming the torrent of maddened humanity, regained the
+poop ourselves.
+
+"For'ard with ye!" yelled the skipper.  "The powder's underneath
+you in the lazarette!"
+
+They were gone like hunted sheep.  And now abaft the flaming
+hatchway there were only we four surviving saloon passengers, the
+captain, his steward, the Zambesi negro, and the quarter-master at
+the wheel.  The steward and the black I observed putting stores
+aboard the captain's gig as it overhung the water from the stern
+davits.
+
+"Now, gentlemen," said Harris to the two of us, "I must trouble
+you to step forward with the rest.  Senhor Santos insists on taking
+his chance along with the young lady in my gig.  I've told him the
+risk, but he insists, 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 my heart bled faint at the thought of leaving her, I who loved
+her so, and might die without ever telling her my love!  Harris,
+however, stood firm.
+
+"There's that quartermaster and my steward, and Jose the nigger,"
+said he.  "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 as I remain aboard!"
+
+I saw his hand go to his belt; I saw the pistols stuck there for
+mutineers.  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 of life and death!  Then last I looked at Ready; and he
+leant invertebrate over the rail, gasping pitiably from his
+exertions in regaining the poop, 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
+wasted and exhausted frame.
+
+"It is for you to decide, captain," said he cynically; "but this
+one will make no deeference.  Yes, I would take him.  It will not
+be far," he added, in a tone that was not the less detestable for
+being lowered.
+
+"Take them both!" moaned little Eva, putting in her first and last
+sweet word.
+
+"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
+with ye, Mr. Cole, before it's too late."
+
+But my darling's brave word for me had fired my blood, and I turned
+with equal resolution on Harris and on the Portuguese.  "I will go
+like a lamb," said I, "if you will first give me five minutes'
+conversation with Miss Denison.  Otherwise I do not go; and as for
+the gig, you may take me or leave me, as you choose."
+
+"What have you to say to her?" asked Santos, coming up to me, and
+again lowering his voice.
+
+I lowered mine still more.  "That I love her!" I answered in a soft
+ecstasy.  "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 be the last that we shall ever have together!"
+
+Uncovering her face, she looked at me with a strange terror in her
+great eyes; then with a questioning light that was yet more strange,
+for in it there was a wistfulness I could not comprehend.  She
+suffered me to take her 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 that you - 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
+she dreaded a declaration which she had foreseen all along?  My evil
+first experience rose up to warn me.  No, I would not speak now; it
+was no time.  If she loved me, it might make her love me less;
+better to trust to God to spare us both.
+
+"Yes, it is all," I said doggedly.
+
+She drew a little nearer, hesitating.  It was as though her
+disappointment 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 had told me that which I would have given all but life itself
+to know.  But in that tick of time a quick step came behind me, and
+the light went out of 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's
+eyes.  "We have not finished our conversation.
+
+"We have!" said she, with sudden decision.  "Go - go - for my sake
+- for your own sake - go at once!"
+
+She gave me her hand.  I merely clasped it.  And so I left her at
+the rail-ah, heaven! how often we had argued on that very spot!  So
+I left her, with the greatest effort of all my life (but one); and
+yet in passing, full as my heart was of love and self, I could not
+but lay a hand 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
+right about the cargo?"
+
+And I heard a chuckle as I reached the ladder; but Ready was no
+longer in my mind; even Eva was driven out of it, as I stood
+aghast on the top-most rung.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+TO THE WATER'S EDGE
+
+
+It was not the new panic amidships that froze my marrow; it was
+not that the pinnace hung perpendicularly by the fore-tackle, and
+had shot out those who had swarmed aboard her before she was
+lowered, as a cart shoots a load of bricks.  It was bad enough to
+see the whole boat-load struggling, floundering, sinking in the sea;
+for selfish eyes (and which of us is all unselfish at such a time?)
+there was a worse sight yet; for I saw all this across an impassable
+gulf of fire.
+
+The quarter-deck had caught: it was in flames to port and starboard
+of the flaming hatch; only fore and aft of it was the deck sound to
+the lips of that hideous mouth, with the hundred tongues shooting
+out and up.
+
+Could I jump it there?  I sprang down and looked.  It was only a
+few feet across; 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!"
+they screamed.  "Walk along the bulwarks!" I held up my hand in
+token that I heard and understood and meant to act.  And as I did
+their bidding I noticed what indeed had long been apparent to idler
+eyes: the wind was not; we had lost our southeast trades; the doomed
+ship was rolling in a dead calm.
+
+Rolling, rolling, rolling so that it seemed minutes before I dared
+to move an inch.  Then I tried it on my hands and knees, but the
+scorched bulwarks burned me to the bone.  And then I leapt up,
+desperate with the pain; and, with my tortured hands spread wide
+to balance me, I walked those few yards, between rising sea and
+falling fire, and falling sea and rising fire, as an acrobat walks
+a rope, and by God's grace without mishap.
+
+There was no time to think twice about my feat, or, indeed, about
+anything else that befell upon a night when each moment was more
+pregnant than the last.  And yet I did think that those who had
+encouraged me to attempt so perilous a trick might have welcomed
+me alive among them; they were looking at something else already;
+and this was what it was.
+
+One of the cabin stewards had presented himself on the poop; he had
+a bottle in one hand, a glass in the other; in the red glare we saw
+him dancing in front of the captain like an unruly marionette.
+Harris appeared to threaten him.  What he said we could not hear for
+the deep-drawn blast and the high staccato crackle of the blazing
+hold.  But we saw the staggering steward offering him a drink; saw
+the glass flung next instant in the captain's face, the blood
+running, a pistol drawn, fired without effect, and snatched away by
+the drunken mutineer.  Next instant a smooth black cane was raining
+blow after blow on the man's head.  He dropped; the blows fell
+thick and heavy as before.  He lay wriggling; the Portuguese struck
+and struck until he lay quite still; then we saw Joaquin Santos
+kneel, and rub his stick carefully on the still thing's clothes, as
+a man might wipe his boots.
+
+Curses burst from our throats; yet the fellow deserved to die.  Nor,
+as I say, had we time to waste two thoughts upon any one incident.
+This last had begun and ended in the same minute; in another we were
+at the starboard gangway, tumbling helter-skelter aboard the lowered
+long-boat.
+
+She lay safely on the water: how we thanked our gods for that!
+Lower and lower sank her gunwale as we dropped aboard her, with no
+more care than the Gadarene swine whose fate we courted.  Discipline,
+order, method, common care, we brought none of these things with us
+from our floating furnace; but we fought to be first over the
+bulwarks, and in the bottom of the long-boat we fought again.
+
+And yet she held us all!   All, that is, but a terror-stricken few,
+who lay along the jibboom like flies upon a stick: all but two or
+three more whom we left fatally hesitating in the forechains:
+all but the selfish savages who had been the first to perish in the
+pinnace, and one distracted couple who had thrown their children
+into the kindly ocean, and jumped in after them out of their torment,
+locked for ever in each other'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 tell you now.  Blind would I gladly be for my few remaining
+years, if that night's horrors could be washed from these eyes for
+ever.  I have said so much, however, that in common candor I must
+say one thing more.  I have spoken of selfish savages.  God help me
+and forgive me!  For by this time I was one myself.
+
+In the long-boat we cannot have been less than thirty; the exact
+number no man will ever know.  But we shoved off without mischance;
+the chief mate had the tiller; the third mate the boat-hook; and
+six or eight oars were at work, in a fashion, as we plunged among
+the great smooth sickening 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 human beings.  The mainmast followed by the board before
+we had doubled our distance from the wreck.  Both trailed to port,
+where we could not see them; and now the mizzen stood alone in sad
+and solitary grandeur, her flapping idle sails lighted up by the
+spreading conflagration, so that they were stamped very sharply
+upon the black add starry sky.  But the whole scene from the
+long-boat was one of startling brilliancy and horror.  The fire now
+filled the entire waist of the vessel, and the noise 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 radiance of all the
+rest, as it flooded the sea for miles around, and a sea of molten
+glass reflected it.  My gorge rose at the long, low billows-sleek
+as black satin - lifting and dipping in this ghastly glare.  I
+preferred to keep my eyes upon the little ship burning like a tar
+barrel as the picture grew.  But presently I thanked God aloud:
+there was the gig swimming like a beetle over the bloodshot rollers
+in our wake.
+
+In our unspeakable gladness at being quit of the ship, some minutes
+passed before we discovered that the long-boat was slowly filling.
+The water was at our ankles before a man of us cried out, so fast
+were our eyes to the poor lost Lady Jermyn.  Then all at once the
+ghastly fact dawned upon us; and I think it was the mate himself
+who burst out crying like a child.  I never ascertained, however,
+for I had kicked off my shoes 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 plank had started from end to end.  Within
+and without the waters rose equally - then lay an instant level with
+our gunwales - then swamped us, oh! so slowly, that I thought we
+were never going to sink.  It was like getting inch by inch into
+your tub; I can feel it now, creeping, crawling up my back.  "It's
+coming!  0 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
+was warm and buoyant, and I came up like a cork, as I knew I should.
+I shook the drops from my face, and there were the sweet stars once
+more; for many 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
+to help him, and in an instant he had me wildly round the neck.  In
+the end I shook him off, poor devil, to his death.  And he was the
+last I tried to 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
+gripped it with my chin as I swam.  It relieved me greatly.  Up and
+down I rode among the oily black hillocks; I was down when there
+was a sudden flare as though the sun had risen, and I saw still a
+few heads bobbing and a few arms waving frantically around me.  At
+the same instant a terrific detonation split the ears; and when I
+rose on the next bald billow, where the ship lay burning a few
+seconds before, there remained but a red-hot spine that hissed and
+dwindled for another minute, and then left a blackness through which
+every star shone with redoubled brilliance.
+
+And now right and left splashed falling missiles; a new source of
+danger or of temporary respite; to me, by a merciful Providence, it
+proved the latter.
+
+Some heavy thing fell with a mighty splash right in front of me.
+A few more yards, and my brains had floated with the spume.  As it
+was, the oar was dashed from under my armpits; in another moment
+they had found a more solid resting-place.
+
+It was a hen-coop, and it floated bars upwards like a boat.  In
+this calm it might float for days.  I climbed upon the bars-and the
+whole cage rolled over on top of me.
+
+Coming to the surface, I found to my joy that the hen-coop had
+righted itself; so now I climbed up again, but this time very
+slowly and gingerly; the balance was undisturbed, and I stretched
+myself cautiously along the bars on my stomach.  A good idea
+immediately occurred to me.  I had jumped as a matter of course
+into the flannels which one naturally wears in the tropics.  To
+their lightness I already owed my life, but the common cricket-belt
+which was part of the costume was the thing to which I owe it most
+of all.  Loosening this belt a little, as I tucked my toes
+tenaciously under the endmost bar, I undid and passed the two ends
+under one of the middle bars, fastening the clasp upon the other
+side.  If I capsized now, well, we might go to the bottom together;
+otherwise the hen-coop and I should not part company in a hurry;
+and I thought, I felt, that she would float.
+
+Worn out as I was, and comparatively secure for the moment, I will
+not say that I slept; but my eyes closed, and every fibre rested,
+as I rose and 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 I raised my head and looked sharply all ways
+but the way I durst not look for 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 closed again, I say I thought I smelt
+tobacco; but this, of course, was my imagination supplying all the
+links from one.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE SILENT SEA
+
+
+Remember (if indeed there be any need to remind you) that it is a
+flagrant landsman who is telling you this tale.  Nothing know I of
+seamanship, save what one could not avoid picking up on the round
+voyage of the Lady Jermyn, never to be completed on this globe.  I
+may be told that I have burned that devoted vessel as nothing ever
+burned on land or sea.  I answer that I write of what I saw, and
+that is not altered by a miscalled spar or a misunderstood manouvre.
+But now I am aboard a craft I handle for myself, and must make shift
+to handle a second time with this frail pen.
+
+The hen-coop was some six feet long, by eighteen or twenty inches
+in breadth 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
+rail of the Lady Jermyn's poop; there the bars had risen at right
+angles to the 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 over the face of the waters, and over me.
+
+Discipline, what there was of it originally, had been the very
+first thing to perish aboard our ill-starred ship; the officers, I
+am afraid, were not much better than poor Ready made them out
+(thanks to Bendigo and Ballarat), and little had been done in true
+ship-shape style all night.  All hands had taken their spell at
+everything as the fancy seized them; not a bell had been struck from
+first to last; and I can only conjecture that the fire raged four or
+five hours, from the fact that it was midnight by my watch when I
+left it on my cabin drawers, and that the final extinction of the
+smouldering keel was so soon followed by the first deep hint of dawn.
+The rest took place with the trite rapidity of the equatorial
+latitudes.  It had been my foolish way to pooh-pooh the old saying
+that there is no twilight in the tropics.  I saw more truth in it
+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 was
+sickening; my senses swam.  Sunlit billows smooth and sinister,
+without a crest, without a sound; miles and miles of them as I
+rose; an oily grave among them as I fell.  Hill after hill of horror,
+valley after valley of despair!  The face of the waters in petty but
+eternal unrest; and now the sun must shine to set it smiling, to
+show me its cruel ceaseless mouthings, to reveal all but the
+ghastlier horrors underneath.
+
+How deep was it?  I fell to wondering!  Not that it makes any
+difference whether you drown in one fathom or in ten thousand,
+whether you fall from a balloon or from the attic window.  But the
+greater depth or distance is the worse to contemplate; and I was as
+a man hanging by his hands so high above the world, that his dangling
+feet cover countries, continents; a man who must fall very soon, and
+wonders how long he will be 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;
+less frightened, as a child is frightened, by the mere picture.  And
+I have still the impression that, as hour followed hour since the
+falling of the wind, the nauseous swell in part subsided.  I seemed
+less often on an eminence or in a pit; my glassy azure dales had
+gentler slopes, or a distemper 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
+one or other of my legs had been for ever trailing in the sea, to
+keep the hen-coop from rolling over the other way; in fact, as I
+understand they steer the toboggan in Canada, so I my little bark.
+Now the necessity for this was gradually decreasing; whatever the
+cause, it was the greatest mercy the day had brought me yet.  With
+less strain on the attention, however, there was more upon the mind.
+No longer forced to exert some muscle twice or thrice a minute, I
+had time to feel very faint, and yet time to think.  My soul flew
+homing to its proper prison.  I was no longer any unit at unequal
+strife with the elements; instincts common to my kind were no longer
+my only stimulus.  I was my poor self again; it was my own little
+life, and no other, that I wanted to go on living;, and yet 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 had perhaps
+nerved and strengthened me all these hours.  What, then, could it
+be?  I could not think. 
+
+For moments or for minutes I wondered stupidly, dazed as I was.
+Then I remembered - and the tears gushed to my eyes.  How could I
+ever have forgotten?  I deserved it all, all, all!  To think that
+many a time we must have sat together on this very coop!  I kissed
+its blistering edge at the thought, and my tears ran afresh, as
+though they never would stop.
+
+Ah!  how I thought of her as that cruel day's most cruel sun
+climbed higher and higher in the flawless flaming vault.  A
+pocket-handkerchief of 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 upon the head that had its own fever to endure
+as well.  Eva Denison!  Eva Denison!  I was talking to her in the
+past, I was talking to her in the future, and oh!  how different
+were the words, the tone!  Yes, I hated myself for having forgotten
+her; but I hated God for having given her back 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
+was dying a lingering death in mid-ocean; she would never know how
+I loved her, 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 how I had loved her all the time.  So I forced myself from
+my lethargy of despair and grief; and this thought, the sweetest
+thought of all my life, may or may not have been my unrealized
+stimulus ere now; it was in very 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
+since dinner the night before.  How clearly I saw the long saloon
+table, only laid, however, abaft the mast; the glittering glass,
+the cool white napery, the poor old dried dessert in the green
+dishes!  Earlier, this had occupied my mind an hour; now I dismissed
+it in a moment; there was Eva, I must live for her; there must be
+ways of living at least a day or two without sustenance, and I must
+think of them.
+
+So I undid that belt of mine which fastened me to my gridiron, and
+I straddled my craft with a sudden keen eye for sharks, of which I
+never once had thought until now.  Then I tightened the belt about
+my hollow body, and just sat there with the problem.  The past hour
+I had been wholly unobservant; the inner eye had had its turn; but
+that was over now, and I sat as upright as possible, seeking
+greedily for a sail.  Of course I saw none.  Had we indeed been off
+our course before the fire broke out?  Had we burned to cinders
+aside and apart from the regular track of ships?  Then, though my
+present valiant mood might ignore the adverse chances, they were as
+one hundred to a single chance of deliverance.  Our burning had
+brought no ship to our succor; and how should I, a mere speck amid
+the waves, bring one to mine?
+
+Moreover, I was all but motionless; I was barely drifting at all.
+This I saw from a few objects which were floating around me now at
+noon; they had been with me when the high sun rose.  One was, I
+think, the very oar which had been my first support; another was a
+sailor's cap; but another, which floated nearer, was new to me,
+as though it had come to the surface while my eyes were turned
+inwards.  And this was clearly the case; for the thing was a drowned
+and bloated corpse.
+
+It fascinated me, though not with extraordinary horror; it came too
+late to do that.  I thought I recognized the man's back.  I fancied
+it was the mate who had taken charge of the long-boat.  Was I then
+the single survivor of those thirty souls?  I was still watching my
+poor lost com rade, when that happened to him against which even I
+was not proof.  Through the deep translucent blue beneath me a slim
+shape glided; three smaller fish led the way; they dallied an instant
+a fathom under my feet, which were snatched up, with what haste you
+may imagine; then on they went to surer prey.
+
+He turned over; his dreadful face stared upwards; it was the chief
+officer, sure enough.  Then he clove the water with a rush, his
+dead hand waved, the last of him to disappear; and I had a new
+horror to think over 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 the chief mate, but there again came in the assisted imagination.
+Yet I was not so sure of this as before.  I thought of Santos and
+his horrible heavy cane.  Good God!  she was in the power of that!
+I must live for Eva indeed; must save myself to save and protect my
+innocent and helpless girl.
+
+Again I was a man; stronger than ever was the stimulus now, louder
+than ever 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.
+Very weak I was already; without sustenance I should surely die.
+But as yet I was far enough from death, or I had done disdaining
+the means of life that all this time lay ready to my hand.  A number
+of dead fowls imparted ballast to my little craft.
+
+Yet I could not look at them in all these hours; or I could look, but
+that was all.  So I must sit up one hour more, and keep a sharper eye
+than ever for the tiniest glimmer of a sail.  To what end, I often
+asked myself?  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 that I could count them; another shark swam
+round me for an hour.  In sudden panic I dashed my knuckles on
+the wooden bars, to get at a duck to give the monster for a sop.
+My knuckles bled.  I held them to my mouth.  My cleaving tongue
+wanted more.  The duck went to the shark; a few minutes more 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
+that if 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; there was too much danger of capsizing, and failing to free
+oneself before she filled and sank.
+
+With much caution I began breaking the bars, one by one; it was hard
+enough, 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 knees
+downwards.  And the relief of that outweighed all the danger, which,
+as I discovered 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
+the explosion; 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 frayed ends I tied my fowls by the legs, with the most foolish
+pride in my own cunning.  Do you not see?  It would keep them fresh
+for my use, and it was a 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,
+no sail.
+
+Now, however, I could lie back, and use had given me a strange sense
+of safety; besides, I think I knew, I hope I felt, that the hen-coop
+was in other Hands than mine.
+
+All is reaction in the heart of man; light follows darkness nowhere
+more surely than in that hidden self, and now at sunset it was my
+heart's high-noon.  Deep peace pervaded me as I lay outstretched in
+my narrow rocking bed, as it might be in my coffin; a trust in my
+Maker's will to save me if that were for the best, a trust in His
+final wisdom and loving-kindness, even though this night should be
+my last on earth.  For myself I was resigned, and for others I must
+trust Him no less.  Who was I to constitute myself the protector of
+the helpless, when He was in His 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
+cannot describe it to you.  If you have seen the sun set in the
+tropics, you would despise my description; and, if not, I for one
+could never make you see it.  Suffice it that a petrel wheeled
+somewhere between deepening carmine and paling blue, and it took
+my thoughts off at an earthy tangent.  I thanked God there were no
+big sea-birds in these latitudes; no molly-hawks, no albatrosses,
+no Cape-hens.  I thought of an albatross that I had caught going
+out.  Its beak and talons were at the bottom with the charred
+remains of the Lady Jermyn.  But I could see them still, could feel
+them shrewdly in my mind's flesh; and so to the old superstition,
+strangely justified by my case; and so to the poem which I, with my
+special experience, not unnaturally consider the greatest poem ever
+penned.
+
+But I did not know it then as I do now - and how the lines eluded
+me!  I seemed 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
+my thirst, which the blood of the fowls had so very partially
+appeased.  I see now that it is lucky I could recall but little
+more.  Experience is less terrible than realization, and that
+poem makes me realize what I went through as memory cannot.  It
+has verses which would have driven me mad.  On the other hand, the
+exhaustive mental search for them distracted my thoughts until the
+stars were back in the sky; and now I had a new occupation, saying
+to myself all the poetry I could remember, especially that of the
+sea; for I was a bookish fellow even then.  But I never was anything
+of a scholar.  It is odd therefore, that the one apposite passage
+which recurred to me in its entirety was in hexameters and
+pentameters
+
+   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
+statement of my case; and yet less so now (I was thankful to
+reflect) than in the morning, when every wave was indeed a mountain,
+and its trough a Tartarus.  I had learnt the lines at school; nay,
+they had formed my very earliest piece of Latin repetition.  And how
+sharply I saw the room I said them in, the man I said them to, ever
+since my friend!  I figured him even now hearing Ovid rep., the same
+passage in the same room.  And I lay 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 the
+soul, undefiled by any dream.
+
+They say that our dreaming is done as we slowly wake; then was I out
+of the way of it that night, for a sudden violent rocking awoke me
+in one horrid instant.  I made it worse by the way I started to a
+sitting posture.  I had shipped some water.  I was shipping more.
+Yet all around the sea was glassy; whence then the commotion?  As
+my ship came trim again, and I saw that my hour was not yet, the
+cause occurred to me; and my heart turned so sick that it was minutes
+before I had the courage to test my theory.
+
+It was the true one.
+
+A shark had been at my trailing fowls; had taken the bunch of them
+together, dragging the legs from my loose fastenings.  Lucky they
+had been no stronger!  Else had I been dragged down to perdition too.
+
+Lucky, did I say?  The refinement of cruelty rather; for now I had
+neither meat nor drink; my throat was a kiln; my tongue a flame;
+and another 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
+the blazing 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 were marrying us on board.  The ship's bell was ringing for us;
+a guitar in the background burlesqued the Wedding March under skinny
+fingers; the air was poisoned by a million cigarettes, they raised
+a pall of smoke above the mastheads, they set fire to the ship;
+smoke and flame covered the sea from rim to rim, smoke and flame
+filled the universe; the sea dried up, and I was left lying in its
+bed, lying in my coffin, with red-hot teeth, because the sun blazed
+right above them, and my withered lips were drawn back from them
+for ever.
+
+So once more I came back to my living death; too weak now to carry
+a finger 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
+the worst 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, a
+pleasure boat on the Thames, a hammock under the trees; last of all
+it was the upper berth in a not very sweet-smelling cabin, with a
+clatter of knives and forks near at hand, and a very strong odor of
+onions in the Irish stew.
+
+My hand crawled to my head; both felt a wondrous weight; and my
+head was covered with bristles no longer than those on my chin, only
+less stubborn.
+
+"Where am I?" I feebly asked.
+
+The knives and forks clattered on, and presently I burst out crying
+because they had not heard me, and I knew that I could never make
+them hear.  Well, they heard my sobs, and a huge fellow came with
+his mouth full, and smelling like a pickle bottle.
+
+"Where am I?"
+
+"Aboard the brig Eliza, Liverpool, homeward bound; glad to see them
+eyes open."
+
+"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 be the same."
+
+"I've got it, sir."
+
+"Well, fetch it along, and come you in, Mr. Bowles; likely you may
+think o' somethin'."
+
+A reddish, hook-nosed man, with a jaunty, wicked look, came and
+smiled upon me in the friendliest fashion; the smell of onions
+became more than I knew how to endure.
+
+"Ever hear of the ship Lady Jermyn?" asked the first corner, winking
+at the other.
+
+I thought very hard, the name did sound familiar; but no, I could
+not honestly 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
+with the 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 not swear that I had not.
+
+"Oh, won't you?  Well, there's only one more chance.  Ever heard of
+Miss Eva Denison - "
+
+"By God, yes!  Have you?"
+
+I was sitting bolt upright in my bunk.  The skipper's beard dropped
+upon his 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
+she was."
+
+"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; there wasn'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't read it in your face?"
+
+I could - I did.  I made that plain to them, and at last I had the
+paper smoothed out upon my knees.  It was a short statement of the
+last sufferings of those who had escaped in the gig, and there was
+nothing in it that I did not now expect.  They had buried Ready
+first - then my darling - then her step-father.  The rest expected
+to follow fast enough.  It was all written plainly, on a sheet of
+the log-book, in different trembling hands.  Captain Harris had
+gone next; and two had been discovered dead.
+
+How long I studied that bit of crumpled paper, with the salt spray
+still sparkling on it faintly, God alone knows.  All at once a
+peal of nightmare laughter rattled through the cabin.  My deliverers
+started back.  The laugh was mine.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE SOLE SURVIVOR
+
+
+A few weeks later I landed in England, I, who no longer desired to
+set foot on any land again.
+
+At nine-and-twenty I was gaunt and gray; my nerves were shattered,
+my heart was broken; and my face showed it without let or hindrance
+from the spirit that was broken too.  Pride, will, courage, and
+endurance, all these had expired in my long and lonely battle with
+the sea.  They had kept 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
+the hand of fellowship that the world stretched out, and the other
+was the reading of a jaundiced eye.  I could not help it: there was
+a poison in my veins that made me all ingratitude and perversity.
+The world welcomed me back, and I returned the compliment by sulking
+like the recaptured runaway I was at heart.  The world showed a
+sudden interest in me; so I took no further interest in the world,
+but, on the contrary, resented its attentions with unreasonable
+warmth and obduracy; and my would-be friends I regarded as my very
+worst enemies.  The majority, I feel sure, meant but well and
+kindly by the poor survivor.  But the survivor could not forget that
+his name was still in the newspapers, nor blink the fact that he was
+an unworthy hero of the passing hour.  And he suffered enough from
+brazenly meddlesome and self-seeking folk, from impudent and
+inquisitive intruders, to justify some suspicion of old acquaintances
+suddenly styling themselves old friends, and of distant connections
+newly and unduly eager to claim relationship.  Many I misjudged, and
+have long known it.  On the whole, however, I wonder at that attitude
+of mine as little as I approve of it.
+
+If I had distinguished myself in any other way, it would have been
+a different thing.  It was the fussy, sentimental, inconsiderate
+interest in one thrown into purely accidental and necessarily
+painful prominence - the vulgarization of an unspeakable tragedy
+- that my soul abhorred.  I confess that I regarded it from my own
+unique and selfish point of view.  What was a thrilling matter to
+the world was a torturing memory to me.  The quintessence of the
+torture was, moreover, my own secret.  It was not the loss of the
+Lady Jermyn that I could not bear to speak about; it was my own
+loss; but the one involved the other.  My loss apart, however, it
+was plain enough to dwell upon experiences so terrible and yet so
+recent as those which I had lived to tell.  I did what I considered
+my duty to the public, but I certainly did no more.  My reticence
+was rebuked in the papers that made the most of me, but would fain
+have made more.  And yet I do not think that I was anything but
+docile with those who had a manifest right to question me; to the
+owners, and to other interested persons, with whom I was confronted
+on one pretext or another, I told my tale as fully and as freely as
+I have told it here, though each telling hurt more than the last.
+That was necessary and unavoidable; it was the private intrusions
+which I resented with all the spleen the sea had left me in exchange
+for the qualities it had taken away.
+
+Relatives I had as few as misanthropist could desire; but from
+self-congratulation on the fact, on first landing, I soon came to
+keen regret.  They at least would have sheltered me from spies and
+busybodies; they at least would have secured the peace and privacy
+of one who was no hero in fact or spirit, whose noblest deed was a
+piece of self preservation which he wished undone with all his
+heart.
+
+Self-consciousness no doubt multiplied my flattering assailants.
+I have said that my nerves were shattered.  I may have imagined
+much and exaggerated the rest.  Yet what truth there was in my
+suspicions you shall duly see.  I felt sure that I was followed
+in the street, and my every movement dogged by those to whom I
+would not condescend to turn and look.  Meanwhile, I had not
+the courage to go near my club, and the Temple was a place where
+I was accosted in every court, effusively congratulated 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 my memory;
+nor must you confuse my then feelings on all these matters with
+those 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 blame myself for abandoning my chambers and avoiding my club.
+
+For a temporary asylum I pitched upon a small, quiet, empty,
+private hotel which I knew of in Charterhouse Square.  Instantly
+the room next mine became occupied.
+
+All the first night I imagined I heard voices talking about me in
+that room next door.  It was becoming a disease with me.  Either
+I was being dogged, watched, followed, day and night, indoors and
+out, or I was the victim of a very ominous hallucination.  That
+night I never closed an eye nor lowered my light.  In the morning
+I took a four-wheel cab and drove straight to Harley Street; and,
+upon my soul, as I stood on the specialist's door-step, I could
+have sworn I saw the occupant of the room 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
+these fancies spring entirely from the imagination?  Not entirely
+- just so.  And you keep looking behind you, as though somebody
+were at your elbow; and you 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 a man who has come through
+your nervous strain."  A keen professional light glittered in his
+eyes.  "And almost commonplace," he added, smiling, "compared with
+the hallucinations you must have suffered from on that hen-coop!
+Ah, my dear sir, the psychological interest of your case is very
+great!"
+
+"It may be," said I, brusquely.  "But I come to you to get that
+hen-coop out of my head, not to be reminded of it.   Everybody asks
+me about the damned thing, and you follow everybody else.  I wish
+it and I were at the bottom of the sea together!"
+
+This speech had the effect of really interesting the doctor in my
+present condition, which was indeed one of chronic irritation and
+extreme excitability, alternating with fits of the very blackest
+despair.  Instead of offending my gentleman I had put him on his
+mettle, and for half an hour he honored me with the most exhaustive
+inquisition ever elicited from a medical man.  His panacea was
+somewhat in the nature of an anti-climax, but at least it had the
+merits of simplicity and of common sense.  A change of air - perfect
+quiet - say a cottage in the country - 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
+and your 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 did it matter?  And, oh, it was so true - so true.
+
+Every day and all day I was thinking of my love; every hour and all
+hours she was before me with her sunny hair and young, young face.
+Her wistful eyes were gazing into mine continually.  Their
+wistfulness I had never realized at the time; but now I did; and I
+saw it for what it seemed always to have been, the soft, sad,
+yearning look of one fated to 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 no mistake.  I have implied, I believe, that it was for another
+woman I fled originally to the diggings.  Well, that one was still
+unmarried, and when the papers were full of me she wrote me a letter
+which I now believe to have been merely kind.  At the time I was all
+uncharitableness; but words of mine would fail to tell you how cold
+this letter left me; it was as a candle lighted in the full blaze
+of the sun.
+
+With all my bitterness, however, you must not suppose that I had
+quite lost 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 lose those feelings altogether.  They were with
+me in the better moments of these my worst days.  I trusted His
+wisdom still.  There was a reason for everything; there were reasons
+for all this.  I alone had been saved out of all those souls who
+sailed from Melbourne in the Lady Jermyn.  Why should I have been
+the favored one; I with my broken heart and now lonely life?  Some
+great inscrutable reason there must be; at my worst I did not deny
+that.  But neither did I puzzle my sick brain with the reason.  I
+just waited for it to be revealed to me, if it were God's will
+ever to reveal it.  And that I conceive to be the one spirit in
+which a man may contemplate, with equal sanity and reverence, the
+mysteries and the miseries of his life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+I FIND A FRIEND
+
+
+
+The night after I consulted the specialist I was quite determined
+to sleep.  I had laid in a bundle of the daily papers.  No country
+cottage was advertised to let but I knew of it by evening, and about
+all the likely ones I had already written.  The scheme occupied my
+thoughts.  Trout-fishing was a desideratum.  I would take my
+rod and plenty of books, would live simply and frugally, and it
+should make a new man of me by Christmas.  It was now October.  I
+went to sleep thinking of autumn tints against an autumn sunset.
+It must have been very early, certainly not 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
+and dingy all day long, with heavy old chandeliers and black old oak,
+and dead flowers in broken flower-pots surrounding a grimy grass-plot
+in the rear.  On this latter my bedroom window looked; and never am
+I likely to forget the vile music of the cats throughout my first
+long wakeful night there.  The second night they actually woke me;
+doubtless they had been busy long enough, but it was all of a sudden
+that I heard them, and lay listening for more, wide awake in an
+instant.  My window had been very softly opened, and the draught
+fanned my forehead as I held my breath.
+
+A faint light glimmered through a ground-glass pane over the door;
+and was dimly reflected by the toilet mirror, in its usual place
+against the window.  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
+with a worse: the thief had gone as he had come ere my toes halted
+aching amid the debris.
+
+A useless little balcony - stone slab and iron railing - jutted out
+from my 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 they disappeared.  There was a dull yet springy thud on the
+grass below.  Then no more noise but the distant thunder of the
+traffic, and the one that woke 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
+own was not as I answered "Nothing!" for this was not the first time
+my next-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 undiminished
+good-humor of my neighbor, "some one did; but he's gone now, so
+let him be."
+
+"Gone?  Not he!  He's getting over that wall.  After him - after
+him!"  And the head disappeared from the window next mine.
+
+I rushed into the corridor, and was just in time to intercept a
+singularly handsome young fellow, at whom I had hardly taken the
+trouble to look until now.  He was in full evening dress, and his
+face was radiant with the spirit of mischief and adventure.
+
+"For God's sake, sir," I whispered, "let this matter rest.  I shall
+have to come forward if you persist, and Heaven knows I have been
+before the public quite enough!"
+
+His dark eyes questioned me an instant, then fell as though he would
+not disguise that he recollected and understood .  I liked him for
+his good taste.  I liked him for his tacit sympathy, and better
+still for the amusing disappointment in his gallant, young face.
+
+"I am sorry to have robbed you of a pleasant chase," said I.  "At
+one time I should have been the first to join you.  But, to tell you
+the truth, 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 his
+flattering 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
+a thing, you see.  I shall look for another opportunity of thanking
+you to-morrow."
+
+"No, no!" cried he, "thanks be hanged, but - but, I say, if I
+promise you not to bore you about things - won't you drink a glass
+of brandy-and-water in my room before you turn in again?"
+
+Brandy-and-water being the very thing I needed, and this young man
+pleasing me more andmore, I said that I would join him with all my
+heart, and returned to my room for my dressing-gown and slippers.
+To find them, however, I had to light my candles, when the first
+thing I saw was the havoc my marauder had left behind him.  The
+mirror was cracked across; the dressing-table had lost a leg; and
+both lay flat, with my brushes and shaving-table, and the foolish
+toilet crockery which no one uses (but I should have to replace)
+strewn upon the carpet.  But one thing I found that had not been
+there before: under the window lay a formidable sheath-knife without
+its sheath.  I picked it up with something of a thrill, which did
+not lessen when I felt its edge.  The thing 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 barely midnight, and that he had
+only just come in when the clatter took place in 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 new
+acquaintance bent over the weapon, as he held it to the light, and
+ran his finger along the blade.  He could have not frowned more
+heavily if he had 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
+at least one other beggar skulking down below."  He stood looking at
+me, the knife 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've heard of other cases about these Inns of Court.
+There's evidently a gang of them, and this knife might convict the
+lot; there's no saying; anyway I think the police should have it.
+If you like I'll take it to Scotland Yard myself, and hand it over
+without mentioning your name."
+
+"Oh, if you keep my name out of it," said I, "and say nothing about
+it here in the hotel, you may do what you like, and welcome!  It's
+the proper course, no doubt; only I've had publicity enough, and
+would sooner have felt that blade in my body than set my name going
+again in the newspapers."
+
+"I understand," he said, with his well-bred sympathy, which never
+went a shade too far; and he dropped the weapon into a drawer, as
+the boots entered with the tray.  In a minute he had brewed two
+steaming jorums of spirits-and-water; as he handed me one, I feared
+he was going to drink my health, or toast my luck; but no, he was
+the one man I had met who seemed, as he said, to "understand."
+Nevertheless, he had his toast.
+
+"Here's confusion to the criminal classes in general," he cried;
+"but death and damnation to the owners of that knife!"
+
+And we clinked tumblers across the little oval table in the middle
+of the room.  It was more of a sitting-room than mine; a bright
+fire was burning in the grate, and my companion insisted on my
+sitting over it in 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 then produced a handsome cigar-case admirably
+stocked, and we smoked and sipped in the cosiest fashion, though
+without exchanging many words.
+
+You may imagine my pleasure in the society of a youth, equally
+charming in looks, manners and address, who had not one word to say
+to me about the 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 the catastrophe to this very boy with less reluctance than
+to any other creature whom I had encountered since my deliverance.
+He seemed so full of silent sympathy: his consideration for my
+feelings was so marked and yet so unobtrusive.  I have called him a
+boy.  I am apt to write as the old 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 found out that he was
+six-and-twenty.
+
+I have also called him handsome.  He was the handsomest man that I
+have ever met, had the frankest face, the finest eyes, the brightest
+smile.  Yet his bronzed forehead was low, and his mouth rather
+impudent and bold than truly strong.  And there was a touch of
+foppery about him, in the enormous white tie and the much-cherished
+whiskers of the fifties, which was only redeemed by that other touch
+of devilry that he had shown me in the corridor.  By the rich brown
+of his complexion, as well as by a certain sort of swagger in his
+walk, I should have said that he was a naval 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 in
+Lancashire."
+
+"I suppose there's no need to tell my name?" said I, less sadly, I
+daresay, than I had ever yet alluded to the tragedy which I alone
+survived.  It was an unnecessary allusion, too, as a reference to
+the foregoing conversation will show.
+
+"Well, no!" said he, in his frank fashion; "I can't honestly say
+there is."
+
+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
+lived to tell the tale!"
+
+The egotism of this speech was not wholly gratuitous.  I thought
+it did seem strange to him: that a needless constraint was put upon
+him by excessive consideration for my feelings.  I desired to set
+him at his ease as he had set me at mine.  On the contrary, he
+seemed quite startled by my remark.
+
+"It is strange," he said, with a shudder, followed by the biggest
+sip of brandy-and-water he had taken yet.  "It must have been
+horrible - horrible!" he added to himself, his dark eyes staring
+into the fire.
+
+"Ah!" said I, "it was even more horrible than you suppose or can
+ever imagine."
+
+I was not thinking of myself, nor of my love, nor of any particular
+incident of the fire that still went on burning in my brain.  My
+tone was doubtless confidential, but I was meditating no special
+confidence when my companion drew one with his next words.  These,
+however, came after a pause, in which my eyes had fallen from his
+face, but in which I heard him emptying his glass.
+
+"What do you mean?" he whispered.  "That there were other
+circumstances - things which haven't got into the papers?"
+
+"God knows there were," I answered, my face in my hands; and, my
+grief brought home to me, there I sat with it in the presence of
+that stranger, 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 suddenly stopping and laying a rather tremulous hand upon my
+shoulder.
+
+"You - It wouldn't do you any good to speak of those circumstances,
+I suppose?" he faltered.
+
+"No: not now: no good at all."
+
+"Forgive me," he said, resuming his walk.  "I had no business - I
+felt so sorry - I cannot tell you how I sympathize! And yet - I
+wonder if you will always feel so?"
+
+"No saying how I shall feel when I am a man again," said I.  "You
+see what I am at present."  And, pulling myself together, I rose to
+find my new friend quite agitated in his turn.
+
+"I wish we had some more brandy," he sighed.  "I'm afraid it's too
+late to get any now."
+
+"And I'm glad of it," said I.  "A man in my state ought not to look
+at spirits, or he may never look past them again.  Thank goodness,
+there are other medicines.  Only this morning I consulted the best
+man on nerves in London.  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 was
+driving over to Hampstead, and I thought it was you.  Well, what's
+the prescription?"
+
+In my satisfaction at finding that he had not been dogging me
+intentionally (though I had forgotten the incident till he reminded
+me of it), I answered his question with unusual fulness.
+
+"I should go abroad," said Rattray.  "But then, I always am abroad;
+it's only the other day I got back from South America, and I shall
+up anchor again before this filthy English winter sets in.
+
+Was he a sailor after all, or only a well-to-do wanderer on the face
+of the 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 into more or less enthusiastic advocacy of this or that
+foreign resort, as opposed 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
+the night.  His voice had lost its hearty ring, and he seemed
+preoccupied, as if talking of one matter while he thought upon
+another.  Yet he would not let me go; and presently he confirmed my
+suspicion, no less than my first impression of his delightful
+frankness and cordiality, by candidly telling me what was on his mind.
+
+"If you really want a cottage in the country," said he, "and the most
+absolute peace and quiet to be got in this world, I know of the very 
+hing on my land in Lancashire.  It would drive me mad in a week; but
+if you 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 of
+Braithwaite.  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,
+and would 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 the cottage."
+
+"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'n only sorry I
+shall not see something of you on your own heath.  I can't thank
+you enough for your kind suggestion.  When do you suppose the
+Braithwaites could do with me?"
+
+His charming smile rebuked my impatience.
+
+"We must first see whether they can do with you at all," said he.
+"I sincerely 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 matter of fact, I'm going down there to-morrow, and I've got
+to telegraph to my place in any case to tell them when to meet me.
+I'll send the telegram first thing, and I'll make them send one back
+to say whether there's room 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 the cottage and the hall were not even in sight of each
+other, and I really had 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 my appreciation of his society plainer than
+ever to him; for indeed I had found a more refreshing pleasure in
+it already than I had hoped to derive from mortal man again; and we
+parted, at three o'clock in the morning, like old fast friends.
+
+"Only don't expect too much, my dear Mr. Cole," were his last words
+to me.  "My own place is as ancient and as tumble-down as most ruins
+that you pay to see over.  And I'm never there myself because - I
+tell you frankly - I hate it like poison!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+A SMALL PRECAUTION
+
+
+My delight in the society of this young Squire Rattray (as I soon
+was to hear him styled) had been such as to make me almost forget
+the sinister incident which had brought us together.  When I
+returned to my room, however, there were the open window and the
+litter on the floor to remind me of what had happened earlier in
+the night.  Yet I was less disconcerted than you might suppose.  A
+common housebreaker can have few terrors for one who has braved
+those of mid-ocean single-handed; my would-be visitor had no longer
+any for me; for it had not yet occurred to 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, these morbid
+imaginings (as I was far from unwilling to consider them) had one
+and all deserted me in the sane, clean company of the capital young
+fellow 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 his
+freshness and his boyish charm; and though the sense of failure is
+heavy upon me there, I who knew the man knew also that I must fail
+to do him justice.  Enough may have been said, however, to impart
+some faint idea of what this youth was to me in the bitter and
+embittering anti-climax of my life.  Conventional figures spring to
+my pen, but every one of them is true; he was flowers in spring, he
+was sunshine after rain, he was rain following long months of
+drought.  I slept admirably after all; and I awoke to see the
+overturned toilet-table, and to thrill as I remembered there was one
+fellow-creature with whom I could fraternize without fear of a rude
+reopening of my every wound.
+
+I hurried my dressing in the hope of our breakfasting together.  I
+knocked at the next door, and, receiving no answer, even ventured
+to enter, with the same idea.  He was not there.  He was not in the
+coffee-room.  He was not in the hotel.
+
+I broke my fast in disappointed solitude, and I hung about
+disconsolate all the morning, looking wistfully for my new-made
+friend.  Towards mid-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
+telegram first 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-morrow night."
+
+I thanked him from my heart.  "You seem in a hurry!" I added, as I
+followed him up the stairs.
+
+"I am," said he.  "It's a near thing for the train.  I've just time
+to stick 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'm going to make it my privilege to see that everything is as cosey
+as possible 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 gave in.
+
+"All right," said I; "then I must content myself with seeing you
+off at the station."
+
+To my surprise his smile faded, and a flush of undisguised annoyance
+made him, if anything, better-looking than ever.  It brought out a
+certain strength of mouth and jaw which I had not observed there
+hitherto.  It gave him an ugliness of expression which only
+emphasized his perfection of feature.
+
+"You mustn't do that either," said he, shortly. "I have an
+appointment at 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 I deserved it; for I had exhibited a characteristic (though not
+chronic) want of taste, of which I am sometimes guilty to this day.
+Not to show ill-feeling on the head of it, I nevertheless followed
+him down again in four or five minutes.  And I was rewarded by his
+brightest smile as he grasped my hand.
+
+"Come to-morrow by the same train," said he, naming station, line,
+and hour; "unless I telegraph, all will be ready and you shall be
+met.  You may rely on reasonable charges.  As to the fishing, go
+up-stream - to the right when you strike the beck - and you'll find
+a good pool or two.  I may have to go to Lancaster the day after
+to-morrow, but I shall give you a call when I get back."
+
+With that we parted, as good friends as ever.  I observed that my
+regret at losing him was shared by the boots, who stood beside me
+on the steps as 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
+coin in his hand before pocketing it with evident satisfaction.
+
+Lonely as I was, and wished to be, I think that I never felt my
+loneliness as I did during the twenty-four hours which intervened
+between Rattray's departure and my own.  They dragged like wet days
+by the sea, and the effect was as depressing.  I have seldom been
+at such a 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 new friend, 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: he had come into my dark life like a lamp,
+and his going left a darkness deeper than before.
+
+In my dejection I took a new view of the night's outrage.  It was
+no common burglar's work, for what had I worth stealing?  It was
+the work of my unseen enemies, who dogged me in the street; they
+alone knew why; the doctor had called these hallucinations, and I
+had forced myself to agree with the doctor; but I could not deceive
+myself in my present mood.  I remembered the steps, the steps - the
+stopping when I stopped - the drawing 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 it mere vulgar curiosity;
+because a few had bored me, I had imagined the many at my heels; but
+now I knew - I knew!  It was the few again: a few who hated me even
+unto death.
+
+The idea took such a hold upon me that I did not trouble my head
+with reasons and motives.  Certain persons had designs upon my
+life; that was enough for me.  On the whole, the thought was
+stimulating; it set a new value 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 should follow me once more, and this time
+to some purpose.  Last night they had left 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
+no more than my duty as a civilized citizen.  On Black Hill Flats,
+however, I had formed another habit, of which I should never have
+broken myself so easily, but for the fact that all the firearms I
+ever had were reddening and rotting at the bottom of the Atlantic
+Ocean.  I now went out 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 dusk
+I was owner of as fine a specimen as could be procured in the city
+of London.  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
+bullet separately; but the last-named would have killed an elephant.
+The oak case that I bought with it cumbers my desk as I write, and,
+shut, you would think that it had never contained anything more
+lethal than fruit-knives.  I open it, and there are the green-baize
+compartments, one with a box of percussion caps, still apparently
+full, another that could not contain many more wadded-bullets, and
+a third with a powder-horn which can never have been much lighter.
+Within the lid is a label bearing 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 my
+waistcoat pocket; in the right-hand side-pocket of my overcoat I
+carried my Deane and Adams, loaded in every chamber; also my right
+hand, as innocently as you could wish.  And just that night I was
+not followed!  I walked across Regent's Park, and I dawdled on
+Primrose Hill, without the least result.  Down I turned into the
+Avenue Road, and presently was strolling between green fields
+towards Finchley.  The moon was up, but nicely 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 I did want
+to give the beggars their last chance.  But they did not even
+attempt to avail themselves of it: never once did they follow me:
+my ears were in too good training to make any mistake.  And the
+reason only dawned on me as I drove back disappointed: they had
+followed me already to the gunsmith's!
+
+Convinced of this, I entertained but little hope of another midnight
+visitor.  Nevertheless, I put my light out early, and sat a long
+time peeping through my blind; but only an inevitable Tom, with
+back hunched up and tail erect, broke the moonlit profile of the
+back-garden wall; and once more that disreputable music (which none
+the less had saved my life) was the only near sound all night.
+
+I felt very reluctant to pack Deane and Adams away in his case next
+morning, and the case in my portmanteau, where I could not get at
+it in case my unknown friends took it into their heads to accompany
+me out of town.  In the hope that they would, I kept him loaded,
+and in the same overcoat pocket, until late in the afternoon, when,
+being very near my northern destination, and having the compartment
+to myself, I locked the toy away with considerable remorse for the
+price I had paid for it.  All down the line I had kept an eye for
+suspicious characters with an eye upon me; but even my
+self-consciousness failed to discover one; and I reached 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
+very porters seemed to expect me, and my luggage was in the cart
+before I had given up my ticket.  Nor had we started when I first
+noticed that Braithwaite did not speak when I spoke to him.  On the
+way, however, a more flagrant instance recalled young Rattray's
+remark, that the man was "not like other people." I had imagined it
+to refer to a mental, not a physical, defect; whereas it was clear
+to me now that my prospective landlord was stone-deaf, and I
+presently discovered him to be dumb as well.  Thereafter I studied
+him with some attention during our drive of four or five miles.  I
+called to mind the theory that an innate physical deficiency is
+seldom without its moral counterpart, and I wondered how far 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 was certainly
+forbidding, and he thrashed his horse up the hills in a dogged,
+vindictive, thorough-going way which at length made me jump out and
+climb one of them on foot.  It was the only form of protest that
+occurred 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 desolate
+enough.  I believe we met no living soul on the high road which we
+followed for the first three miles or more.  At length we turned
+into a narrow lane, with a stiff stone wall on either hand, and this
+eventually led us past the lights of what appeared to be a large
+farm; it was really a small hamlet; and now we were nearing our
+destination.  Gates had to be opened, and my poor driver breathed
+hard from the continual getting down and up.  In the end a long and
+heavy cart-track brought us to the loneliest light that I have ever
+seen.  It shone on the side of a hill - in the heart of an open
+wilderness - as solitary as a beacon-light at sea.  It was the light
+of the cottage which was to be my temporary home.
+
+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 a voice harsh (I took it) from disuse.  I was warming
+myself before the kitchen fire when she came in carrying my heaviest
+box as though it had nothing 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 could intercept her.
+
+I conceive that very few men are attracted by abnormal strength in
+a woman; we cannot help it; and yet it was not her strength which
+first repelled me in Mrs.  Braithwaite.  It was a combination of
+attributes.  She had a poll of very dirty and untidy red hair; her
+eyes were set close together; she had the jowl of the traditional
+prize-fighter.  But far more disagreeable than any single feature
+was the woman's expression, or rather the expression which I caught
+her assuming naturally, and banishing with an effort for my benefit.
+To me she was strenuously civil in her uncouth way.  But I saw her
+give her husband one look, as he staggered in with my comparatively
+light portmanteau, which she instantly snatched out of his feeble
+arms.  I saw this look again before the evening was out, and it was
+such a one as Braithwaite himself had fixed upon his horse as he
+flogged it up the hills.
+
+I began to wonder how the young squire had found it in his conscience
+to recommend such a pair.  I wondered less when the woman finally
+ushered me upstairs to my rooms.  These were small and rugged, but
+eminently snug and clean.  In each a good fire blazed cheerfully; my
+portmanteau was already unstrapped, the table in the sitting-room
+already laid; and I could not help looking twice at the silver and
+the glass, so bright was their condition, so good their quality.
+Mrs. Braithwaite watched me from the door.
+
+"I doubt you'll be thinking them's our own," said she.  "I wish they
+were; 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
+there lookin'-glass an' all."
+
+She had followed me into the bedroom, where I looked with redoubled
+interest at each object as she mentioned it, and it was in the glass
+ -  a masqueline shaving-glass - that I caught my second glimpse of my
+landlady'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 I felt 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
+zeal for my comfort; there were even flowers on my table, without a
+doubt from Kirby Hall.
+
+And in another matter the squire had not misled me: the woman was
+an excellent plain cook.  I expected ham and eggs.  Sure enough,
+this was my dish, but done to a turn.  The eggs were new and all
+unbroken, the ham so 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 a new man of me, after my long journey
+and my cold, damp drive.  I was for chatting with Mrs. Braithwaite
+when she came up to clear away.  I thought she might be glad to
+talk after the life she must lead with her afflicted husband, but
+it seemed to have had the opposite effect on her.  All I elicited
+was an ambiguous statement as to the distance between the cottage
+and the hall; it was "not so far."  And so she left me to my pipe
+and to my best night yet, in the stillest spot I have ever slept
+in on dry land; one heard nothing but the bubble of a beck; and it
+seemed very, very far away.
+
+A fine, bright morning showed me my new surroundings in their true
+colors; even in the sunshine these were not very gay.  But gayety
+was the last thing I wanted.  Peace and quiet were my whole desire,
+and both were here, set in scenery at once lovely to the eye and
+bracing to the soul.
+
+>From the cottage doorstep one looked upon a perfect panorama of
+healthy, open English country.  Purple hills hemmed in a broad,
+green, undulating plateau, scored across and across by the stone
+walls of the north, and all dappled with the shadows of rolling
+leaden clouds with silver fringes.  Miles away a church spire stuck
+like a spike out of the hollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed
+the trees behind.  No nearer habitation could I see.  I have
+mentioned a hamlet which we passed in the spring-cart.  It lay
+hidden behind some hillocks to the left.  My landlady told me it
+was better than half a mile away, and "nothing when you get there;
+no shop; no post-office; not even a public - house."
+
+I inquired in which direction lay the hall.  She pointed to the
+nearest trees, a small forest of stunted oaks, which shut in the
+view to the right, after quarter of a mile of a bare and rugged
+valley.  Through this valley twisted the beck which I had heard
+faintly in the night.  It ran through the oak plantation and so to
+the sea, some two or three miles further on, said my landlady; but
+nobody would have thought it was so near.
+
+"T'squire was to be away to-day," observed the woman, with the
+broad vowel sound which I shall not attempt to reproduce in print.
+"He was going to Lancaster, I believe."
+
+"So I understood," said I.  "I didn't think of troubling him, if
+that's what 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,
+chill air was doing me good already: the "perfect quiet" was finding
+its way into my soul.  I blessed my specialist, I blessed Squire
+Rattray, I blessed the very villains who had brought us within each
+other's ken; and nowhere was my thanksgiving more fervent than in
+the deep cleft threaded by the beck; for here the shrewd yet gentle
+wind passed completely overhead, and the silence was purged of
+oppression by the ceaseless symphony of clear water running over
+clean stones.
+
+But it was no day for fishing, and no place for the fly, though I
+went through the form of throwing one for several hours.  Here the
+stream merely rinsed its bed, there it stood so still, in pools of
+liquid amber, that, when the sun shone, the very pebbles showed
+their shadows in the deepest places.  Of course I caught nothing;
+but, towards the close of the gold-brown afternoon, I made yet
+another new acquaintance, in the person of a little old clergyman
+who attacked me pleasantly from the rear.
+
+"Bad day for fishing, sir," croaked the cheery voice which first
+informed me of his presence.  "Ah, I knew it must be a stranger,"
+he cried as I turned and he hopped down to my side with the activity
+of a much younger man.
+
+"Yes," I said, "I only came down from London yesterday.  I find the
+spot so delightful that I haven't bothered much about the sport.
+Still, I've had 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
+a pun, I hope?  Never could endure puns!  So you came down yesterday,
+young gentleman, 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 so little in common with his type as I knew it.  He had,
+however, about the shrewdest pair of eyes that I have ever seen,
+and my answer only served to 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 than
+quite 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 and through me like knitting-needles through a ball of wool.
+
+"I could hardly call myself that," said I.  "But Mr. Rattray has
+been very kind to me."
+
+"Meet him in town?"
+
+I said I had, but I said it with some coolness, for his tone had
+dropped into the confidential, and I disliked it as much as this
+string of questions 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
+my first impressions of this impertinent old fellow; "but I'm hanged
+if I tell it you!  I am here for rest and quiet, sir.  I don't ask
+you your name.  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
+faded away in mere surprise, and, next instant, my elderly and
+reverend friend was causing me some compunction by coloring like
+a boy.
+
+"You may think my curiosity mere impertinence, sir," said he; "you
+would think 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 feel some sympathy for one of the neighboring clergy, to
+whom this godless young 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
+I could not but apologize for my hasty words.
+
+"Don't name it, sir," said the clergyman; "you had a perfect right
+to resent my questions, and I enjoy meeting young men of spirit;
+but not when it's an evil spirit, such as, I fear, possesses your
+friend!  I do assure you, sir, that the best thing I have heard of
+him for years is the very little that you have told me.  As a rule,
+to hear of him at all in this part of the world, is to wish that
+we had not heard.  I see him coming, however, and shall detain you
+no longer, for I don't deny that there is no love lost between us."
+
+I looked round, and there was Rattray on the top of the bank, a
+long way to the left, coming towards me with a waving hat.  An
+extraordinary ejaculation brought me to the right-about next instant.
+
+The old clergyman had slipped on a stone in mid-stream, and, as he
+dragged a dripping leg up the opposite bank, he had sworn an oath
+worthy of the "godless young man" who had put him to flight, and
+on whose demerits 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 saw him 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 never seen this one before.  Let's have another look."
+
+We were walking away together.  We turned on the top of the bank.
+And there the old clergyman was planted on the moorside, and watching
+us intently from under his hollowed hands.
+
+"Well, I'm hanged!" exclaimed Rattray, as the hands fell and their
+owner beat a hasty retreat.  My companion said no more; indeed, for
+some minutes we pursued our way in silence.  And I thought that it
+was with an effort that he broke into sudden inquiries concerning
+my journey and my comfort 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 had known him all my life; nor do I think there was
+another living man with whom I would have linked arms at that time.
+
+"Good?" cried he.  "Nonsense, my dear sir!  I'm only afraid you
+find it devilish rough.  But, at all events, you're coming to dine
+with me to-night."
+
+"Am I?" I asked, smiling.
+
+"Rather!" said he.  "My time here is short enough.  I don't lose
+sight of you 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
+my retainers 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
+suppose I'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 - getting up the wines - never had such a joke!
+Give you my word, I almost forgot I was in the wilderness!"
+
+"So you're quite alone, are you?"
+
+"Yes; as much so as that other beggar who was monarch of all he
+surveyed, his right there was none to dispute, from the what-is-it
+down to the glade -"
+
+"I'll come," said I, as we reached the cottage.  "Only first you
+must let me 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
+way upstairs, I paused to tell Mrs. Braithwaite that I was dining
+at the hall.  She was busy cooking, and I felt prepared for her
+unpleasant expression; but she showed no annoyance at my news.  I
+formed the impression that it was no news to her.  And next minute I
+heard a whispering below; it was unmistakable in that silent cottage,
+where not a word had reached me yet, save in conversation to which I
+was myself a party.
+
+I looked out of window.  Rattray I could no longer see.  And I
+confess that I felt both puzzied and annoyed until we walked away
+together, when it was his arm which was immediately thrust through
+mine.
+
+"A good soul, Jane," said he; "though she made an idiotic marriage,
+and leads a life which might spoil the temper of an archangel.  She
+was my nurse when I was a youngster, Cole, and we never meet without
+a yarn."  Which seemed natural enough; still I failed to perceive
+why they need yarn in whispers.
+
+Kirby Hall proved startlingly near at hand.  We descended the bare
+valley to the right, we crossed the beck upon a plank, were in the
+oak-plantation about a minute, and there was the hall upon the
+farther side.
+
+And a queer old place it seemed, half farm, half feudal castle: fowls
+strutting at large about the back premises (which we were compelled
+to skirt), and then a front door of ponderous oak, deep-set between
+walls fully six feet thick, and studded all over with wooden pegs.
+The facade, indeed, was wholly grim, with a castellated tower at one
+end, and a number of narrow, sunken windows looking askance on the
+wreck and ruin of a once prim, old-fashioned, high-walled garden.
+I thought that Rattray 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 bright young fellow for never coming near so
+desolate a domain.
+
+We dined delightfully in a large and lofty hall, formerly used (said
+Rattray) as a court-room.  The old judgment seat stood back against
+the wall, and our table was the one at which the justices had been
+wont to sit.  Then the chamber had been low-ceiled; now it ran to
+the roof, and we ate our dinner beneath a square of fading autumn
+sky, with I wondered how many ghosts looking down on us from the
+oaken gallery!  I was interested, impressed, awed not a little, and
+yet all in a way which afforded my mind the most welcome distraction
+from itself and from the past.  To Rattray, on the other hand, it
+was rather sadly plain that the place was both a burden and a bore;
+in fact he vowed it was the dampest and the dullest old ruin under
+the sun, and that he would sell it to-morrow if he could find a
+lunatic to buy.  His want of sentiment struck me as his one
+deplorable trait.  Yet even this displayed his characteristic merit
+of frankness.  Nor was it at all unpleasant to hear his merry,
+boyish laughter ringing round hall and gallery, ere it died away
+against a dozen closed doors.
+
+And there were other elements of good cheer: a log fire blazing
+heartily in the old dog-grate, casting a glow over the stone flags,
+a reassuring flicker into the darkest corner: cold viands of the
+very best: and the finest old Madeira that has ever passed my lips.
+
+"Now, all my life I have been a "moderate drinker" in the most
+literal sense of that slightly elastic term.  But at the sad time
+of which I am trying to write, I was almost an abstainer, from the
+fear, the temptation - of seeking oblivion in strong waters.  To
+give way then was to 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 and nervous state, in which a glass would
+have the same effect on me as three or four upon a healthy man.
+
+Heaven knows how much or how little I took that evening!  I can
+swear it was the smaller half of either bottle - and the second we
+never finished - but.  the amount matters nothing.  Even me it did
+not make grossly tipsy.  But it warmed my blood, it cheered my heart,
+it excited my brain, and - it loosened my tongue.  It set me talking
+with a freedom of which I should have been incapable in my normal
+moments, on a subject whereof I had never before spoken of my own
+free will.  And yet the will to - speak - to my present companion
+- was no novelty.  I had felt it at our first meeting in the private
+hotel.  His tact, his sympathy, his handsome face, his personal charm,
+his frank friendliness, had one and all tempted me to bore this
+complete stranger with unsolicited confidences for which an
+inquisitive relative might have angled in vain.  And the temptation
+was the stronger because I knew in my heart that I should not bore
+the young squire at all; that he was anxious enough to hear my story
+from my own lips, but too good a gentleman intentionally to betray
+such anxiety.  Vanity was also in the impulse.  A vulgar newspaper
+prominence had been my final (and very genuine) tribulation; but to
+please and to interest one so pleasing and so interesting to me,
+was another and a subtler thing.  And then there was his sympathy
+- shall I add his admiration? - for my reward.
+
+I do not pretend that I argued thus deliberately in my heated and
+excited brain.  I merely hold that all these small reasons and
+motives were there, fused and exaggerated by the liquor which
+was there as well.  Nor can I say positively that Rattray put no
+leading questions; only that I remember none which had that sound;
+and that, once started, I am afraid 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
+in an armchair that my host dragged from a little book-lined room
+adjoining the hall.  I finished on my legs, my back to the fire, my
+hands beating wildly together.  I had told my dear Rattray of my
+own accord more than living man had extracted from me yet.  He
+interrupted me very little; never once until I came to the murderous
+attack by Santos on the drunken steward.
+
+"The brute!" cried Rattray.  "The cowardly, cruel, foreign devil!
+And you never let out one word of that!"
+
+"What was the good?" said I.  "They are all gone now - all gone to
+their account.  Every man of us was a brute at the last.  There was
+nothing to be gained by telling the public that."
+
+He let me go on until I came to another point which I had hitherto
+kept to myself: the condition of the dead mate's fingers: the cries
+that the sight of them had recalled.
+
+"That Portuguese villain again!" cried my companion, fairly leaping
+from the chair which I had left and he had taken.  "It was the work
+of the same cane that killed the steward.  Don't tell me an
+Englishman would have done it; and yet you said nothing about that
+either!"
+
+It was my first glimpse of this side of my young host's character.
+Nor did I admire him the less, in his spirited indignation, because
+much of this was clearly against myself.  His eyes flashed.  His
+face was white.  I suddenly found myself the cooler man of the two.
+
+"My dear fellow, do consider!" said I.  "What possible end could
+have been served by my stating what I couldn't prove against a man
+who could never be brought to book in this world?  Santos was
+punished as he deserved; his punishment was death, and there's an
+end on't."
+
+"You might be right," said Rattray, "but it makes my blood boil to
+hear such a story.  Forgive me if I have spoken strongly;" and he
+paced his hall for a little in an agitation which made me like him
+better and better.  "The cold-blooded villain!" he kept muttering;
+"the infernal, foreign, blood-thirsty rascal!  Perhaps you were
+right; it couldn't have done 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 if you've told me the worst even now?"
+And he stood before me, with candid suspicion 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
+impossibile to resist.  "Heaven knows you have had enough to worry
+you!" he added, in his 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
+was something 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; but
+don't ask me any more."  And I leaned my forehead on the high oak
+mantel-piece, and groaned again.
+
+His hand was upon my shoulder.
+
+"Do tell me," he urged.  I was silent.  He pressed me further.  In
+my fancy, 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 burning softly away at my feet And so we stood until the voice
+of Rattray recalled 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't care.  Nothing matters to me but one thing.  Now that you know
+what that is, I hope you're satisfied."
+
+It was no way to speak to one's host.  Yet I felt that he had pressed
+me unduly.  I hated myself for my final confidence, and his want of
+sympathy made me hate him too.  In my weakness, however, I was the
+natural prey of violent extremes.  His hand flew out to me.  He was
+about to speak.  A moment more and I had doubtless forgiven him.  But
+another sound came instead and made the pair of us start and stare.
+It was the soft shutting of some upstairs door.
+
+"I thought we had the house to ourselves?" cried I, my miserable
+nerves on edge in an instant.
+
+"So did I," he answered, very pale.  "My servants must have come
+back.  By the 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 another I heard him railing behind some upper door that he had
+flung open and banged behind him; then his voice dropped, and
+finally died away.  I was left some minutes in the oppressively
+silent hall, shaken, startled, ashamed of my garrulity, aching
+to get away.  When he returned it was by another of the many closed
+doors, and he found me awaiting him, hat in hand.  He was wearing
+his happiest look until he saw my hat.
+
+"Not going?" he cried.  "My dear Cole, I can't apologize sufficiently
+for my 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 of listening to our conversation.  Of course he denies it; but it
+really doesn't matter, as I'm sorry to say he's much too 'fresh' (as
+they call it 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
+could have no conception of my weakness, my low and nervous condition 
+of body 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 much already.  I was in no state to stand it.  And I held out my
+hand with decision.
+
+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'm
+devilish sorry!  Take my advice and try something milder; now do,
+to-morrow; for I should never forgive myself if it made you worse
+instead 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
+get rid of me so cheaply-much as you seem to want to!"
+
+"I was only thinking of you," he rejoined, with a touch of pique
+that convinced me of his sincerity.  "Of course I want you to stop,
+though I 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't you better have a lantern?"
+
+No; it was unnecessary.  I could see splendidly, had the bump of
+locality and as many more lies as would come to my tongue.  I was
+indeed burning to be gone.
+
+A moment later I feared that I had shown this too plainly.  For his
+final handshake was hearty enough to send me away something ashamed
+of my precipitancy, and with a further sense of having shown him
+small gratitude for his kindly anxiety on my behalf.  I would behave
+differently to-morrow.  Meanwhile I had new regrets.
+
+At first it was comparatively easy to see, for the lights of the
+house shone faintly among the nearer oaks.  But the moon was hidden
+behind heavy clouds, and I soon found myself at a loss in a terribly
+dark zone of 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 still
+quarrelling with myself for my indiscretions and my incivilities,
+one and all the result of his wine and my weakness, and this new
+predicament (another and yet more vulgar result) was the final
+mortification.  I swore aloud.  I simply could not see a foot in
+front of my face.  Once I proved it by running my head hard against
+a branch.  I was hopelessly and ridiculously lost within a hundred
+yards of the hall!
+
+Some minutes I floundered, ashamed to go back, unable to proceed
+for the trees and the darkness.  I heard the heck running over its
+stones.  I could still see an occasional glimmer from the windows
+I had left.  But the light was now on this side, now on that; the
+running water chuckled in one ear after the other; there was nothing
+for it but to return in all humility for the lantern which I had
+been so foolish as to refuse.
+
+And as I resigned myself to this imperative though inglorious course,
+my heart warmed once more to the jovial young squire.  He would
+laugh, but not unkindly, at my grotesque dilemma; at the thought of
+his laughter I began to smile myself.  If he gave me another chance 
+I would smoke that cigar with him before starting home afresh, and
+remove, front my own mind no less than from his, all ill impressions.
+After all it was not his fault that I had taken too much of his wine;
+but a far worse offence was to be sulky in one s cups.  I would show
+him that I was myself again in 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 steps towards the lights, and at
+length let myself into the garden by the postern at which I had
+shaken Rattray's hand not ten minutes before.
+
+Taking heart of grace, I stepped up jauntily to the porch.  The
+weeds muffled my steps.  I myself had never thought of doing so,
+when all at once I halted in a vague terror.  Through the deep
+lattice windows I had seen into the lighted hall.  And Rattray was
+once more seated at his table, a little company of men around him.
+
+I crept nearer, and my heart stopped.  Was I delirious, or raving
+mad with 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,
+where the broken meats still lay as he and I had left them; his
+fingers, I remember, were playing with a crust, and his eyes fixed
+upon a distant door, as he leant back in his chair.  Behind him
+hovered the nigger of the Lady Jermyn, whom I had been the slower
+to recognize, had not her skipper sat facing me on the squire's
+right.  Yes, there was Captain Harris in the flesh, eating heartily
+between great gulps of wine, instead of feeding the fishes as all
+the world supposed.  And nearer still, nearer me than any, with his
+back to my window but his chair slued round a little, so that he
+also could see that door, and I his profile, 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
+stood spellbound and petrified without.
+
+They say that a drowning man lives his life again before the last;
+but my own fight with the sea provided me with no such moments of
+vivid and rapid retrospect as those during which I stood breathless
+outside the lighted windows of Kirby Hall.  I landed again.  I was
+dogged day and night.  I set it down to nerves and notoriety; but
+took refuge in a private hotel.  One followed me, engaged the next
+room, set a watch on all my movements; another came in by the window
+to murder me in my bed; no party to that, the first one nevertheless
+turned the outrage to account, wormed himself into my friendship
+on the strength of it, and lured me hither, an easy prey.  And here
+was the gang of them, to meet me!  No wonder Rattray had not let me
+see him off at the station; no wonder I had not been followed that
+night.  Every link I saw in its right light instantly.  Only the
+motive remained obscure.  Suspicious circumstances swarmed upon my
+slow perception: how innocent I had been!  Less innocent, however,
+than wilfully and wholly reckless: what had it mattered 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 blood danced, my eyes lay in wait with theirs.  Everything began
+to matter once more.  It was as though the machinery of my soul,
+long stopped, had suddenly 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
+many moments in reality, for Santos was blowing his rings of smoke
+in the direction of the door, and the first that I noticed were but
+dissolving when it opened - and the best was true!  One instant I
+saw her very clearly, 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 into which I had stepped, to give such thanks to
+the Almighty as this heart has never felt before or since.  And I
+remained kneeling; for now my face was on a level with the sill;
+and when my eyes could see again, there stood my darling before
+them in the room.
+
+Like a queen she stood, in the very travelling cloak in which I had
+seen her last; it was tattered now, but she held it close about her
+as though a shrewd wind bit her to the core.  Her sweet face was
+all peeked and pale in the candle-light: she who had been a child
+was come to womanhood in a few weeks.  But a new spirit flashed in
+her dear eyes, a new strength hardened her young lips.  She stood
+as an angel brought to book by 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 of my heart.
+
+The first sound was the hasty rising of young Rattray; he was at
+Eva's side next instant, essaying to lead her to his chair, with
+a flush which deepened as she repulsed him coldly.
+
+"You have sent for me, and I have come," said she.  "But I prefer
+not to sit down in your presence; and what you have to say, you
+will be good enough to say as quickly as possible, that I may
+go again before I am - stifled!"
+
+It was her one hot word; aimed at them all, it seemed to me to
+fall like a lash on Rattray's cheek, bringing the blood to it like
+lightning.  But it was Santos who snatched the cigarette from his
+mouth, and opened upon the defenceless girl in a torrent of
+Portuguese, yellow with rage, and a very windmill of lean arms and
+brown hands in the terrifying rapidity of his gesticulations.  They
+did not terrify Eva Denison.  When Rattray took a step towards the
+speaker, with flashing eyes, it was some word from Eva that checked
+him; when Santos was done, it was to Rattray that she turned 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, as the young man turned on Santos with a scowl; you are one
+as wicked as the other, but there was a time when I thought
+differently of you: his character I have always known.  Of the two
+evils, I prefer to speak to you."
+
+Rattray bowed, humbly enough, I thought; but my darling's nostrils
+only curled the more.
+
+"He calls me a liar," she continued; "so may you all.  Since you
+have found it out, I admit it freely and without shame; one must
+be false in the 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 I lied in my sore extremity to gain the
+one miserable advantage within my reach.  He says you found me out
+by making friends with Mr. Cole.  He says that Mr. Cole has been
+dining with you in this very room, this very night.  You still
+tell the truth sometimes; has that man - that demon - 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 thinking
+otherwise."
+
+"Suppose he had known?  What would you have done?"
+
+Rattray said nothing.  Santos shrugged as he lit a fresh cigarette.
+The captain 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 all the rest; you would have killed him in cold blood, as
+I wish and pray that you would kill me!"
+
+The young fellow faced her, white to the lips.  "You have no right
+to say that, Miss Denison!" he cried.  "I may be bad, but, as I am
+ready to answer for my sins, the crime of murder is not among them.
+
+Well, it is still some satisfaction to remember that my love never
+punished me with such a look as was the young squire's reward for
+this protestation.  The curl of the pink nostrils, the parting of
+the proud lips, 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 grief underlying the scorn, but actually found it
+in my heart to pity this poor devil of a Rattray: so humbly fell
+those fine eyes of his, so like a dog did he stand, waiting to be
+whipped.
+
+"Yes; you are very innocent!" she began at last, so softly that I
+could scarcely hear.  "You have not committed murder, so you say;
+let it stand to your credit by all means.  You have no blood upon
+your hands; you say so; that is enough.  No! you are comparatively
+innocent, I admit.  All you have done is to make murder easy for
+others; to get others to do the dirty work, and then shelter them
+and share the gain; all you need have on your conscience is every 
+ife that was lost with the Lady Jermyn, and every 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, and who
+sits there eating his supper; he is more of a man than you.  Give
+me the wretch who has beaten men to death before my eyes; there's
+something great about a monster like that, there's something to
+loathe.  His assistant is only little - mean - despicable!"  Loud
+and hurried in its wrath, low and deliberate in its contempt, all
+this was uttered with a furious and abnormal eloquence, which would
+have struck me, loving her, to the ground.  On Rattray it had a
+different effect.  His head lifted as she heaped abuse upon it,
+until he met her flashing eye with that of a man very thankful to
+take his deserts and something more; and to mine he was least
+despicable when that last word left her lips.  When he saw that it
+was her last, he took her candle (she had put it down on the ancient
+settle against the door), and presented it to her with another bow.
+And so without a word he led her to the door, opened it, and bowed
+yet lower as 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 my
+step-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
+neck brown 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 squire
+had him by the collar, and the wine was spilling on the cloth, as
+I rose very cautiously and crept back to the path.
+
+"When rogues fall out!" I was thinking to myself.  "I shall save
+her yet - I shall save my darling!"
+
+Already I was accustomed to the thought that she still lived, and
+to the big heart she had set beating in my feeble frame; already
+the continued existence of these villains, with the first dim
+inkling of their villainy, was ceasing to be a novelty in a brain
+now quickened and prehensile beyond belief.  And yet - but a few
+minutes had I knelt at the window - 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.  0 my love!
+0 my heart's delight!  Now I knew why I was spared; to save her; to
+snatch her from these rascals; to cherish and protect her evermore!
+
+All the past shone clear behind me; the dark was lightness and the
+crooked straight.  All the future lay clear ahead it presented no
+difficulties 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
+it glimmered, now in the one above.  At last it was steady, high up
+near the stars, and I stole below.
+
+"Eva!  Eva!"
+
+There was no answer.  Low as it was, my voice was alarming; it
+cooled and 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.  I heard 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 think I'm in bed and asleep half-a-mile away.  Oh, thank God!
+I'll get you away from 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.  Not another syllable!"
+
+She was gone; there was a long yellow slit in the masonry once more;
+her light 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
+the black billows had silver crests: now an incandescent buoy bobbed
+among them.  0 for enough light, and no more!
+
+In the hall the high voices were more subdued.  I heard the captain's
+tipsy laugh.  My eyes fastened themselves upon that faint and lofty
+light, and on my heels I crouched among the bushes.
+
+The flame moved, flickered, and shone small but brilliant on the
+very sill.  I ran forward on tip-toe.  A white flake fluttered to
+my feet.  I secured it and waited for one word; none came; but the
+window was softly shut.
+
+I stood in doubt, the treacherous moonlight all over me now, and
+once more the window opened.
+
+"Go quickly!"
+
+And again it was shut; next moment I was stealing close by the spot
+where I had knelt.  I saw within once more.
+
+Harris nodded in his chair.  The nigger had disappeared.  Rattray was
+lighting a candle, and the Portuguese holding out his hand for the
+match.
+
+"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
+latch down again for the sudden trembling of my fingers.  The key
+turned behind me ere I had twenty yards' start.
+
+Thank God there was light enough now!  I followed the beck.  I found
+my way.  I stood in the open valley, between the oak-plantation and
+my desolate cottage, and I kissed my tiny, twisted note again and
+again in a paroxysm of passion and of insensate joy.  Then I
+unfolded it and held it 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 to read; it was doubly so in the moonlight, five-and-forty
+autumns ago.  My eyesight, however, was then perhaps the soundest
+thing about me, and in a little I had deciphered enough to guess
+correctly (as it proved) at the whole: -
+
+
+"You say you heard everything just now, and there is no time for
+further explanations.  I am in the hands of villains, but not
+ill-treated, though they are one as bad as the other.  You will not
+find it easy to rescue me.  I don't see how it is to be done.  You
+have promised not to do anything I ask you not to do, and I implore
+you not to tell a soul until you have seen me again and heard more.
+You might just as well kill me as come back now with help.
+
+"You see you know nothing, though I told them you knew all.  And so
+you shall as soon as I can see you for five minutes face to face.
+In the meantime do nothing - know nothing when you see Mr. Rattray
+- unless you wish to be my death.
+
+"It would have been possible last night, and it may be again
+to-morrow night.  They all go out every night when they can,
+except Jose, who is left in charge.  They are out from nine or
+ten till   two or three; if they are out to-morrow night my 
+candle will be close to the window as I shall put it when I have
+finished this.  You can see my window from over the wall.  If
+the light is in front you must climb the wall, for they will
+leave the gate locked.  I shall see you and will bribe Jose to
+let me out for a turn.  He has done it before for a bottle of
+wine.  I can manage him.  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 are under 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 the gang."
+
+
+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, that prospect of immediate
+measures which alone preserved in me such coolness as I had retained
+until now.  I was cool no longer; where I had relied on practical
+direction I was baffled and hindered and driven mad; on my honor 
+believe I was little less for some moments, groaning, cursing, and
+beating the air with impotent fists - in one of them my poor love's
+letter crushed already to a ball.
+
+Danger and difficulty I had been prepared to face; but the task
+that I was set was a hundred-fold harder than any that had whirled
+through my teeming 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 wait twenty-four!
+
+No; my word was passed; keep it I must.  She knew the men, she must
+know best; 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 that spanned 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 and down, and the gaunt strong figure of the woman
+Braithwaite stood out as I had seen it first, in the doorway, with
+the light showing warmly through 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
+took new life from the crisis, and in a flash I saw how to turn my
+weakness into account.  I made a false step on my way to the door;
+when I reached it I leant heavily against the jam, and I said with
+a slur that I felt unwell.  I had certainly been flushed with wine
+when I left Rattray; it would be no bad thing for him to hear that
+I had arrived quite tipsy at the cottage; should he discover I had
+been near an hour on the way, here was my explanation cut and dried.
+
+So I shammed a degree of intoxication with apparent success, and
+Jane Braithwaite 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;
+then out with my candles, and into bed in all my clothes, until the
+cottage should be quiet.  Yes, I must lie still and feign sleep,
+with every nerve and fibre leaping within me, lest the she-devil
+below should suspect me of suspicions!  It was with her I had to
+cope for the next four-and-twenty hours; and she filled me with a
+greater present terror than all those villains at the hall; for had
+not their poor little helpless 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 this vile virago!
+
+It must have been one or two in the morning when I stole to my
+sitting-room window, opened it, and sat down to think steadily,
+with the counterpane about my shoulders.
+
+The moon sailed high and almost full above the clouds; these were
+dispersing as the night wore on, and such as remained were of a
+beautiful soft tint between white and gray.  The sky was too light
+for stars, and beneath it the open country stretched so clear and
+far that it was as though one looked out at noonday through
+slate-colored glass.  Down the dewy slope below my window a few
+calves fed with toothless mouthings; the beck was very audible, the
+oak-trees less so; but for these peaceful sounds the stillness and
+the solitude were equally intense.
+
+I may have sat there like a mouse for half an hour.  The reason was
+that I had become mercifully engrossed in one of the subsidiary
+problems: whether it would be better to drop from the window or to
+trust to the creaking stairs.  Would the creaking be much worse
+than the thud, and the difference worth the risk of a sprained ankle?
+Well worth it, I at length decided; the risk was nothing; my window
+was scarce a dozen feet from the ground.  How easily it could be
+done, how quickly, how safely in this deep, stillness and bright
+moonlight!  I would fall so lightly on my stocking soles; a single
+soft, dull thud; then away under the moon without fear or risk of
+a false step; away over the stone walls to the main road, and so to
+the nearest police-station with my tale; and before sunrise the
+villains would be taken in their beds, and my darling would be 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
+letter carefully again, and again it maddened and distracted me.
+I struck my hands together.  I paced the room wildly.  Caution
+deserted me, and I made noise enough to wake the very mute; lost
+to every consideration but that of 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 civil tongue!  The prospect
+appalled me as nothing else could or did; nay, the sudden noise upon
+the stairs, the knock at my door, and the sense that I had betrayed
+myself already even now all was over - these came as a relief after
+the haunting terror which they interrupted.
+
+I flung the door opcn, and there stood Mrs. Braithwaite, as fully
+dressed 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
+woman rang out in it, yet its effect on me was astonishng: once
+again was I inspired to turn my slip into a move.
+
+"Matter?" I cried.  "Can't you see what's the matter; couldn't you
+see when I came in?  Drink's the matter!  I came in drunk, and now
+I'm mad.  I can't stand it; I'm not in a fit state.  Do you know
+nothng of me?  Have they told you nothing?  I'm the only man that
+was saved from the Lady Jermyn, the ship that was burned to the
+water's edge with every soul but me.  My nerves are in little ends.
+I came down here for peace and quiet and sleep.  Do you bow that
+I have hardly slept for two months?  And now I shall never sleep
+again!  O my God I shall die for want of it!  The wine has done it.
+I never should have touched a drop.  I can't stand it; I can't
+sleep after it; I shall kill myself if I get no sleep.  Do you hear,
+you woman?  I shall kill myself in your house if I don't get to
+sleep!"
+
+I saw her shrink, virago as she was.  I waved my arms, I shrieked
+in her face.  It was not all acting.  Heaven knows how true it was
+about the sleep.  I was slowly dying of insomnia.  I was a nervous
+wreck.  She must have heard it.  Now she saw it for herself.
+
+No; it was by no means all acting.  Intending only to lie, I found
+myself telling little but the strictest truth, and longing for sleep
+as passionately as though I had nothing to keep me awake.  And yet,
+while my heart cried aloud in spite of me, and my nerves relieved
+themselves in this unpremeditated ebullition, I was all the time
+watching its effect as closely as though no word of it had been
+sincere.
+
+Mrs.  Braithwaite seemed frightened; not at all pitiful; and as I
+calmed down she recovered her courage and became insolent.  I had
+spoilt her night.  She had not been told she was to take in a
+raving lunatic.  She would speak to Squire Rattray in the morning.
+
+"Morning?" I yelled after her as she went.  "Send your husband to
+the nearest 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 all to-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 of much I had not thought at all.  It had rushed
+from my heart and from my lips.  And no sooner was I alone than I
+burst into hysterical tears, only to stop and compliment myself
+because they sounded genuine - as though they were not!   Towards
+morning I took to my bed in a burning fever, and lay there, now
+congratulating myself upon it, because when night came they would
+all think me so secure; and now weeping because the night might
+find me dying or dead.  So I tossed, with her note clasped in my
+hand underneath the sheets; and beneath my very body that stout
+weapon that I had bought in town.  I might not have to use it,
+but I was fatalist enough to fancy that I should.  In the meantime
+it helped me to lie still, my thoughts fixed on the night, and the
+day made easy for me after all.
+
+If only I could sleep!
+
+About nine o'clock Jane Braithwaite paid me a surly visit; in half
+an hour she was back with tea and toast and an altered mien.  She
+not only lit my fire, but treated me the while to her original
+tone of almost fervent civility and respect and determination.  Her
+vagaries soon ceased to puzzle me: the psychology of Jane Braithwaite
+was not recondite.  In the night it had dawned upon her that Rattray
+had found me harmless and was done with me, therefore there was no
+need for her to put herself out any further on my account.  In the
+morning, finding me really ill, she had gone to the hall in alarm;
+her subsequent attentions were an act of obedience; 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.
+A rogue he must be, but surely not the petty rogue that she had made
+him out.  Yet it was dirty work that he had done by me; and there
+I had to lie 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
+thought of Eva alone restrained me, and I retorted as before, in a
+tone I strove to 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
+soothing me it excites me to the verge of madness.  I'm almost over
+the verge - for want of sleep - my trouble ever since the trouble."
+
+Again I was speaking the literal truth, and again congratulating
+myself as 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 his sentiments as involved.  He took my hand again, and
+his brow wrinkled at its heat.  He asked for the other hand to feel
+my pulse.  I had to drop my letter 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
+the place that doesn't agree with you, and it was I who brought you
+to the place; 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 ingenuously
+disingenuous.  There was less to smile at in his really nervous
+anxiety to get me away.  I lay there reading him like a book: it
+was not my health that concerned him, of course: was it my safety?
+I told him he little knew how ill I was - an inglorious speech that
+came hard, though not by any means untrue.  "Move me with this
+fever on me?" said I; "it would 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
+to stay 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 revolyer between the mattress and the small of my back.  "We
+must get you out of it," he continued, "the moment you feel fit to
+stir.  Shall we say to-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 three
+glasses 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
+the shrieks of the women; it's the cursing and the fighting of the
+men; it's boat-loads struggling in an oily sea; it's husbands and
+wives jumping overboard together; it's men turned into devils, it's
+hell-fire afloat  - "
+
+"Stop! stop! " he whispered, hoarse as a crow.  I was sitting up
+with my hot eyes upon him.  He was white as the quilt, and the bed
+shook with his trembling.  I had gone as far as was prudent, and
+I lay back with a glow of secret satisfaction.
+
+"Yes, I will stop," said I, "and I wouldn't have begun if you hadn't
+found it so difficult to understand my trouble.  Now you know what
+it is.  It's the old trouble.  I came up here to forget it; instead
+of that I drink too much and tell you all about it; and the two
+things together have bowled me over.  But I'll go to-morrow; only
+give me something to put me asleep till then."
+
+"I will!" he vowed.  "I'll go myself to the nearest chemist, and
+he shall give me the very strongest stuff he's got.  Good-by, and
+don't you stir till I come back - for your own sake.  I'll go this
+minute, and I'll ride like hell!"  And if ever two men were glad
+to be rid of each other, they were this young villain and myself.
+
+But what was his villany?  It was little enough that I had
+overheard at the window, and still less that poor Eva had told me
+in her hurried lines.  All I saw clearly was that the Lady Jermyn
+and some hundred souls had perished by the foulest of foul play;
+that, besides Eva and myself, only the incendiaries had escaped;
+that somehow these wretches had made a second escape from the gig,
+leaving dead men and word of their own death behind them in the
+boat.  And here the motive was as much a mystery to me as the
+means; but, in my present state, both were also matters of supreme
+indifference.  My one desire was to rescue my love from her
+loathsome captors; of little else did I pause to think.  Yet
+Rattray's visit left its own mark on my mind; and long after he
+was gone I lay puzzling over the connection between a young
+Lancastrian, of good name, of ancient property, of great personal
+charm, and a crime of unparalleled atrocity committed in cold blood
+on the high seas.  That his complicity was flagrant I had no
+room to doubt, after Eva's own indictment of him, uttered to his
+face and in my hearing.  Was it then the usual fraud on the
+underwriters, and was Rattray the inevitable accomplice on dry
+land?  I could think of none but the conventional motive for
+destroying a vessel.  Yet I knew there must be another and a
+subtler one, to account not only for the magnitude of the crime,
+but for the pains which the actual perpetrators had taken to
+conceal the fact of their survival, and for the union of so
+diverse a trinity as Senhor Santos, 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 spite of 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
+some sleep 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 my companion.
+
+"I don't know," said he.  "I just told them to make up the strongest
+sleeping-draught that was safe, and I mentioned something about your
+case.  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
+that Eva 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 it been 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 gave me his hand once more, I took it with
+involuntary cordiality.  I only grieved that so fine a young fellow
+should have involved himself in so villainous a business; yet for
+Eva's sake I was glad that he had; for my mind failed (rather than
+refused) to believe him so black as she had painted him.
+
+The long, long afternoon that followed I never shall forget.  The
+opiate racked my head; it did not do its work; and I longed to sleep
+till evening with a longing I have never known before or since.
+Everything seemed to depend upon it; I should be a man again, if
+only I could first be a log for a few hours.  But no; my troubles
+never left me for an instant; and there I must lie, pretending that
+they had!  For the other draught was for the night; and if they but
+thought the first one had taken due effect, so much the less
+would they trouble their heads about me 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 reason lingered on.  To lie there helpless when Eva was
+expecting me, that would be the finishing touch.  I should rise a
+maniac if ever I rose at all.  More probably I would put one of
+my five big bullets into my own splitting head; it was no small
+temptation, lying there in a double agony, with the loaded weapon
+by my side.
+
+Then sometimes I thought it was coming; and perhaps for an instant 
+would be tossing in my hen-coop; then back once more.  And I swear
+that my physical and mental torments, here in my bed, would have
+been incomparably greater than anything I had endured on the sea,
+but for the saving grace of one sweet thought.  She lived!  She
+lived!  And the God who had taken care o me, a castaway, would
+surely deliver her also from the hands of murderers and thieves.
+But not through me - I lay weak and helpless - and my tears ran
+again and yet again as I felt myself growing hourly weaker.  
+
+I remember what a bright fine day it was, with the grand open
+country all smiles beneath a clear, almost frosty sky, once when
+I got up on tip-toe and peeped out.  A keen wind whistled about the
+cottage; I felt it on my feet as I stood; but never have I known a
+more perfect and invigorating autumn day.  And there I must lie,
+with the manhood ebbing Out of me, the manhood that I needed
+so for the night!  I crept back into bed.  I swore that I would
+sleep.  Yet there I lay, listening sometimes to that vile woman's
+tread below; sometimes to mysterious whispers, between whom
+I neither knew nor cared; anon to my watch ticking by my side, to
+the heart beating in my body, hour after hour - hour after hour.
+I prayed as I have seldom prayed.  I wept as I have never wept.
+I railed and blasphemed - not with my lips, because the woman must
+think I was asleep - but so much the more viciously in my heart.
+
+Suddenly it turned dark.  There were no gradations - not even a
+tropical twilight.  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 faint and narrow glimmer stole between it and the
+casement; and the light that had 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
+waking refreshed!  The swift and sudden miracle that it seemed!  I
+shall never, never forget it, still less the sickening thrill of
+fear which was cruelly 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
+the window, drew back the blind, and held it in the moonlight.  It
+was not quite ten o'clock.  And yet the cottage was so still - so
+still.
+
+I stole to the door, opened it by cautious degrees, and saw the
+reflection of a light below.  Still not a sound could I hear, save
+the rapid drawing of my own breath, and the startled beating of
+my own heart.
+
+I now felt certain that the Braithwaites were out, and dressed
+hastily, making as little noise as possible, and still hearing
+absolutely none from below.  Then, feeling faint with hunger, though
+a new being after my sleep, I remembered a packet of sandwiches
+which I had not opened on my journey north.  These I transferred
+from my travelling-bag (where they had lain forgotten to my jacket
+pocket, before drawing down the blind, leaving the room on tip-toe,
+and very gently fastening the door behind me.  On the stairs, too,
+I trod with the utmost caution, feeling the wall with my left
+hand (my right was full), lest by any chance I might be mistaken
+in supposing I had the cottage to myself.  In spite of my caution
+there came a creak at every step.  And to my sudden horror I heard
+a chair move in the kitchen below.
+
+My heart and I stood still together.  But my right hand tightened
+on stout wood, my right forefinger trembled against thin steel.  The
+sound was not repeated.  And at length I continued on my way down,
+my teeth set, 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,
+as he stood on a chair before the fire, supporting himself on the
+chimney piece with one puny arm, while he reached overhead with the
+other.  I stood by for an instant, glorying in the thought that he
+could not hear me; the next, I saw what it was he was reaching up
+for - a bell-mouthed blunderbuss - 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 splendid
+spring which Messrs. Deane and Adams had put into that early
+revolver of theirs, and he could not have come down much quicker
+with my bullet in his spine.
+
+"Now, then," I said, "what the devil do you mean by shamming deaf
+and dumb?"
+
+"I niver said I was owt o' t' sort," he whimpered, cowering behind
+the chair 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
+from presenting my five chambers and my ten-inch barrel; otherwise
+I should be sorry to relate how I bullied that mouse of a man.)
+"I may let you off," I continued, "if you answer questions.  Where's
+your wife?"
+
+"Eh, she'll be back directly! " said Braithwaite, with some tact;
+but his look was too cunning to give the warning weight.
+"I've a bullet to spare for 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
+much emphasis and so little reluctance as to convince me that for
+once at least he had spoken the truth.  There was even a spice of
+malice in his tone.  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, and don'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
+his duty, and yet as plainly relieved to learn the extent of my
+intention.
+
+"Certainly," said I; "why not?  I'm not particularly anxious to
+see your wife again, and you may ask Mr. Rattray from me why the
+devil he led me to suppose you were deaf and dumb?  Or, if you
+like, you needn't say anything at all about it," I added, seeing
+his thin jaw fall; "tell him I never found you out, but just felt
+well enough to go, and went.  When do 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 a couple of sovereigns: I longed to offer him twenty, but feared
+to excite his suspicions.  "These are yours if you have a conveyance
+at the end of the 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
+he shook his head.
+
+"I'm ill, man!" I cried.  "If I stay here I'll die!  Mr. Rattray
+knows that, and he wanted me to go this morning; he'll be only too
+thankful to find 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
+into trooble, 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,
+you know!  I should keep four of them all to myself."
+
+The cupidity of the little wretch was at last overcoming his abject
+cowardice.  I could see him making up his miserable mind.  And I
+still flatter myself that I took only safe (and really cunning)
+steps to precipitate the process.  To offer him more money would
+have been madness; instead, I poured it all back into my pocket.
+
+"All right!" I cried; "you're a greedy, cowardly, old idiot, and
+I'll just 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 of the blunderbuss, but quickened my step, and soon
+had him running at my heels.
+
+"Stop, stop, sir!  You're that hasty wi' a poor owd man." So he
+whimpered as he followed me like the little cur he was.
+
+"I'm hanged if I stop," I answered without looking back; and had
+him almost in tears before I swung round on him so suddenly that he
+yelped with fear.  "What are you bothering me for?" I blustered.
+"Do you want me to 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
+five miles."
+
+"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
+hence as you possibly can?"
+
+"Why, there, sir!" he cried, crassly inspired; "I could drive you
+in our own trap in half the time."
+
+"Oh, no, you couldn't!  I - I'm not fit to be out at all; it must
+be a closed 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 sovereign of 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'll write to Mr.  Rattray about that.  But I'll be
+shot if I spend another night on his property."
+
+I was rid of him at last; and there I stood, listening to his
+headlong steps, until they stumbled out of earshot down the lane;
+then back to the cottage, at a run myself, and up to my room to be
+no worse than my word.  The sovereigns plopped into the water and
+rang together at the bottom of the jug.  In another minute I was
+hastening through the plantation, in my hand the revolver that had
+served me well already, and was 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 my
+luck was better than my management.  As I came upon the beck, a new
+sound reached me with the swirl.  It was the jingle of bit and
+bridle; the beat of hoofs came after; and I had barely time to fling
+myself flat, when two horsemen emerged from the plantation, riding
+straight towards me in the moonlight.  If they continued on that
+course they could not fail to see me as they passed along the
+opposite bank.  However, to my unspeakable relief, they were scarce
+clear of the trees when they turned their horses' heads, rode them
+through the water a good seventy yards from where I lay, and so away
+at a canter across country towards the road.  On my hands and knees
+I had a good look at them as they bobbed up and down under the moon;
+and my fears subsided in astonished curiosity.  For I have already
+boasted of my eyesight, and I could have sworn that neither Rattray
+nor any one of his guests was of the horsemen; yet the back and
+shoulders of one of these seemed somehow familiar to me.  Not that
+I wasted many moments over the coincidence, for I had other things
+to think about as I ran on to the hall.
+
+I found the rear of the building in darkness unrelieved from within;
+on the other hand, the climbing moon beat so full upon the garden
+wall, it was as though a lantern pinned me as I crept beneath it.
+In passing I thought 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 the two 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 little distance, and then, to see over it,
+walked backwards until I was all but in the beck; and there, sure
+enough, shone my darling's candle, close as close against the
+diamond panes of her narrow, lofty window!  It brought those ready
+tears back to my foolish, fevered eyes.  But for sentiment there
+was no time, and every other emotion was either futile or premature.
+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
+without notch or cranny in the ancient, solid masonry.  I stood
+against it on my toes, and I touched it with my finger-tips as high
+up as possible.  Some four feet severed them from the coping that
+left only half a sky above my upturned eyes.
+
+I do not know whether I have made it plain that the house was not
+surrounded by four walls, but merely filled a breach in one of the
+four, which nipped it (as it were) at either end.  The back entrance
+was approachable enough, but barred or watched, I might be very
+sure.  It is ever the vulnerable points which are most securely
+guarded, and it was my one comfort that the difficult way must also
+be the safe way, if only the 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 the tower that immured my love;
+the height never varied; nor could my hands or eyes discover a
+single foot-hole, ledge, or other means of mounting to the top.
+
+Yet my hot head was full of ideas; and I wasted some minutes in
+trying to lift from its hinges a solid, six-barred, outlying gate,
+that my weak arms could hardly stir.  More time went in pulling
+branches from the oak-trees about the beck, where the latter ran
+nearest to the moonlit wall.  I had an insane dream of throwing a
+long forked branch over the coping, and so swarming up
+hand-over-hand.  But even to me the impracticability of this plan
+came home at last.  And there I stood in a breathless lather, much
+time and strength thrown away together; and the candle burning
+down for nothing in that little lofty window; and the running water
+swirling noisily over its stones at my back.
+
+This was the only sound; the wind had died away; the moonlit valley
+lay as still as the dread old house in its midst but for the splash
+and gurgle of the beck.  I fancied this grew louder as I paused and
+listened in my helplessness.  All at once - was it the tongue of
+Nature telling me the way, or common gumption returning at the
+eleventh hour?  I ran down to the water's edge, and could have
+shouted for joy.  Great stones lay in equal profusion on bed and
+banks.  I lifted one of the heaviest in both hands.  I staggered
+with it to the wall.  I came back for another; for some twenty
+minutes I was so employed; my ultimate reward a fine heap of
+boulders against the wall.
+
+Then I began to build; then mounted my pile, clawing the wall to
+keep my balance.  My fingers were still many inches from the coping.
+I jumped down and gave another ten minutes to the back-breaking work
+of carrying more boulders from the water to the wall.  Then I
+widened my cairn below, so that I could stand firmly before
+springing upon the pinnacle with which I completed it.  I knew well
+that this would collapse under me if I allowed my weight to rest
+more than an instant upon it.  And so at last it did; but my fingers
+had clutched the coping in time; had grabbed it even 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
+my hands, when I flung an arm over and caught the inner coping.  The
+other arm followed; then a leg; and at last I sat astride the wall,
+panting and palpitating, and hardly able to credit my own
+achievement.  One great difficulty had been my huge revolver.  I had
+been terribly frightened it might go off, and had finally used my
+cravat to sling it at the back of 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 the window 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 dropped into the
+garden in a very ecstasy of grief and rapture, to think that I had
+been so long in coming to my love, but that I had come at last.
+And I picked myself up in a very frenzy of fear lest, after all,
+I should fail 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, I
+looked across a sharp border of shade upon a chaos, the more
+striking for its lingering trim design.  The long, straight paths
+were barnacled with weeds; the dense, fine hedges, once prim and
+angular, had fattened out of all shape or form; and on the velvet
+sward of other days you might have waded waist high in rotten hay.
+Towards the garden end this rank jungle merged into a worse
+wilderness of rhododendrons, the tallest I have ever seen.  On all
+this the white moon smiled, and the grim house glowered, to the
+eternal swirl and rattle of the beck beyond its walls.
+
+Long enough I stood where I had dropped, listening with all my being
+for some other sound; but at last that great studded door creaked
+and shivered on its ancient hinges, and I heard voices arguing in
+the Portuguese tongue.  It was poor Eva wheedling that black rascal
+Jose.  I saw her in the lighted porch; the nigger I saw also,
+shrugging and gesticulating 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
+by final warnings and expostulations hurled from the step: for the
+black stood watching her as she came steadily my way, now raising
+her head to sniff the air, now stooping to pluck up a weed, the very
+picture of a prisoner seeking the open air for its own sake solely.
+I had a keen eye apiece for them as I cowered closer to the wall,
+revolver in hand.  But ere my love was very near me (for she would
+stand long moments gazing ever so innocently at the moon), her
+jailer had held a bottle to the light, and had beaten a retreat so
+sudden and so hasty that I expected him back every moment, and so
+durst not stir.  Eva saw me, however, and contrived to tell me so
+without interrupting the air that she was humming as she walked.
+
+"Follow me," she sang, "only keep as you are, keep as you are, close
+to the wall, close to the wall."
+
+And on she strolled to her own tune, and came abreast of me without
+turning her head; so I crept in the shadow (my ugly weapon tucked out
+of sight), and she sauntered in the shine, until we came to the end
+of the garden, where the path turned at right angles, running behind
+the rhododendrons; once in their shelter, she halted and beckoned me,
+and next instant I had her hands in mine.
+
+"At last!" was all that I could say for many a moment, as I stood
+there gazing into her dear eyes, no hero in my heroic hour, but the
+bigger love-sick fool than ever.  "But quick - quick - quick!" I
+added, as she brought me to my senses by withdrawing her hands.
+"We've no time to lose."  And I looked wildly from wall to wall,
+only to find them as barren and inaccessible on this side as on the
+other.
+
+"We have more time than you think," were Eva's first words.  "We can
+do nothing 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
+the top."
+
+I thought her eyes glistened.
+
+"What patience!" she cried softly.  "We must find a simpler way of
+getting 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
+some disguise; and my head swam with the thought of the risk that
+I had run at the very moment when I thought myself safest.  Well,
+I would have finished them both!  But I did not say so to Eva.  I
+did not mention the incident, I was so fearful of destroying her
+confidence in me.  Apologizing, therefore, for my interruption,
+without explaining it, I begged her to let me hear her plan.
+
+It was simple enough.  There was no fear of the others returning
+before midnight; the chances were that they would be very much
+later; and now it was barely eleven, and Eva had promised not
+to stay out above half-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 angry shudder; "but it's no use thinking of that," she was
+quick enough to add, "when you have such dreadful men to deal with,
+such fiends!  And I have had all day to prepare, and have suffered
+till I am so desperate I would rather die to-night than spend
+another in that house.  No; let me finish!  Jose will come round
+here to look for me.  But you and I will be hiding n the other side
+of these rhododendrons.  And when we hear him here we'll make a
+dash for it across the long grass.  Once let us get the door shut
+and locked in his face, and he'll be in a trap.  It will take him
+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
+was their 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 I have
+heard how ill you are.  "That you should have come to me
+notwithstanding  - " and she broke off with her little hands lying so
+gratefully on my shoulders, that I know not how I refrained from
+catching her then and there to my heart.  Instead, I laughed and
+said that my illness was a pure and deliberate sharp, and my
+presence there its direct result.  And such was the virtue in my
+beloved's voice, the magic of her eyes, the healing of her touch,
+that I was scarce conscious of deceit, but felt a whole man once
+more as we two stood together in the moonlight.
+
+In a trance I stood there gazing into her brave young eyes.  In a
+trance I suffered her to lead me by the hand through the rank, dense
+rhododendrons.  And still entranced I crouched by her side near the
+further side, with only unkempt grass-plot and a weedy path between
+us and that ponderous door, wide open still, and replaced by a
+section of the lighted hail within.  On this we fixed our attention
+with mingled dread and impatience, those contending elements of
+suspense; but the black was slow to reappear; and my eyes stole
+home to my sweet girl's face, with its glory of moonlit curls, and
+the eager, resolute, embittered look that put the world back two
+whole months, and Eva Denison upon the Lady Jermyn's poop, in the
+ship's last hours.  But it was 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 its folds; and underneath she wore the
+very dress in which she had sung at our last concert, and been
+rescued in the gig.  It looked as though she had worn it ever since.
+The roses were crushed and soiled, the tulle all torn, and tarnished
+some strings of beads that had been gold: a tatter of Chantilly lace
+hung by a thread: it is another of the relics that I have unearthed
+in the writing of this narrative.
+
+"I thought men never noticed dresses?" my love said suddenly, a
+pleased light in her eyes (I thought) in spite of all.  "Do you
+really remember it?"
+
+"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
+first that came that terrible night.  They have given me many since.
+But I won'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
+went on.
+
+"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
+fire to 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
+wanted to know just then was whether my love loved me - whether she
+ever could - 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
+passion for accuracy which had led up to half our arguments on the
+voyage; but this time Eva let me off.
+
+"It was also gold: twelve thousand ounces from the diggings.  That
+was the 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.  I asked her if she had known on board.
+
+"Not until the last moment.  I found out during the fire.  Do you
+remember when we said good-by?  I was nearly telling you then."
+
+Did I remember!  The very letter of that last interview was cut deep
+in my heart; not a sleepless night had I passed without rehearsing
+it word for 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 vainer speculation, and I had cudgelled my wakeful
+brains for the meaning of the new and subtle horror which I had
+read in my darling's eyes at the last.  Now I understood; and the
+one explanation brought such a tribe in its train, that even the
+perilous ecstasy of the present moment was temporarily 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
+for weeks."
+
+"Why, I saw them doing it!" I cried.  "But what about the gig?  Who
+picked you up?"
+
+She was watching that open door once more, and she answered with
+notable indifference, "Mr. Rattray."
+
+"So that's the connection!" said I; and I think its very simplicity
+was what 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 so hard 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 the same angry flush, the same set mouth and scornful
+voice; and I took it finally into my head that she was unjust to
+the poor devil, villain though he was.  With all his villainy I
+declined to believe him as bad as the others.  I told her so in as
+many words.  And in a moment we were arguing as though we were back
+on the Lady Jermyn with nothing else to do.
+
+"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.
+I believe he was really glad for my sake when he discovered that I
+knew nothing of the villainy.  Come now, has he ever offered you
+any personal violence?"
+
+"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 of
+bringing you back by force.  You can guess who suggested that - and
+who set his face against it and got his way.  You would think the
+better of Rattray 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 to defend 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 grant you may be out of their reach for ever!"
+
+"But where are we to go?" she whispered wildly.  "What are you to
+do with me?  All my friends think me dead, and if they knew I was
+not it would all come out."
+
+"So it shall," said I; "the sooner the better; if I'd had my way
+it would all be out already."
+
+I see her yet, my passionate darling, as she turned upon me, whiter
+than the full white moon.
+
+"Mr. Cole," said she, "you must give me your sacred promise that
+so far as 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 remain where I am."
+
+"In their hands?"
+
+"Decidedly - to warn them in time.  Leave them I would, but betray
+them - never!"
+
+What could I say?  What choice had I in the face of an alternative
+so headstrong and so unreasonable?  To rescue Eva from these
+miscreants I would have let every malefactor in the country go
+unscathed: yet the condition was a hard one; and, as I hesitated,
+my love went on her knees to me, there in the moonlight among the
+rhododendrons.
+
+"Promise - promise - or you will kill me!" she gasped.  "They may
+deserve it richly, but I would rather be torn in little pieces
+than - than have them - 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
+from these wretches, or if you will, to win her for myself.  Nor
+did it strike me as very strange, after a moment's reflection, that
+she should intercede thus earnestly for a band headed by her own
+mother's widower, prime scoundrel of them all though she knew him
+to be.  The only surprise was that she had not interceded in his
+name; that I should have forgotten, and she should have allowed me
+to forget, the very existence of so indisputable a claim upon her
+loyalty.  This, however, made it a little difficult to understand
+the hysterical gratitude with which my unwilling promise was
+received.  Poor darling!  she was beside herself with sheer relief.
+She wept as I had never seen her weep before.  She seized and even
+kissed my hands, as one who neither knew nor cared what she did,
+surprising me so much by her emotion that this expression of it
+passed unheeded.  I was the best friend she had ever had.  I was
+her one good friend in all the world; she would trust herself to
+me; and if I would but take her to the convent where she had
+been brought up, she would pray for me there until her death, but
+that would not be very long.
+
+All of which confused me utterly; it seemed an inexplicable
+breakdown in one who had shown such nerve and courage hitherto,
+and so hearty a loathing for that damnable Santos.  So completely
+had her presence of mind forsaken her that she looked no longer
+where she had been gazing hitherto.  And thus it was that neither
+of us saw Jose until we heard him calling, "Senhora Evah! Senhora
+Evah!" with some rapid sentences in Portuguese.
+
+"Now is our time," I whispered, crouching lower and clasping a
+small hand 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 to get us out."  And I produced my Deane and
+Adams with no small relish.
+
+A little trustful pressure was my answer and my reward; meanwhile
+the black 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
+he would be frightened of their hearing him.  But here he comes!"
+
+A shuffling quick step on the path; a running grumble of
+unmistakable threats; a shambling moonlit figure seen in glimpses
+through the leaves, very near us for an instant, then hidden by
+the shrubbery as he passed within a few yards of our hiding-place.
+A diminuendo of the shuffling steps; then a cursing, frightened
+savage at one end of the rhododendrons, and we two stealing out
+at the other, hand in hand, and bent 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 speed
+through the last ten yards of grass, while the black rushed down
+one of the side paths, gaining audibly on us over the better
+ground.  But our start had saved us, and we flew up the steps as
+his feet ceased to clatter on the path; he had plunged into the
+grass to cut off the corner.
+
+"Thank God!" cried Eva.  "Now shut it quick."
+
+The great door swung home with a mighty clatter, and Eva seized
+the key in both hands.
+
+"I can't turn it! "
+
+To lose a second was to take a life, and unconsciously I was
+sticking at that, perhaps from no higher instinct than distrust
+of my aim.  Our pursuer, however, was on the steps when I clapped
+my free hand on top of those little white straining ones, and by
+a timely effort bent both them and the key round together; the
+ward shot home as Jose hurled himself against the door.  Eva bolted
+it.  But the thud was not repeated, and I gathered myself together
+between the door and the nearest window, for by now 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
+cocked before the crash came that I was counting on, and with it
+a shower of small 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 had to wait till I saw his legs, when I
+promptly shattered one of them at disgracefully short range.  The
+report was as deafening as one upon the stage; the hall filled with
+white smoke, and remained hideous with the bellowing of my victim.
+I searched him without a qualm, but threats of annihilation instead,
+and found him unarmed but for that very knife which Rattray had
+induced me to hand over to him in town. I had a grim satisfaction
+in depriving him of this, and but small compunction in turning my
+back upon his pain.
+
+"Come," I said to poor Eva, "don't pity him, though I daresay he's
+the most pitiable of the lot; show me the way through, and I'll
+follow with this lamp."
+
+One was burning on the old oak table.  I carried it along a narrow
+passage, through a great low kitchen where I bumped my head against
+the black oak beams; and I held it on high at a door almost as
+massive as the 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, held
+close, not only showed that the door was locked, but that the lock
+was one 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 not budge; there was no play at all at either lock or hinges;
+nor did I see how I could spend one of my four remaining bullets
+upon the former, with any 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 lay
+blubbering 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
+her health) with which Eva had bribed him, and I gave it to him
+before laying 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
+open the 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 were fixed 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
+very distinguishable clatter on some invisible stair.
+
+"Underground passage!" I exclaimed, and in my sheer disgust I
+forgot what was due to my darling.  "Why on earth didn't you tell
+me of it before?"
+
+"There was so much to tell you!  It leads to the sea.  Oh, what
+shall we do?  You must hide - upstairs - anywhere!" cried Eva,
+wildly.  "Leave them to me - leave them to me."
+
+"I like that," said I; and I did; but I detested myself for the
+tears my words 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
+with the 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 the perspiration shining on his handso me 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
+was a long rent in this lining, where the books had opened with
+a door, through which Captain Harris, Joaquin Santos, and Jane
+Braithwaite followed Rattray in quick succession, the men all
+with lanterns, the woman scarlet and dishevelled even for her.  It
+was over the squire's shoulders I saw their faces;, he kept them
+from passing him in the doorway by a free use of his elbows; and
+when I looked at him again, his black eyes were blazing from a face
+white with passion, and they were fixed 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, taking a
+threatening step forward.  For at the last moment I had tucked my
+revolver behind my back, not only for the pleasure, but for the
+obvious advantage of getting them all in front of me and off their
+guard.  I had no idea that such eyes as Rattray's could be so fierce:
+they were dancing from me to my companion, whom their glitter
+frightened into an attempt to disengage herself from me; but my arm
+only tightened about her drooping figure.
+
+"I shall gain no more than I expect," said I, carelessly.  "And I
+know what to expect from brave gentlemen like you!  It will be
+better than your own fate, at all events; anything's better than
+being taken hence to the place of execution, and hanged by the
+neck until you're dead, all three of you in a row, and your bodies
+buried within the precincts of the 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
+sorry to 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 the room.  "Come out and line up with the rest!  No,
+I'm not going to see you fellows dance on nothing; I've another
+kind of ball apiece for you, and one between 'em for the
+Braithwaites!"
+
+Well, I suppose I always had a nasty tongue in me, and rather
+enjoyed making play with it on provocation; but, if so, I met
+with my deserts that night.  For the nigger of the Lady Jermyn
+lay all but hid behind Eva and me; if they saw him at all, they
+may have thought him drunk; but, as for myself, I had fairly
+forgotten his existence until the very moment came for showing
+my revolver, when it was twisted out of my grasp instead, and a
+ball sang under my arm as the brute fell back exhausted and the
+weapon clattered beside him.  Before I could stoop for it there
+was a dead weight on my left arm, and Squire Rattray was over the
+table at a bound, with his arms jostling mine beneath Eva Denison's
+senseless form.
+
+"Leave her to me," he cried fiercely.  "You fool," he added in a
+lower key, "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
+him in the beginning.  And I did not utterly distrust him yet.
+Rather was the guile on my side as I drew back and watched
+Rattray lift the young girl tenderly, and slowly carry her to the
+door by which she had entered and left the hall just twenty-four
+hours before.  I could not take my eyes off them till they were
+gone.  And when I looked for my revolver, it also had 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 up and carried it off with Eva.  I looked wildly for some
+other weapon.  Two unarmed men and a woman were all I had to deal
+with, for Braithwaite had long since vanished.  Could I but knock
+the worthless life out of the men, I should have but the squire and
+his servants to deal with; and in that quarter I still had my hopes
+of a bloodless battle and a treaty of war.
+
+A log fire was smouldering in the open grate.  I darted to it, and
+had a heavy, half-burned brand whirling round my head next instant.
+Harris was the first within my reach.  He came gamely at me with
+his fists.  I sprang upon him, and struck him to the ground with
+one blow, the sparks flying far and wide as my smoking brand met
+the seaman's skull.  Santos was upon me 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 for them to rise, when I
+felt myself seized round the neck from behind, and a mass of fluffy
+hair tickling my cheek, while a shrill voice set up a lusty scream
+for the squire.
+
+I have said that the woman Braithwaite was of a sinister strength;
+but I had little dreamt how strong she really was.  First it was
+her arms that wound themselves about my neck, long, sinuous, and
+supple as the tentacles of some vile monster; then, as I struggled,
+her thumbs were on my windpipe like pads of steel.  Tighter she
+pressed, and tighter yet.  My eyeballs started; my tongue lolled;
+I heard my brand drop, and through a mist I saw it picked up
+instantly.  It crashed upon my skull as I still struggled vainly;
+again and again it came down mercilessly in the same place; until
+I felt as though a sponge of warm water had been squeezed over my
+head, and saw a hundred withered masks grinning sudden exultation
+into mine; but still the lean arm whirled, and the splinters flew,
+till I was blind with my blood and the seven senses were beaten out
+of me.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+A DEADLOCK
+
+
+It must have been midnight when I opened my eyes; a clock was
+striking as though it never would stop.  My mouth seemed fire; a
+pungent flavor filled my nostrils; the wineglass felt cold against
+my teeth.  "That's more like it!" muttered a voice close to my ear.
+An arm was withdrawn from 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 lay in my clothes on an old
+four-poster bed.  And my enemies were standing over me in a group.
+
+"I hope you are satisfied!" sneered Joaquin Santos, with a flourish
+of his 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
+go and tell the poliss yourself?" asked the Portuguese, in the same
+tone of mordant 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 our way 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 a leetle beet."
+
+"That's all I ask," said Rattray.
+
+"You won't ask it twice," rejoined Santos, shrugging.  "I know this
+Senhor 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
+to die."
+
+"I agree with the senhor," said Harris, whose forehead was starred
+with 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
+we could no longer hear them, Rattray closed the door and quietly
+locked it.     Then he turned to me, stern enough, and pointed to the
+door with a hand 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
+to keep 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 a dead man now."
+
+"I can't think why you interfered."
+
+"You've heard the reason.  I won't have murder done here if I can
+prevent it; so far I have; it rests with you whether I can go on
+preventing it or not."
+
+"With me, does it?"
+
+He sat down on the side of the bed.  He threw an arm to the far
+side of my 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 put up my hand; it lit upon a very turban of
+bandages, and at that I tried to take his hand in mine.  He shook
+it off, and his eyes met mine more fiercely than before.
+
+"See here, Cole," said he; "I don t know how the devil you got wind
+of anything to start with, and I don't care.  What I do know is that
+you've made bad enough a long chalk worse for all concerned, and
+you'll have to get yourself out of the mess you've got yourself into,
+and there's only one way.  I suppose Miss Denison has really told
+you everything this time?  What's that?  Oh, yes, she's all right
+again; no thanks to you.  Now let's hear what she did tell you.
+It'll save time.
+
+I repeated the hurried disclosures made by Eva in the rhododendrons.
+He nodded grimly in confirmation of their truth.
+
+"Yes, those are the rough facts.  The game was started in Melbourne.
+My part 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 gold aboard.  Well, I did so; never mind the details now,
+and never mind the bloody massacre the others had made of it before
+I came up.  God knows I was 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'm going to share the plunder, and I'll
+swing with the others if it ever comes to that.  I deserve it hard
+enough.  And so here we are, we three and the nigger, all four fit
+to swing in a row, as you were fool enough to 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 whether they 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
+good faith of this absurd proposal was so incongruously apparent;
+and so obviously genuine was the young villain's anxiety for my
+consent.  Become accessory after the fact in such a crime!  Sell
+my silence for a price!  I concealed my feelings with equal
+difficulty and resolution.  I had plans of my own already, but
+I must gain time to think them over.  Nor could I afford to quarrel
+with Rattray meanwhile.
+
+"What was the haul?" I asked him, with the air of one not unprepared
+to consider the matter.
+
+"Twelve thousand ounces!"
+
+"Forty-eight thousand pounds, about?"
+
+"Yes-yes."
+
+"And your share?"
+
+"Fourteen thousand pounds.  Santos takes twenty, and Harris and I
+fourteen thousand each."
+
+"And you offer me seven?"
+
+"I do!  I do!"
+
+He was becoming more and more eager and excited.  His eyes were
+brighter than I had ever seen them, but slightly bloodshot, and a
+coppery flush tinged his clear, sunburnt skin.  I fancied he had
+been making somewhat free with the brandy.  But loss of blood had
+cooled my brain; and, perhaps, natural perversity had also a share
+in the composure which grew upon me as it deserted my companion.
+
+"Why make such a sacrifice?" said I, smiling. "Why not let them do
+as they like?"
+
+"I've told you why!  I'm not so bad as all that.  I draw the line
+at bloody 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 no help for it.  We didn't know whether you knew or not; it
+made all the difference to us; and somebody had to dog you and find
+out how much you did know.  I was the only one who could possibly
+do it.  God knows how I detested the job!  I'm more ashamed of it
+than of worse things.  I had to worm myself into your friendship;
+and, by Jove, you made me think you did know, but hadn't let it out,
+and might any day.  So then I got you up here, where you would be 
+in our power if it was so; surely you can see every move?  But this
+much I'll swear - I had nothing to do with Jose breaking into your
+room at the hotel; they went behind me there, curse them!  And when
+at last I found out for certain, down here, that you knew nothing
+after all, I was never more sincerely thankful in my life.  I give
+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 glad I'm even with one of you."
+
+"It's done you no good," said Rattray.  "Their first thought was to
+put you out of the way, and it's more than ever their last.  You
+see the sort of men you've got to deal with; and they're three to
+one, counting the nigger; 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
+that most sensible men, in my dilemma, would at least have nursed or
+played upon good-will so lucky and so enduring.  But there was always
+a twist in me that made me love (in my youth) to take the unexpected
+course; and it amused me the more to lead my young friend on.
+
+"And where have you got this gold?" I asked him, in a low voice so
+promising that he instantly lowered his, and his eyes twinkled
+naughtily into mine.
+
+"In the old tunnel that runs from this place nearly to the sea,"
+said he.  "We Rattrays have always been a pretty warm lot, Cole,
+and in the old days we were the most festive smugglers on the
+coast; this tunnel's a relic of 'em, although it was only a
+tradition till I came into the property.  I swore I'd find it, and
+when I'd done so I made the new connection which you shall see.  I'm
+rather proud of it.  And I won't say I haven't used the old drain
+once or twice after the fashion of my rude forefathers; but never
+was it such a godsend as it's been this time.  By Jove, it would
+be a sin if you didn't come in with us, Cole; but for the lives
+these blackguards lost the thing's gone splendidly; it would be a
+sin if you went and lost yours, whereas, if you come in, the two
+of us would 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,
+and the rest where we dropped it when we heard you were trying to
+bolt.  We'd got it all at the other end, ready to pop aboard the
+schooner that's lying there still, if you turned out to know
+anything and to have told what 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 how much 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, as soon 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
+the counter; and if you wait in the cab, by the Lord Harry, I'll
+pay you your seven thousand first!  You don't deserve it, Cole, but
+you shall have 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.
+But I did not see his face until he returned to the bedside.  And
+then it frightened 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 see that this is the only way?  Do you suppose a murder more
+or less makes any difference to that lot downstairs?  Are you
+really such a fool as to die rather than hold your tongue?"
+
+"I won't hold it for money, at all events," said I.  "But that's
+what I was coming to."
+
+"Very well!" he interrupted.  "You shall only pretend to touch it.
+All I want 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 be good enough for me."
+
+"Suppose I won't give my bare word?" said I, in a gentle manner
+which I did not mean to be as irritating as it doubtless was.  Yet
+his proposals and 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
+a passion.  "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 me your 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
+and left 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 with her - you - you!"
+
+"That has nothing to do with it," said I, shaking the bed with my
+anger and 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
+loathe me 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 to make an end of it by incontinently killing me himself.
+His fists flew out.  Had I been a whole man on my legs, he took
+care to tell me what he would have done, and to drive it home with
+a mouthful of the oaths which were 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 stand by you at all costs.  I want to make amends to you, I
+want to prevent a crime.  Yet there you lie and set your face against
+a compromise; and there you lie and taunt me with the thing that's
+gall and wormwood to me already.  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 the gold, my boy, but for the girl!
+So she won't look at me.  And it serves me 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 crime
+in which you've had a hand," was my reply, made, however, with as
+much kindness as I could summon.  "The word I used was spoken in
+anger," said I; for his had disappeared; and he looked such a
+miserable, handsome dog as he stood there hanging his guilty head
+- in the room, I fancied, where he once had lain as a pretty,
+innocent child.
+
+"Cole," said he, "I'd give twice my share of the damned stuff never
+to have put my hand to the plough; but go back I can't; so there's
+an end of it."
+
+"I don't see it," said I.  "You say you didn't go in for the gold?
+Then give up your share; the others'll jump at it; and Eva won't
+think the worse 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
+to begin."
+
+"I don't believe you ever before had such pals to desert," was my
+reply to that.  "Quite apart from my own share in the matter, it
+makes me positively sick to see a fellow like you mixed up with such
+a crew in such a game.  Get out of it, man, get out of it while you
+can!  Now's your time.  Get out of it, for God's sake!"
+
+I sat up in my eagerness.  I saw him waver.  And for one instant a
+great hope fluttered in my heart.  But his teeth met.  His face
+darkened.  He shook his head.
+
+"That's the kind of rot that isn't worth talking, and you ought to
+know it," said he.  "When I begin a thing I go through with it,
+though it lands me in hell, as this one will.  I can't help that.
+It's too late to go back.  I'm going on and you're going with me,
+Cole, like a sensible chap!"
+
+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
+to persuade me, in a distress not less apparent than his resolution,
+and not 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.
+I listened for the last of an angry stride.  It never even began.
+But after a pause the door was unlocked again, and Rattray
+re-entered.
+
+Without looking at me, he snatched the candle from the table on
+which it stood by the bedside, and carried it to a bureau at the
+opposite side of 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 jacket pocket.  Then I heard a dull little
+snap, as though he had shut some small morocco case; whatever it
+was, he tossed it carelessly back into the bureau; and next minute
+he was really gone, leaving the candle burning on the floor.
+
+I lay and heard his steps out of earshot, and they were angry enough
+now, nor had he given me a single glance.  I listened until there
+was no more to be heard, and then in an instant I was off the bed
+and on my feet.  I reeled a little, and my head gave me great pain,
+but greater still was my excitement.  I caught up the candle, opened
+the unlocked bureau, and then the empty case which I found in the
+very front.
+
+My heart leapt; there was no mistaking the depressions in the case.
+It was a brace of tiny pistols that Rattray had slipped into his
+jacket pockets.
+
+Mere toys they must have been in comparison with my dear Deane and
+Adams; that mattered nothing.  I went no longer in dire terror of
+my life; indeed, there was that in Rattray which had left me feeling
+fairly safe, in spite of his last words to me, albeit I felt his
+fears on my behalf to be genuine enough.  His taking these little
+pistols (of course, there were but three chambers left loaded in
+mine) confirmed my confidence in him.
+
+He would stick at nothing to defend me from the violence of his
+bloodthirsty accomplices.  But it should not come to that.  My legs
+were growing firmer under me.  I was not going to lie there meekly
+without making at least an effort at self-deliverance.  If it
+succeeded - the idea came to me in a flash - I would send Rattray
+an ultimatum from the nearest town; and either Eva should be set
+instantly and unconditionally free, or the whole matter be put
+unreservedly in the hands of the local police.
+
+There were two lattice windows, both in the same immensely thick
+wall; to my joy, I discovered that they overlooked the open premises
+at the back of the hall, with the oak-plantation beyond; nor was the
+distance to the ground very great.  It was the work of a moment to
+tear the sheets from the bed, to tie the two ends together and a
+third round the mullion by which the larger window was bisected.
+I had done this, and had let down my sheets, when a movement below
+turned my heart to ice.  The night had 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
+that they also might be invisible in the darkness.  I put out the
+candle, and returned to the window in great perplexity.  Next moment
+I stood aghast ---between the devil and the deep sea.  I still
+heard a something down below, but a worse sound came to drown it.
+An unseen hand was very quietly 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
+his ear at the empty keyhole.
+
+"I think he must be slipping," at last I heard him sigh.  "It was
+not necessary to awaken him in this world.  It is a peety."
+
+"One kick over the lock would do it," said Harris; "only the young
+swab'll hear."
+
+"Not perhaps while he is dancing attendance on the senhora.  Was
+it not good to send him to her?  If he does hear, well, his own
+turn will come the queecker, that is all.  But it would be
+better to take them one at a time; 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 had stood half-petrified by the open window; unwilling to slide
+down the sheets into the arms of an unseen enemy, though I had no
+idea which of them it could be; more hopeful of slipping past my
+butchers in the darkness, and so to Rattray and poor Eva; but not
+the less eagerly looking for some hiding-place in the room.  The
+best that offered was a recess in the thick wall between the two
+windows, filled with hanging clothes: a narrow closet without a
+door, which would shelter me well enough 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 and trousers
+still shook in front of me when the door flew open at the first
+kick, 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 I stood 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 mal dicto!  What have we here?"
+
+I felt certain he had seen me, but the candle passed within a yard of
+my feet, 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
+asseestance in 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 cut his troth, and I will put one of 'is dear
+friend's bullets in 'im for my own 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;
+the sight of these was a surprise to his treacherous confederates,
+as even I could 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
+close to the tied sheet, and shrugged expressively.
+
+"You thought he was too quiet!" echoed Rattray with fierce scorn.
+"You thought I was too blind - that's what you mean.  To tell me
+that Miss Denison wished to see me, and Miss Denison that I wished
+to speak to her!  As if we shouldn't find you out in about a minute!
+But a minute was better than nothing, eh?  And you've made good use
+of your minute, have you.  You've murdered him, and you pretend
+he's got out?  By God, if you have, 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
+his head carried proudly - happily - like a man whose self-respect
+was coming back to him after many days.  Harris shrank before his
+fierce eyes and pointed barrels.  The Portuguese, however, had
+merely given a characteristic shrug, and was now rolling the
+inevitable cigarette.
+
+"Your common sense is almost as remarkable as your sense of
+justice, my friend," said he.  "You see us one, two, tree meenutes
+ago, and you see us now.  You see the empty bed, the empty room,
+and you imagine that in one, 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.  You let him escape - let
+him, I repit - and then you threaten to shoot those who, as it is,
+may pay for your carelessness with their lives.  We have been always
+very loyal to you, Senhor Rattray.  We have leestened to your advice,
+and often taken it against our better judgment.  We are here, not
+because we think it wise, but because you weeshed it.  Yet at the
+first temptation you turn upon us, you point your peestols at your
+friends."
+
+"I don't believe in your loyalty," rejoined Rattray.  "I believe
+you would shoot me sooner than I would you.  The only difference
+would be than I should be shot in the back!"
+
+"It is untrue," said Santos, with immense emotion.  "I call the
+saints to witness that never by thought or word have I been
+disloyal to you" - and the blasphemous wretch actually crossed
+himself with a trembling, skinny hand.  "I have leestened to you,
+though you are the younger man.  I have geeven way to you in
+everything from the moment we were so fullish as to set foot on this
+accursed coast; that also was your doeeng; and it will be your fault
+if ivil comes of it.  Yet I have not complained.  Here in your own
+'ouse you have been the master, I the guest.  So far from plotting
+against you, show me the man who has heard me brith one treacherous
+word behind your back; you will find it deeficult, friend Rattray;
+what do you say, captain?"
+
+"Me?" cried Harris, in a voice bursting with abuse.  And what the
+captain said 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
+as few men have off the stage - who could have confounded these
+villains in a breath, and saved the wretched Rattray at once from
+them and from himself - that unheroic hero remained ignobly silent
+in his homely hiding-place.  And, what is more, he would do the
+same again!
+
+The rogues had fallen out; now was the time for honest men.  They
+all thought I had escaped; therefore they would give me a better
+chance than ever of still escaping; and I have already explained
+to what purpose I meant to use my first hours of liberty.  That
+purpose I hold to have justified any ingratitude that I may seem
+now to have displayed towards the man who had undoubtedly stood
+between death and me.  Was not Eva Denison of more value than many
+Rattrays?  And it was precisely in relation with this pure young
+girl that I most mistrusted the squire: obviously then my first
+duty was to save Eva from Rattray, not Rattray from these traitors.
+
+Not that I pretend for a moment to have been the thing I never was:
+you are not so very grateful to the man who pulls you out of the
+mud when he has first of all pushed you in; nor is it chivalry
+alone which spurs one to the rescue of a lovely lady for whom,
+after all, one would rather live than die.  Thus I, in my corner,
+was thinking (I will say) of Eva first; but next I was thinking of
+myself; and Rattray's blood be on his own 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 store for them, for I
+was very swiftly punished.
+
+The captain's language was no worse in character than in effect:
+the bed was bloody from my wounded head, all tumbled from the haste
+with which I had quitted it, and only too suggestive of still fouler
+play.  Rattray stopped the captain with a sudden flourish of one of
+his pistols, the silver mountings making lightning in the room; then
+he called upon the pair 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.  Yet there I stood.  It would have been
+better to step forward even then.  Yet I cowered among his clothes
+until his own hand fell upon my collar, and forth 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, friend
+squire."
+
+Rattray simply asked me what I had been doing in there, in a white
+flame of passion, and with such an oath that I embellished the truth
+for him in 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 an offer.  You won't accept it.  I do my best; you do your worst;
+but I'll be shot if you get another chance from me!"
+
+Brandy and the wine-glass stood where Rattray must have set them,
+on an oak stool beside the bed; as he spoke he crossed the room,
+filled the glass till the spirit dripped, and drained it at a gulp.
+He was twitching 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
+do so.  I'm only sorry I stood in your way."
+
+But no answer, and for once no rings of smoke came from those
+shrivelled lips: the man had rolled and lighted a cigarette since
+Rattray entered, but it was burning unheeded between his skinny
+fingers.  I had his attention, 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 his head; the crafty glitter in his
+intelligent eyes; the depth and breadth of the creased forehead;
+the knowledge of his resource, the consciousness of my error, all
+distracted and confounded me so that my speech halted and my
+voice ran thin.  I told Rattray every syllable that these traitors
+had been saying behind his back, but I told it all very ill; what
+was worse, and made me worse, I was only too well aware of my own
+failure to carry conviction with my words.
+
+"And why couldn't you come out and say so asked Rattray, as even I
+knew that he must.  "Why wait till now?"
+
+"Ah, why!" echoed Santos, with a smile and a shake of the head; a
+suspicious tolerance, an ostentatious truce, upon his parchment
+face.  And already he was sufficiently relieved to suck his
+cigarette alight again.
+
+"You know why," I said, trusting to bluff honesty with the one of
+them who 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,
+and queeck-weeted beyond belif!  Senhor Rattray, we have all been
+in the dark; we thought we had fool to dii with, but what admirable
+knave the young man would make!  Such readiness, such resource, with
+his tongue or with his peestol; how useful would it be to us!  I am
+glad you have decided to live him to me, friend Rattray, for I am
+quite come round to your 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 will when I talk to him.
+
+I could not speak.  I was fascinated by this wretch: it was reptile
+and rabbit with us.  Treachery I knew he meant; my death, for one;
+my death was certain; and yet I could not speak.
+
+"Then talk to him, for God's sake," cried Rattray, "and I shall be
+only too 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 a leetle time to think over it calmly; better steel for 'im to
+slip upon it, as you say.  Let us live 'im for the night, what there
+is of it; time enough in the morning."
+
+I could hardly believe my ears; still I knew that it was treachery,
+all treachery; and the morning I should never see.
+
+"But we can't leave him up here," said Rattray; "it would mean one
+of us watching 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
+to be Rattray's last on earth.  I watched, but nothing happened;
+on the contrary, both men seemed agreed, the Portuguese
+gesticulating, the Englishman nodding, as they stood conversing at
+the window.  Their faces were strangely reassuring.  I began to
+reason with myself, to rid my mind of mere presentiment and
+superstition.  If these two really were at one about me (I argued)
+there might be no treachery after all.  When I came to think of it,
+Rattray had been closeted long enough with me to awake the worst
+suspicions in the breasts of his companions; now that these were
+allayed, there might be no more bloodshed after all (if, for example,
+I pretended to give in), even though Santos had not cared whose
+blood was shed a few minutes since.  That was evidently the character
+of the wretch: to compass his ends or to defend his person he would
+take life 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 gross
+ruffian, with no refinements to his rascality, he had been at the
+brandy bottle 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 he had been.  I was quite sorry for him when the
+conversation at the window ceased 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
+clothes of mine for you to hide behind.  You needn't look so
+scared; it's as dry as a bone, as cellars go.  And it's past three
+o'clock.  And you've just got to come."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+A MAN OF MANY MURDERS
+
+
+It was a good-sized wine-cellar, with very little wine in it; only
+one full bin could I discover.  The bins themselves lined but two
+of the walls, and most of them were covered in with cobwebs,
+close-drawn like mosquito-curtains.  The ceiling was all too low:
+torpid spiders hung in disreputable parlors, dead to the eye, but
+loathsomely alive at an involuntary touch.  Rats scuttled when we
+entered, and I had not been long alone when they returned to bear
+me company.  I am not a natural historian, and had rather face a
+lion with the right rifle than a rat with a stick.  My jailers,
+however, had been kind enough to leave me a lantern, which, set
+upon the ground (like my mattress), would afford a warning, if not
+a protection, against the worst; unless I slept; and as yet I had
+not lain down.  The rascals had been considerate enough, more
+especially Santos, who had a new manner for me with his revised
+opinion of my character; it was a manner almost as courtly as that
+which had embellished his relations with Eva Denison, and won him
+my early regard at sea.  Moreover, it was at the suggestion of
+Santos that they had detained me in the hall, for much-needed meat
+and drink, on the way down.  Thereafter they had conducted me
+through the book-lined door of my undoing, down stone stairs leading
+to three cellar doors, one of which they had double-locked upon me.
+
+As soon as I durst I was busy with this door; but to no purpose; it
+was a slab of solid oak, hung on hinges as massive as its lock.  It
+galled me to think that but two doors stood between me and the secret
+tunnel to the 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 a very small grating which let in a very little fresh air:
+the massive foundations had been tunnelled in one place; a rude
+alcove was the result, with this grating at the end and top of it,
+some seven feet above the earth floor.  Even had I been able to
+wrench away the bars, it would have availed me nothing, since the
+aperture formed the segment of a circle whose chord was but a very
+few inches long.  I had nevertheless a fancy for seeing the stars
+once more and feeling the breath of heaven upon my bandaged temples,
+which impelled me to search for that which should add a cubit to my
+stature.  And at a glance I descried two packing-cases, rather small
+and squat, but the pair of them together the very thing for me.  To
+my amazement, however, I could at first move neither one nor the
+other of these small boxes.  Was it that I was weak as water, or
+that they were heavier than lead?  At last I managed to get one
+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
+the lantern: 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
+been sacrificed before my eyes.  Minute followed minute in which
+I looked at nothing, 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 hide my meddlesomeness, and blew the rest
+away.  The box had dropped very much where I had found it; it had
+exhausted my strength none the less, and I was glad at last to lie
+down on the mattress, and to wind my body in Rattray's blankets.
+
+I shuddered at the thought of sleep: the rats became so lively the
+moment I lay still.  One ventured so near as to sit up close to the
+lantern; the light showed its fat white belly, and the thing itself
+was like a dog begging, as big to my disgusted eyes.  And yet, in
+the midst of these horrors (to me as bad as any that had preceded
+them), nature overcame 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
+yellow light, from my pillow close to the earth.  Harris turned
+away at my glance; he carried a spade, and began digging near the
+boxes without more ado, by the light of a second lantern set on one
+of them: his back was to me from this time on.  Santos shrugged a
+shoulder towards the captain as he opened a campstool, drew up his
+trousers, and seated himself 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 is
+slipping; it is peety he takes such quantity of brandy!  It is
+leetle wikness of you Engleesh; we in Portugal never touch it, save
+as a liqueur; therefore we require less slip.  Friend squire
+upstairs is at this moment no better than a porker.  Have I made
+mistake?  I thought it was 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 aslip up there, that he would not hear
+us if we were to shoot each other dead!"
+
+And he gave me his paternal smile, benevolent, humorous, reassuring;
+but I was no longer reassured; nor did I greatly care any more what
+happened to me.  There is a point of last, as well as one of least
+resistance, and I had reached both points at once.
+
+"Have you shot him dead?" I inquired, thinking that if he had, this
+would precipitate my turn.  But he was far from angry; the parchment
+face crumpled into tolerant smiles; the venerable head shook a
+playful reproval, 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 I" said he; "reely, Senhor Cole!  But you are quite
+right: I would have shot him, or cut his troth" (and he shrugged
+indifference on the point), "if it had not been for you; and yet it
+would have been your fault!  I nid not explain; the poseetion must
+have explained itself already; 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, bad man.  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."
+And that 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
+for prejudice.  In my youth I had myself such prejudices; but one
+loses them on the Zambesi.  You cannot expect one to set any value
+upon the life of a black nigger; and when you have keeled a great
+many Kaffirs, by the lash, with the crocodiles, or what-not, then a
+white man or two makes less deeference.  I acknowledge there were too
+many on board that sheep; but what was one to do?  You have your
+Engleesh proverb about the dead men and the stories; it was necessary
+to make clin swip.  You see the result."
+
+He shrugged again towards the boxes; but this time, being reminded
+of them (I supposed), he rose and went over to see how Harris was
+progressing.  The captain had never looked round; neither did he
+look at Santos.  "A leetle dipper," I heard the latter say, "and,
+perhaps, a few eenches - " but I lost the last epithet.  It followed
+a glance over the shoulder in my direction, and immediately preceded
+the return of Santos to his camp-stool.
+
+"Yes, it is always better to bury treasure," said he once more; but
+his tone was altered; it was more contemplative; and many smoke-rings
+came from the shrunk lips before another word; but through them all,
+his dark eyes, dull with age, were fixed upon me.
+
+"You are a treasure!" he exclaimed at last, softly enough, but
+quickly and 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
+the visit to the hole I had made up my mind to it.
+
+"Bury you?  No, not alive," said Santos, in his playfully reproving
+tone.  "It would be necessary to deeg so dip!" he added through his
+few remaining teeth.
+
+"WeIl," I said, "you'll swing for it.  That's something."
+
+Santos smiled again, benignantly enough this time: in contemplation
+also: as an artist smiles upon his work.  I was his!
+
+"You live town," said he; "no one knows where you go.  You come
+down here; no one knows who you are.  Your dear friend squire
+locks you up for the night, but dreenks too much and goes to slip
+with the key in his pocket; it is there when he wakes; but the
+preesoner, where is he?  He is gone, vanished, escaped in the night,
+and, like the base fabreec of your own poet's veesion, he lives no
+trace - is it trace? - be'ind!  A leetle earth is so easily bitten
+down; a leetle more is so easily carried up into the garden; and a
+beet of nice strong wire might so easily be found in a cellar, and
+afterwards in the lock!  No, Senhor Cole, I do not expect to 'ang.
+My schims have seldom one seengle flaw.  There was just one in the
+Lady Jermyn; there was - Senhor Cole!  If there is one this time,
+and you will be so kind as to point it out, I will - I will run the
+reesk of shooting you instead of  - "
+
+A pinch of his baggy throat, between the fingers and thumbs of both
+hands, foreshadowed a cleaner end; and yet I could look at him; nay,
+it was more than I could do not to look upon that bloodless face,
+with the two 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
+other without me, and my part's done."
+
+Harris was my only hope.  I had seen this from the first, but my
+appeal I had been keeping to the very end.  And now he was leaving
+me before a word would come!  Santos had gone over to my grave, and
+there was Harris at 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'
+about it."
+
+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
+each of us.  "I once hanged fifteen in a row; abominable thifs.
+And I once poisoned nearly a hundred at one banquet; an
+untrustworthy tribe; but the hanging was the worse sight and the
+worse death.  Heugh!  There was one man - he was no stouter than
+you are captain -"
+
+But the door slammed; we heard the captain on the stairs; there was
+a rustle from the leaves outside., and then a silence that I shall
+not attempt 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
+particular business than I found it at the time.  Perverse I may be
+in old age as in my youth; but on that my agony - my humiliating
+agony - I decline to dwell.  I suffer it afresh as I write.  There
+are the cobwebs on the ceiling, a bloated spider crawling in one:
+a worse monster is gloating over me: those dull eyes of his, and
+my own pistol-barrel, cover me in the lamp-light.  The crucifix pin
+is awry in his cravat; that is because he has offered it me to kiss.
+As a refinement (I feel sure) my revolver is not cocked; and the
+hammer goes up - up -
+
+He missed me because a lantern was flashed into his eyes through
+the grating.  He wasted the next ball in firing wildly at the light.
+And the last chamber's load became suddenly too precious for my
+person; for there were many voices overhead; there were many feet
+upon the stairs.
+
+Harris came first - head-first - saw me still living as he reeled
+ -  hurled himself upon the boxes and one of these into the hole 
+ -  all far quicker than my pen can write it.  The manoeuvre, being
+the captain's, explained itself: on his heels trod Rattray, with
+one who brought me to my feet like the call of silver trumpets.
+
+"The house is surrounded," says the squire, very quick and quiet;
+"is this 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
+smoking pistol in his hand.
+
+"Two things to do," says Rattray - "I don't care which."  He strode
+across the cellar and pulled at the one full bin; something slid
+out, it was a binful of empty bottles, and this time they were
+allowed to crash upon the floor; the squire stood pointing to a
+manhole at the back of the bin.  "That's one alternative," said he;
+"but it will mean leaving this much stuff at least," pointing to
+the boxes, "and probably all the rest at the other end.  The other
+thing's to stop and fight!"
+
+"I fight," said Santos, stalking to the door.  "Have you no more
+ammunition for me, friend Cole?  Then I must live you alive; adios,
+senhor!"
+
+Harris cast a wistful look towards the manhole, not in cowardice,
+I fancy, but in sudden longing for the sea, the longing of a poor
+devil of a sailor-man doomed to die ashore.  I am still sorry to
+remember that Rattray judged him differently.  "Come on, skipper,"
+said he; "it's all or none aboard the lugger, and I think it will
+be none.  Up you go; wait a second in the room above, and I'll
+find you an old cutlass.  I shan't be longer."  He turned to me
+with a wry smile.  "We're not half-armed," he said; "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
+this time with eyes of stone; but now she turned her back upon him
+without a word.  His face changed; the stormlight of passion and
+remorse played upon 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.  But I 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 a sudden impulse, not (as I think) altogether
+unaccountable, albeit (as I have said) so indefensible.
+
+My back was hardly turned an instant.  I had left a statue of
+unforgiving coldness.  I started round to catch in my arms a
+half-fainting, grief-stricken form, shaken with sobs that it broke
+my heart to hear.  I placed her on the camp-stool.  I knelt down
+and comforted her as well as I could, stroking her hands, my arm
+about her heaving shoulders, with the gold-brown hair streaming
+over them.  Such hair as it was!  So much longer than I had dreamt.
+So soft - so fine - my soul swam with the sight and touch of it.
+Well for me that there broke upon us from above such a sudden din
+as turned my hot blood cold!  A wild shout of surprise; an ensuing
+roar of defiance; shrieks and curses; yells of rage and pain; and
+pistol-shot after pistol-shot as loud as cannon in the confined
+space.
+
+I know now that the battle in the hall was a very brief affair;
+while it lasted I had no sense of time; minutes or moments, they
+were (God forgive me!) some of the very happiest in all my life.
+My joy was as profound as it was also selfish and incongruous.
+The villains were being routed; of that there could be no doubt
+or question.  I hoped Rattray might escape, but for the others no
+pity stirred in my heart, and even my sneaking sympathy with the
+squire could take nothing from the joy that was in my heart.  Eva
+Denison was free.  I was free.  Our oppressors would trouble us no
+more.  We were both lonely; we were both young; we had 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 blood ran
+hot and cold by turns.  I forgot everything but our freedom and my
+love.  I forgot my sufferings, as I would have you all forget them.
+I am not to be pitied.  I have been in heaven on earth.  I was
+there that night, 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
+is dead!"
+
+And she sat upright, with bright eyes starting from a deathly face.
+I do not think she knew that she had been in my arms at all: any more
+than I knew that the firing had ceased before she told me.  Excited
+voices were still raised overhead; but some sounded distant, yet
+more distinct, coming through the grating from the garden; and none
+were voices that we knew.  One poor wretch, on the other hand, we
+heard plainly groaning to his 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
+tone or 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 - go and see what has happened; come back and tell me!  I dare
+not come.  I will stay here and pray for strength to bear whatever
+news you may bring me.  Go quickly.  I will - wait - and pray!"
+
+So I left the poor child on her knees in that vile cellar, white
+face and straining hands uplifted to the foul ceiling, sweet lips
+quivering with prayer, eyelids reverently lowered, and the swift
+tears flowing from beneath them, all in the yellow light of the
+lantern that stood burning by her side.  How different a picture
+from that which awaited me overhead!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+MY GREAT HOUR
+
+
+The library doors were shut, and I closed the secret one behind me
+before opening the other and peering out through a wrack of bluish
+smoke; and there lay Captain Harris, sure enough, breathing his last
+in the arms of one constable, while another was seated on the table
+with a very wry face, twisting a tourniquet round his arm, from
+which the blood was dripping like raindrops from the eaves.  A third
+officer stood in the porch, issuing directions to his men without.
+
+"He's over the wall, I tell you!  I saw him run up our ladder.
+After him every man of you - and spread!"
+
+I looked in vain for Rattray and the rest; yet it seemed as if only
+one of them had escaped.  I was still looking when the man in the
+porch wheeled 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 me with a smile, but whom I failed to recognize.
+
+"I might have guessed it was Mr. Cole," said he.  "I knew you were
+here somewhere, 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
+Inspector Royds, if you're any the wiser.
+
+"What has happened?  Who has escaped?"  "Your friend Rattray; but
+he won't get far."
+
+"What of the Portuguese and the nigger?"
+
+I forgot that I had crippled Jose, but remembered with my words,
+and wondered the more where he was.
+
+"I'll show you," said Royds.  "It was the nigger let us in.  We
+heard him groaning round at the back - who smashed his leg?  One of
+our men was at that cellar grating; there was some of them down
+there; we wanted to find 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 the
+moonlight, on the edge of the long grass.  The slave had fallen on
+top of his master; one leg lay swathed and twisted; one black hand
+had but partially relaxed upon the haft of a knife (the knife) that
+stood up hilt-deep in a blacker heart.  And in the hand of Santos
+was still the revolver (my Deane and Adams) which had sent its last
+ball through the nigger'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 them next 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 other struck.  It's the worst bit of luck in the whole
+business, and I'm rather disappointed on the whole.  I've been
+nursing the job all this week; had my last look round this very
+evening, with one of these officers, and only rode back for more
+to make sure of taking our gentlemen alive.  And we've lost three
+out of four of 'em, and have still to lay hands on the gold!  I
+suppose you didn't know there was any aboard ?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Not before to-night."
+
+"Nor did we till the Devoren came in with letters last week, a
+hundred and thirty days out.  She should have been in a month before
+you, but she got amongst the ice around the Horn.  There was a
+letter of advice about the gold, saying it would probably go in the
+Lady Jermyn; and another about Rattray and his schooner, which had
+just sailed; the young gentleman 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
+been seen 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 in their death agony, and on the bauble with the sacred device
+that he wore always 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 since for 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
+young gent, 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.
+"Try at 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 side scoured whilst I hang about the place."
+
+And he walked through the house, and out the back way, at the
+officer's heels; meanwhile the man with the wounded arm was swaying
+where he sat from loss of blood, and I had to help him into the
+open air before at last 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 I returned 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.
+So I 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
+the police and got over the wall by a ladder they left behind them.
+They are scouring the country - Miss Denison!  Eva!  My poor love!"
+
+She had broken down utterly in a second fit of violent weeping; and
+a second time I took her in my arms, and stood trying in my clumsy
+way to comfort her, as though she were a little child.  A lamp was
+burning in the library, and I recognized the arm-chair which Rattray
+had drawn thence for me on the night of our dinner - the very night
+before!  I led Eva back into the room, and I closed both doors.  I
+supported my poor girl to the chair, and once more I knelt before
+her and took her hands in mine.  My great hour was come at last:
+surely a happy omen that it was also the hour before the dawn.
+
+"Cry your fill, my darling," I whispered, with the tears in my own
+voice.  "You shall never have anything more to cry for in this world!
+God has been very good to us.  He brought you to me, and me to you.
+He has rescued us for each other.  All our troubles are over; cry
+your fill; you will never have another chance so long as I live, if
+only you will let me live for you.  Will you, Eva?  Will you?  Will
+you?"
+
+She drew her hands from mine, and sat upright in the chair, looking
+at me with round eyes; but mine were dim; astonishment was all that
+I could read in her look, and on I went headlong, with growing
+impetus and passion.
+
+"I know I am not much, my darling; but you know I was not always
+what my luck, good and bad, has left me now, and you will make a
+new man of me so soon!  Besides, God must mean it, or He would not
+have thrown us together 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 let me try, Eva?  Say that you will!"
+
+"Then - you - ove me?" she said slowly, in a low, awe-struck voice
+that might have told me my fate at once; but I was shaking all over
+in the intensity of my passion, and for the moment it was joy enough
+to be able at last to tell her all.
+
+"Love you?" I echoed.  "With every fibre of my being!  With every
+atom of my heart and soul and body!  I love you well enough to live
+to a hundred for 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,
+but I mastered myself sufficiently to face her question and to
+answer it as honestly as I might.
+
+"Yes!" I cried; "well enough even to do that, if it was for your
+happiness; but I might be rather difficult to convince about that."
+
+"You are very strong and true," she murmured.  "Yes, I can trust
+you as I have never trusted anybody else!  But - how long have you
+been so foolish?" 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
+used to argue?  I rebelled so against my love!  I imagined that I had
+loved once already and once for all.  But on the night of the fire I
+knew that my love for you was different from all that had gone before
+or would ever 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 knew it till I had given up fighting.  What did I care
+about the fire?  I was never happier - until now!  You sang through
+my heart like the wind through the rigging; my one fear was that I
+might go to the bottom without telling you my love.  When I asked
+to say a few last words to you on the poop, it was to tell you my
+love before we parted, that you might know I loved you whatever came.
+I didn't do so, because you seemed so frightened, poor darling!  I
+hadn't it in my heart to add to your distress.  So I left you
+without a word.  But I fought the sea for days together 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 senses after days of
+delirium.  When I heard that you were dead, I longed to die myself.
+And when I found you lived after all, the horror of your surroundings
+was nothing to be compared with the mere fact that you lived; that
+you were unhappy and in danger was my only grief, but it was nothing
+to the thought of your death; and that I had to wait twenty-four
+hours without coming to you drove me nearer to madness than ever I
+was on the hen-coop.  That's how I love you, Eva," I concluded;
+"that's how I love 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
+all through this outburst; as I finished they filled with tears, and
+my poor love sat wringing her slender fingers, and upbraiding herself
+as though she were the most heartless coquette in the country.
+
+"How wicked I am!" she moaned.  "How ungrateful I must be!  You
+offer me the unselfish love of a strong, brave man.  I cannot take
+it.  I have no love to give you in return."
+
+"But some day you may," I urged, quite happily in my ignorance.
+"It will come.  Oh, surely it will come, after all that we have gone
+through together!"
+
+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.
+I do love you for your bravery and your - love - but that will not
+quite do for either of us."
+
+"Why not?" I cried in an ecstasy.  "My darling, it will do for me!
+It is more than I dared to hope for; thank God, thank God, that you
+should care 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
+more about it now.  God knows I can afford to leave well alone!  I
+am only too happy - too thankful - as it is!"
+
+And indeed I rose to my feet every whit as joyful as though she had
+accepted me on the spot.  At least she had not rejected me; nay, she
+confessed to loving me in a way.  What more could a lover want?  Yet
+there was a dejection in her drooping attitude which disconcerted me
+in the hour of my reward.  And her eyes followed me with a kind of
+stony remorse which struck a chill to my bleeding heart.
+
+I went to the door; the hall was still empty, and I shut it again
+with a shudder at what I saw before the hearth, at all that I had
+forgotten in the little library.  As I turned, another door opened
+ -  the door made invisible by the multitude of books around and upon
+it - and young Squire Rattray 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 they never glanced my way, but flew straight to Eva, and rested
+on her very humbly and sadly, as her two hands gripped the arms of
+the chair, and she 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 I still wonder which of us admired him the more, as he stood
+there in his pride and his humility, gallant and young, and yet
+shamefaced and sad.
+
+"You risk your life - for my forgiveness?" whispered Eva at last.
+"Risk it?  I'll give myself up if you'll take back some of the
+things you said to 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;
+nor could I bear to watch them any longer.  I believed that he
+loved her in his own way as sincerely as I did in mine.  I believed
+that she detested him for the detestable crime in which he had been
+concerned.  I believed that the opinion of him which she had
+expressed to his face, in my hearing, was her true opinion, and I
+longed to hear her mitigate it ever so little before he went.  He
+won my sympathy as a gallant who valued a kind word from his
+mistress more than life itself.  I hoped earnestly that that kind
+word would be spoken.  But I had no desire to wait to hear it.  I
+felt an intruder.  I would leave them alone together for the last
+time.  So I walked to the door, but, seeing a key in it, I changed
+my mind, and locked it on the inside.  In the hall I might become
+the unintentional instrument of the squire's capture, though, so far
+as my ears served me, it was still empty as we had left it.  I
+preferred to run no 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
+is alive 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,
+and Eva with her face hidden in her hands.
+
+The cellar was a strange scene to revisit within an hour of my
+deliverance from that very torture-chamber.  It had been something
+more before I left it, but in it I could think only of the first
+occupant of the camp-stool.  The lantern still burned upon the floor.
+There was the mattress, still depressed where I had lain face to
+face with insolent death.  The bullet was in the plaster; it could
+not have missed by the breadth of many hairs.  In the corner was the
+shallow grave, dug by Harris for my elements.  And Harris was dead.
+And Santos was dead.  But life 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
+with beams - as much as I myself ever saw of the subterranean conduit
+between Kirby House and the sea.  But I understood that the curious
+may traverse it 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 wild young squire's final flight; and my heart still singing
+with the joy of which 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 the chamber 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 I
+entered he was kissing the tears from her wet, flushed cheek.  Her
+eyelids drooped; she was pale as the dead without, so pale that her
+eyebrows looked abnormally and dreadfully dark.  She did not cling
+to him.  Neither did she resist his caresses, but lay passive in
+his arms as though her proper paradise was there.  And neither heard
+me enter; it was as 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 his eyes were dim.  Eva clasped her hands before her, and looked
+me steadily in 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; next
+moment she was very close to me, and fresh tears were in her eyes.
+But I stepped 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
+her pouting 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
+my elbows on the narrow stone chimney-piece, which, with the grate
+below and a small mirror above, formed an almost solitary oasis in
+the four walls of books.  In the mirror I saw my face; it was
+wizened, drawn, old before its time, and merely ugly in its sore
+distress, merely repulsive in 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 would tell her so before him - tell him so to his face.  But she
+had turned away; 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
+round with evil triumph in my heart, and God knows what upon my
+face.  Rattray did not move.  With lifted hands the girl was merely
+begging him to go by the door that was open, down the stair.  He
+shook his head grimly.  With an oath I was upon them.
+
+"Go, both of you!" I whispered hoarsely.  "Now - while you can - and
+I can let you.  Now! Now!"
+
+Still Rattray hung back.
+
+I saw him glancing wistfully at my great revolver lying on the table
+under 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
+it sounded 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
+of her 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
+she would have kissed me, she!  I know it.  I knew it then.  But it
+was more than I would bear.  As a brother!  I had heard that tale
+before.  Back I stepped 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
+love you - 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 the
+Argentine Republic, a realm in which, to the best of my belief, I
+had not a solitary acquaintance.  The superscription told me nothing.
+In my relations with Rattray his handwriting had never come under
+my observation.  Judge then of my feelings when the first thing I
+read was his signature at the foot of the last page.
+
+For five years I had been uncertain whether he was alive or dead.
+I had heard nothing of him from the night we parted in Kirby Hall.
+All I knew was that he had escaped from England and the English
+police; his letter gave no details of the incident.  It was an
+astonishing letter; my breath was taken on the first close page; at
+the foot of it the tears were in my eyes.  And all that part I must
+pass over without a word.  I have never shown it to man or woman.
+It is sacred between man and man.
+
+But the letter possessed other points of interest - of almost
+universal interest - to which no such scruples need apply; for it
+cleared up certain features of the foregoing narrative which had
+long been mysteries to all the world; and it gave me what I had
+tried in vain to fathom all these years, some explanation, or rather
+history, of the young Lancastrian's complicity with Joaquin Santos
+in the foul enterprise of the Lady Jermyn.  And these passages I
+shall reproduce word for word; partly because of their intrinsic
+interest; partly for such new light as they day throw on this or
+that phase of the foregoing narrative; and, lastly, out of fairness
+to (I hope) the most gallant and most 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 may wonder still, for I never yet told living soul.  I pretended
+I had joined him of my own free will.  That was not quite the case.
+The facts were as follows:
+
+"In my teens (as I think you know) I was at sea.  I took my second
+mate's certificate at twenty, and from that to twenty-four my
+voyages were far between and on my own account.  I had given way
+to our hereditary passion for smuggling.  I kept a 'yacht' in
+Morecambe Bay, and more French brandy than 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 in Australia.  I shipped
+to Melbourne as third mate on a barque, and I deserted for the
+diggings in the usual course.  But I was never a successful digger.
+I had little luck and less patience, and I have no doubt that many
+a good haul has been taken out of claims previously abandoned by me;
+for of one or two I had the mortification of hearing while still in
+the Colony.  I suppose I had not the temperament for the work.  Dust
+would not do for me - I must have nuggets.  So from Bendigo I drifted
+to the Ovens, and from the Ovens to Ballarat.  But I did no more
+good on one field than on another, and eventually, early in 1853, I
+cast up in Melbourne again with the intention of shipping home in
+the first vessel.  But there were no crews for the homeward-bounders,
+and while waiting for a ship my little stock of gold dust gave out.
+I became destitute first - then desperate.  Unluckily for me, the
+beginning of '53 was the hey-day of Captain MelviHe, the notorious
+bushranger.  He was a young fellow of my own age.  I determined to
+imitate his exploits.  I could make nothing out there from an honest
+life; rather than starve I would lead a dishonest one.  I had been
+born with lawless tendencies; from smuggling to bushranging was an
+easy transition, and about the latter there seemed to be a gallantry
+and romantic swagger which put it on the higher plane of the two.
+But I was not born to be a bushranger either.  I failed at the very
+first attempt.  I was outwitted by my first victim, 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
+the punishment 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, this
+bushranging.  I have looked into the matter on my own account.  You
+not only 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 ten thousand as your share of our first robbery?
+A sailor is the very man I want!'
+
+"I told him that what I wanted was his cob, and that it was no use
+his trying to hoodwink me by pretending he was one of my sort,
+because I knew very well that he was not; at which he shrugged
+again, and slowly dismounted, after offering me his money, of which
+I took half.  He shook his head, telling me I was very foolish, and
+I was coolly mounting (for he had never offered me the least
+resistance), with my pistols in my belt, when suddenly I heard one
+cocked behind me.
+
+"'Stop!' said he.  'It's my turn!  Stop, or I shoot you dead!'
+The tables were turned, and he had me at his mercy as completely as
+he had been at mine.  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 you misjudged him a few months later aboard
+the Lady Jermyn.  He took me to his house on the outskirts of
+Melbourne, a weather-board bungalow, scantily furnished, but
+comfortable enough.  And there he seriously repeated the proposal
+he had made me off-hand in the road.  Only he put it a little
+differently.  Would I go to the hulks for attempting to rob him of
+five pounds, or would I stay and help him commit a robbery, of
+which my share alone would be ten or fifteen thousand?  You know
+which I chose.  You know who this man was.  I said I would join him.
+He made me swear it.  And then he told me what his enterprise was:
+there is no need for me to tell you; nor indeed had it taken
+definite shape at this time.  Suffice it that Santos had wind that
+big consignments of Austrailian gold were shortly to be shipped
+home to England; that he, like myself, had done nothing on the
+diggings, where he had looked to make his fortune, 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
+daughter of the house.  Santos had failed on the fields, but he
+had succeeded in making valuable friends in Melbourne.  Men of
+position and of influence spent their evenings on our veranda,
+among others the Melbourne agent for the Lady Jermyn, the likeliest
+vessel then lying in the harbor, and the one to which the first
+consignment of gold-dust would be entrusted if only a skipper could
+be found to replace the deserter who took you out.  Santos made up
+his mind to find one., It took him weeks, but eventually he found
+Captain Harris on Bendigo, and Captain Harris was his man.  More
+than that he was the man for the agent; and the Lady Jermyn was
+once more made ready for sea.
+
+Now began the complications.  Quite openly, Santos had bought the
+schooner Spindrift, freighted her with wool, given me the command,
+and vowed that he would go home in her rather than wait any longer
+for the Lady Jermyn.  At the last moment he appeared to change his
+mind, and I sailed alone as many days as possible in advance of the
+ship, as had been intended from the first; but it went sorely
+against the grain when the time came.  I would have given anything
+to have backed out of the enterprise.  Honest I might be no longer;
+I was honestly in love with Eva Denison.  Yet to have backed out
+would have been one way of losing her for ever.  Besides, it was
+not the first time I had run counter to the law, I who came of a
+lawless stock; but it would be the first time I had deserted a
+comrade or broken faith with one.  I would do neither.  In for a
+penny, in for a pound.
+
+"But before my God I never meant it to turn out as it did; though
+I admit and have always admitted that my moral responsibility is
+but little if any the less on that account.  Yet I was never a
+consenting party to wholesale murder, whatever else I was.  The
+night before I sailed, Santos and the captain were aboard with me
+till the small hours.  They promised me that every soul should
+have every chance; that nothing but unforeseen accident could
+prevent the boats from making Ascension again in a matter of hours;
+that as long as the gig was supposed to be lost with all hands,
+nothing else mattered.  So they promised, and that Harris meant
+to keep his promise I fully believe.  That was not a wanton ruffian;
+but the other would spill blood like water, as I told you at the
+hall, and as no man now knows better than yourself.  He was
+notorious even in Portuguese Africa on account of his atrocious
+treatment of the blacks.  It was a favorite boast of his that he
+once poisoned a whole village; and that he himself tampered with
+the Lady Jermyn's boats you can take my word, for I have heard
+him describe how he left it to the last night, and struck the
+blows during the applause at the concert on the quarter-deck.  He
+said it might have come out about the gold in the gig, during the
+fire.  It was safer to run no risks.
+
+"The same thing came into play aboard the schooner.  Never shall
+I forget the horror of that voyage after Santos came aboard!  I
+had a crew of eight hands all told, and two he brought with him
+in the gig.  Of course they began talking about the gold; they
+would have their share or split when they got ashore; and there
+was mutiny in the air, with the steward and the quarter-master of
+the Lady Jermyn for ring-leaders.  Santos nipped it in the bud with
+a vengeance!  He and Harris shot every man of them dead, and two
+who were shot through the heart they washed and dressed and set
+adrift to rot in the gig with false papers!  God knows how we made
+Madeira; we painted the old name out and a new name in, on the way;
+and we shipped a Portuguese crew, not a man of whom could speak
+English.  We shipped them aboard the Duque de Mondejo's yacht
+Braganza; the schooner Spindrift had disappeared from the face of
+the waters for ever.  And with the men we took in plenty of sour
+claret and cigarettes; and we paid them well; and the Portuguese
+sailor is not inquisitive under such conditions.
+
+"And now, honestly, I wished I had put a bullet through my head
+before joining in this murderous conspiracy; but retreat was
+impossible, even if I had been the man to draw back after going so
+far; and I had a still stronger reason for standing by the others
+to the bitter end.  I could not leave our lady to these ruffians.
+On the other hand, neither could I take her from them, for (as you
+know) she justly regarded me as the most flagrant ruffian of them
+all.  It was in me and through me that she was deceived, insulted,
+humbled, and contaminated; that she should ever have forgiven me for
+a moment is more than I can credit or fathom to this hour ...  So
+there we were.  She would not look at me.  And I would not leave
+her until death removed me.  Santos had been kind enough to her
+hitherto; he had been kind enough (I understand) to her mother
+before her.  It was only in the execution of his plans that he
+showed his Napoleonic disregard for human life; and it was precisely
+herein that I began to fear for the girl I still dared to love.
+She took up an attitude as dangerous to her safety as to our own.
+She demanded to be set 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 harden her resolution; that mere child
+threatened us to our faces, never shall I 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 to shrug?
+That was all he did then.  It was enough for me who knew him.  For
+days I never left them alone together.  Night after night I watched
+her cabin door.  And she hated me the more for never leaving her
+alone!  I had to resign myself to that.
+
+"The night we anchored in Falmouth Bay, thinking then of taking
+our gold straight to the Bank of England, as eccentric lucky
+diggers - that night I thought would be the last for one or other
+of us.  He locked her in her cabin.  He posted himself outside on
+the settee.  I sat watching him across the table.  Each had a hand
+in his pocket, each had a pistol in that hand, and there we sat,
+with our four eyes locked, while Harris went ashore for papers.
+He came back in great excitement.  What with stopping at Madeira,
+and calms, and the very few knots we could knock out of the
+schooner at the best of times, we had made a seven or eight weeks'
+voyage of it from Ascension - where, by the way, I had arrived
+only a couple of days before the Lady Jermyn, though I had nearly
+a month's start of her.  Well, Harris came back in the highest
+state of excitement: and well he might: the papers were full of
+you, and of the burning of the Lady Jermyn!
+
+"Now mark what happened.  You know, of course, as well as I do;
+but I wonder if you can even yet realize what it was to us!  Our
+prisoner hears that you are alive, and she turns upon Santos and
+tells him he is welcome to silence her, but it will do us ne good
+now, as you know that the ship was wilfully burned, and with what
+object.  It is the single blow she can strike in self-defence;
+but a shrewder one could scarcely be imagined.  She had talked to
+you, at the very last; and by that time she did know the truth.
+What more natural than that she should confide it 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 you all she
+knew!  From the first we were never quite sure whether to believe
+it or not.  That the papers breathed no suspicion of foul play was
+neither here nor there.  Scotland Yard might have seen to that.
+Then we read of the morbid reserve which was said to characterize
+all your utterances concerning the Lady Jermyn.  What were we to
+do?  What we no longer dared to do was to take our gold-dust
+straight to the Bank.  What we did, you know.
+
+"We ran round to Morecambe Bay, and landed the gold as we Rattrays
+had landed lace and brandy from time immemorial.  We left Eva in
+charge of Jane Braithwaite, God only knows how much against my will,
+but we were in a corner, it was life or death with us, and to find
+out how much you knew was a first plain necessity.  And the means
+we took were the only means in our power; nor shall I say more to
+you on that subject than I said five years ago in my poor old house.
+That is still the one part of the whole conspiracy of which I
+myself am most ashamed.
+
+"And now it only remains for me to tell you why I have written all
+this to you, at such great length, so long after the event.  My
+wife wished it.     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 ill of me as you must have done all
+these years.  I was villain enough, but do not think I am
+unpunished.
+
+"I am an outlaw from my country.  I am morally a transported felon.
+Only in this no-man's land am I a free man; let me but step across
+the border and I am worth a little fortune to the man who takes me.
+And we have had a hard time here, though not so hard as I deserved;
+and the hardest part of 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.  In its entirety, as I say, I have never shown it to a
+soul; there was just a little more that I read to my wife (who
+could not hear enough about his); then I folded up the letter, and
+even she has never seen the passages to which I allude.
+
+And yet 1 am not one of those who hold that the previous romances
+of married people should be taboo between them in after life.  On
+the contrary, much mutual amusement, of an innocent character, may
+be derived from a fair and free interchange upon the subject; and
+this is why we, in our old age (or rather in mine), find a still
+unfailing topic in the story of which Eva Denison was wayward
+heroine and Frank Rattray the nearest approach to a hero.  Sometimes
+these reminiscences lead to an argument; for it has been the fate of
+my life to become attached to argumentative persons.  I suppose
+because I myself hate arguing.  On the day that I received Rattray's
+letter we had one of our warmest discussions.  I could repeat every
+word of it after forty years.
+
+"A good man does not necessarily make a good husband," I innocently
+remarked.
+
+"Why do you say that?" asked my wife, who never would let a
+generalization pass unchallenged.
+
+"I was thinking of Rattray," said I.  "The most tolerant of judges
+could scarcely have described him as a good man five years ago.
+Yet I can see that he has made an admirable husband.  On the whole,
+and if you can't be both, it is better to be the good husband!"
+
+It was this point that we debated with so much ardor.  My wife
+would take the opposite side; that is her one grave fault.  And I
+must introduce personalities; that, of course, is among the least
+of mine.  I compared myself with Rattray, as a husband, and (with
+some sincerity) to my own disparagement.  I pointed out that he was
+an infinitely more fascinating creature, which was no hard saying,
+for that epithet at least I have never 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
+head in deep distress), and kissed the tears from her eyes.  And I
+swore that her eyes were as lovely as Eva Denison's, that there
+seemed even more gold in her glossy brown hair, that she was even
+younger to look at.  And at the last and craftiest compliment my
+own love looked at me through her tears, as though some day or other
+she might forgive me.
+
+"Then why did you want to give me up to him?" said she.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Dead Men Tell No Tales, by EW Hornung
+
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