Dead Men Tell No Tales.....................................................................................................................................1

E. W. Hornung.........................................................................................................................................1

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 bedrock 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,

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

selfpossession. 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

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

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 golddust 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 goldfever 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 shortlived. 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

flyblown 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

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 seabirds by the hour together. Miss Denison was our

only lady, and her stepfather, 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 stepfather'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 tradewind 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 lovemaking, 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 quarterdeck. The watch are taking down the extra awning;

they are removing the bunting and the footlights. 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.

"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

"I am not dear, and I'm not yours," she cries. "I'm only a schoolgirl you have all but told me so before

today! If I were a man if I were you I should tell Captain Harris what I thought of him!"

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

My poor love stares at me in the starlight. Her great eyes flash their scorn. Then she gives a little smile and

"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.

"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

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

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

"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.

And she was gone with angry tears for which I blamed myself as I fell to pacing the weather side of the poop

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

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

He gave the shrug of his country that delicate gesture which is done almost entirely with the back a

"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 stepfather, simply because he had breadth enough to sympathize with a coarse old salt like

I turned in, however, and I cannot say the matter kept me awake in the separate stateroom which was one

It was young Ready's hollow voice, as cool, however, as though he were telling me I was late for breakfast. I

"You're joking," was my first thought and utterance; for now he was lighting my candle, and blowing out the

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. Seaboots stamped; bare feet pattered; men bawled;

"Long enough for you to dress comfortably. Steady, old man! It's only just been discovered; they may get it

But was Eva Denison? Breathlessly I put the question; his answer was reassuring. Miss Denison was with her

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

"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

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 quarterdeck, 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 afterhold; the press of people hid the

hatchway from us until we gained the poop; but we heard the buckets spitting and a hosepipe 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

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

"The skipper's a brute," said I, "but he's the right brute in the right place tonight, Ready !"

"I hope he may be," was the reply. "But we were off our course this afternoon; and we were off it again

"Lots of looksat 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

"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."

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, tiepin, 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

"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.

"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

"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 stepfather's arm. It was an answering start to one on his part. The cigarette was snatched from his

I turned, and caught their reflection on the white column of smoke and steam. I ran forward, and saw them

The quarterdeck now staged a lurid scene: that blazing trapdoor in its midst; and each man there a naked

demon madly working to save his roasting skin. Abaft the mainmast the deckpump 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 terrorstricken 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

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

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 cannonball on the

Harris held up his hand. We were still before we had fairly found our tongues. His words did run together a

"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 tomorrow 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

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!

Pellmell they tumbled down the poopladders; pellmell 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

"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 quartermaster at the wheel. The

steward and the black I observed putting stores aboard the captain's gig as it overhung the water from the

"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,

"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

"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

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

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.

"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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

"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 railah, 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.

"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

It was not the new panic amidships that froze my marrow; it was not that the pinnace hung perpendicularly by

the foretackle, 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 boatload 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

The quarterdeck 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

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

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

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 deepdrawn 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

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

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

And yet she held us all! All, that is, but a terrorstricken 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 bloodred 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

In the longboat 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 boathook; and six or eight

oars were at work, in a fashion, as we plunged among the great smooth sickening mounds and valleys of

Scarcely were we clear when the foremast dropped down on the fastenings, dashing the jibboom 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 longboat 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 billowssleek 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

longboat 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

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:

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 redhot 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

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

It was a hencoop, and it floated bars upwards like a boat. In this calm it might float for days. I climbed upon

Coming to the surface, I found to my joy that the hencoop 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

cricketbelt 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 hencoop and I should not part company in a hurry; and I thought, I felt, that she

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

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

The hencoop was some six feet long, by eighteen or twenty inches in breadth and depth. It was simply a

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 longand my bed. And

as each particular bar left its own stripe across my wearied body, and yet its own comfort in my quivering

Discipline, what there was of it originally, had been the very first thing to perish aboard our illstarred 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 shipshape 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 poohpooh the old saying that there is no twilight in the tropics. I saw more truth in it as I lay lonely on

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

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,

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

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

hencoop 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

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

Ah! how I thought of her as that cruel day's most cruel sun climbed higher and higher in the flawless flaming

vault. A pockethandkerchief 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

She was saved in the gig. Sweet Jesus, thanks for that! But I I was dying a lingering death in midocean;

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

>From this onward, while my sense stood by me, I was practical, resourceful, alert. It was now highnoon,

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

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;

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 longboat. 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

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

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

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

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

The sun declined; my shadow broadened on die waters; and now I felt that if my cockleshell could live a

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

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

These I had attached to the lashings which had been blown asunder by the explosion; at one end of the coop

the ringbolt 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.

Now, however, I could lie back, and use had given me a strange sense of safety; besides, I think I knew, I

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 highnoon. 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 lovingkindness, 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

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 seabirds in these latitudes; no

mollyhawks, no albatrosses, no Capehens. 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

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

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

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 hencoop in the middle

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

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

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

The hencoop 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 redhot teeth, because the sun blazed

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.

Death has no more terrors for me. I have supped the last horror of the worst death a man can die. You shall

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 sweetsmelling cabin, with a clatter of knives

My hand crawled to my head; both felt a wondrous weight; and my head was covered with bristles no longer

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,

"Here's a go," said he; "forgotten the name of his blessed ship, he has. Where's that there paper, Mr. Bowles?

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

A reddish, hooknosed man, with a jaunty, wicked look, came and smiled upon me in the friendliest fashion;

"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.

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

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

"There was another passenger of the name of SanSantos. 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 "

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

"I can't hardly say," said the captain awkwardly. "We found the gig o' the Lady Jermyn the week arter we

"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 stepfather. The rest expected

to follow fast enough. It was all written plainly, on a sheet of the logbook, in different trembling hands.

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

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

At nineandtwenty 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 alivefor this. And now they

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 wouldbe 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 selfseeking 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,

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

Relatives I had as few as misanthropist could desire; but from selfcongratulation 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

Selfconsciousness 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

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 fourwheel cab and drove straight to Harley Street; and, upon my soul, as I stood on the specialist's

doorstep, 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

hencoop! 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 hencoop 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

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

anticlimax, 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."

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

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

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

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,

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. Troutfishing 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 flowerpots surrounding a grimy grassplot 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 groundglass 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

The mirror fell with a horrid clatter: the toilettable followed it with a worse: the thief had gone as he had

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

The voice was rich, cheery, lighthearted, agreeable; all that my own was not as I answered "Nothing!" for

this was not the first time my nextdoor neighbor had tried to scrape acquaintance with me.

"As a matter of fact," said I, put to shame by the undiminished goodhumor of my neighbor, "some one did;

"Gone? Not he! He's getting over that wall. After him after him!" And the head disappeared from the

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

"For God's sake, sir," I whispered, "let this matter rest. I shall have to come forward if you persist, and

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

"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

"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

"No, no!" cried he, "thanks be hanged, but but, I say, if I promise you not to bore you about things won't

Brandyandwater 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 dressinggown 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 dressingtable had lost a leg; and both lay flat, with my

brushes and shavingtable, 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 sheathknife 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

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

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

"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

"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

"I understand," he said, with his wellbred 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

spiritsandwater; 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

And we clinked tumblers across the little oval table in the middle of the room. It was more of a sittingroom

than mine; a bright fire was burning in the grate, and my companion insisted on my sitting over it in the

armchair, 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 cigarcase admirably stocked, and we smoked and sipped in

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 hencoop. 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 sixandtwenty.

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

muchcherished 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

"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

"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

"It is strange," he said, with a shudder, followed by the biggest sip of brandyandwater he had taken yet. "It

must have been horrible horrible!" he added to himself, his dark eyes staring into the fire.

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

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

"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.

"Forgive me," he said, resuming his walk. "I had no business I felt so sorry I cannot tell you how I

"No saying how I shall feel when I am a man again," said I. "You see what I am at present." And, pulling

"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

"Saw you on his doorstep, by Jove!" cried Rattray at once. "I was driving over to Hampstead, and I thought it

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 welltodo 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

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

"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

"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

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

"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

"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 tomorrow, 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

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

"Only don't expect too much, my dear Mr. Cole," were his last words to me. "My own place is as ancient and

as tumbledown as most ruins that you pay to see over. And I'm never there myself because I tell you

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 midocean singlehanded; my wouldbe 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

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 anticlimax 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 toilettable, and to thrill as I remembered there was one fellowcreature with whom I

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 coffeeroom. He was

I broke my fast in disappointed solitude, and I hung about disconsolate all the morning, looking wistfully for

my newmade friend. Towards midday 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 tomorrow 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

"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 today, Mr. Cole!" He

"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, betterlooking

than ever. It brought out a certain strength of mouth and jaw which I had not observed there hitherto. It gave

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

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

illfeeling on the head of it, I nevertheless followed him down again in four or five minutes. And I was

"Come tomorrow 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 upstream 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

With that we parted, as good friends as ever. I observed that my regret at losing him was shared by the boots,

"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 twentyfour

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

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

the closing up in quieter places. Why had I never looked round? Why? Because till today 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

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 lastnamed 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 fruitknives. I open it, and there are the greenbaize

compartments, one with a box of percussion caps, still apparently full, another that could not contain many

more waddedbullets, and a third with a powderhorn 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 fiveandforty 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 righthand

sidepocket 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 backgarden wall; and once more that disreputable music (which

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 selfconsciousness 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

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 stonedeaf, 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 deafmute at my side, who was illgrown,

wizened, and puny into the bargain. The browbeaten face of him was certainly forbidding, and he thrashed

his horse up the hills in a dogged, vindictive, thoroughgoing way which at length made me jump out and

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 carttrack 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

beaconlight 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

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

prizefighter. 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

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 sittingroom 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."

"Ay; I doubt he thought what we had ourselves wasn't good enough. An' it's him 'at sent t' armchair,

She had followed me into the bedroom, where I looked with redoubled interest at each object as she

a masqueline shavingglass that I caught my second glimpse of my landlady's evil expression

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;

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

>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 springcart. 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;

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 today," observed the woman, with the broad vowel sound which I shall not

"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 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 goldbrown afternoon, I made yet another new acquaintance, in the person of a

"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

"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 Godforsaken place like this?" said he, making use, I thought, of a

"Ha! So you're a friend of his, are you?" And his eyes went through and through me like knittingneedles

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

I said I had, but I said it with some coolness, for his tone had dropped into the confidential, and I disliked it as

"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

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

"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

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 rightabout next instant.

The old clergyman had slipped on a stone in midstream, 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

Sporting old parson who knows how to swear?" laughed Rattray. "Never saw him in my life before;

"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

We were walking away together. We turned on the top of the bank. And there the old clergyman was planted

"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

"Good?" cried he. "Nonsense, my dear sir! I'm only afraid you find it devilish rough. But, at all events, you're

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

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

"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!"

"Yes; as much so as that other beggar who was monarch of all he surveyed, his right there was none to

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

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

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 oakplantation 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, deepset 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, oldfashioned, highwalled 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

We dined delightfully in a large and lofty hall, formerly used (said Rattray) as a courtroom. 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 lowceiled; 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 tomorrow 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 doggrate, casting a glow

over the stone flags, a reassuring flicker into the darkest corner: cold viands of the very best: and the finest

"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 booklined 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

He let me go on until I came to another point which I had hitherto kept to myself: the condition of the dead

"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

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

"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

"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 coldblooded villain!" he kept muttering; "the infernal, foreign, bloodthirsty 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

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

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

"You hinted as much in town: rightly or wrongly I gathered there was something you would never speak

"No," I murmured; "it had something to do with him, in a sense; but don't ask me any more." And I leaned

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

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

"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

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

"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

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

"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 tomorrow 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.

"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, tomorrow; for I should never forgive myself if it made you worse instead of

"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,

"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.

No; it was unnecessary. I could see splendidly, had the bump of locality and as many more lies as would

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 tomorrow. Meanwhile I had new

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.

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

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

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

None spoke; all seemed waiting; and all were silent but the captain, whose vulgar champing reached me

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

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

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

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 candlelight: 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

The first sound was the hasty rising of young Rattray; he was at Eva's side next instant, essaying to lead her

"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

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

"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

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;

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

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.

"It does matter," retorted Santos; "what is more, she is my stepdaughter, and back she shall come!"

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.

Harris laughed outright as he raised his glass; the hot young squire had him by the collar, and the wine was

"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

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

It was ascending the tower at the building's end; now in this window it glimmered, now in the one above. At

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

"Nolisten!" 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 halfamile away. Oh, thank God! I'll get you away

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

"Then wait hide watch my light. When you see it back in the window, watch with all your eyes! I am

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

The moon was skimming beneath the surface of a sea of clouds: now the black billows had silver crests: now

In the hall the high voices were more subdued. I heard the captain's tipsy laugh. My eyes fastened themselves

The flame moved, flickered, and shone small but brilliant on the very sill. I ran forward on tiptoe. 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.

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

Harris nodded in his chair. The nigger had disappeared. Rattray was lighting a candle, and the Portuguese

As I opened it I heard a door open within. I could hardly let the latch down again for the sudden trembling of

Thank God there was light enough now! I followed the beck. I found my way. I stood in the open valley,

between the oakplantation 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

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, fiveandforty autumns ago. My

eyesight, however, was then perhaps the soundest thing about me, and in a little I had deciphered enough to

"You say you heard everything just now, and there is no time for further explanations. I am in the hands of

villains, but not illtreated, 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

"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

"It would have been possible last night, and it may be again tomorrow 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 tomorrow 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

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 twentyfour 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 hundredfold harder than

any that had whirled through my teeming brain. To sit still; to do nothing; to pretend I knew nothing; an hour

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

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 shedevil below should suspect me of suspicions! It was with her I had to

cope for the next fourandtwenty 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

It must have been one or two in the morning when I stole to my sittingroom window, opened it, and sat

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

slatecolored glass. Down the dewy slope below my window a few calves fed with toothless mouthings; the

beck was very audible, the oaktrees less so; but for these peaceful sounds the stillness and the solitude were

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 policestation 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

I flung the door opcn, and there stood Mrs. Braithwaite, as fully dressed as myself.

This second question was rude and fierce with suspicion: the real woman rang out in it, yet its effect on me

"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

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

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

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

"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 tomorrow and tomorrow 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

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

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

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.

"I shouldn't have touched a drop. I can't stand it. Instead of soothing me it excites me to the verge of madness.

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

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

"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,

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

"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.

"Then tomorrow it is! You see I know it's the climate," he added, jumping from tone to tone; "it couldn't

"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 boatloads struggling in an oily sea; it's husbands and

wives jumping overboard together; it's men turned into devils, it's hellfire 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

"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 tomorrow; only

"I will!" he vowed. "I'll go myself to the nearest chemist, and he shall give me the very strongest stuff he's

got. Goodby, 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

It must have been about midday 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 chimneypiece,

"There, old fellow," said he; "swallow that, and if you don't get some sleep the chemist who made it up is the

"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 sleepingdraught 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

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

Then sometimes I thought it was coming; and perhaps for an instant would be tossing in my hencoop; 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

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 tiptoe 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

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

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!

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 travellingbag (where they had lain forgotten to my jacket pocket, before drawing down the blind,

leaving the room on tiptoe, 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

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

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 bellmouthed blunderbuss and I knew the little devil for the impostor that he was.

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

"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 teninch 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

"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?"

"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

"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

"Before they get back?" asked Braithwaite, plainly in doubt about his duty, and yet as plainly relieved to

"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

"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

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;

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

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

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

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

"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

"And have a conveyance at the roadend 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

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

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 fingertips 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

Yet my hot head was full of ideas; and I wasted some minutes in trying to lift from its hinges a solid,

sixbarred, outlying gate, that my weak arms could hardly stir. More time went in pulling branches from the

oaktrees 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 handoverhand. 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

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

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 backbreaking 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

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,

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

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

"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

"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 lovesick 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,

"We have more time than you think," were Eva's first words. "We can do nothing for halfanhour."

"What patience!" she cried softly. "We must find a simpler way of getting out and I think I have. They've

Then the other two must have been my horsemen, 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

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

"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 tonight 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

"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.

"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 grassplot 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

"You will wonder why I wear it," said Eva, quickly. "It was the first that came that terrible night. They have

"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

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

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!

"But it was gunpowder," I insisted; for it was my incorrigible passion for accuracy which had led up to half

"It was also gold: twelve thousand ounces from the diggings. That was the real mystery. Do you mean to say

"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 goodby? I was

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

"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.

"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

"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

"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

"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

"Not all," said I, clasping her hand warmly in mine. "Not all not all! I will take you away from them, never

"But where are we to go?" she whispered wildly. "What are you to do with me? All my friends think me

"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

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

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

"Promise promise or you will kill me!" she gasped. "They may deserve it richly, but I would rather be

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

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

"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

A little trustful pressure was my answer and my reward; meanwhile the black was singing out lustily in

"Because if they were he couldn't see them, and if he heard them he would be frightened of their hearing him.

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 hidingplace. 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

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

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

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 sixfoot 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

"Come," I said to poor Eva, "don't pity him, though I daresay he's the most pitiable of the lot; show me the

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

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

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.

"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

There was a muffled rush of feet beneath our own, then a dull but very distinguishable clatter on some

"Underground passage!" I exclaimed, and in my sheer disgust I forgot what was due to my darling. "Why on

"There was so much to tell you! It leads to the sea. Oh, what shall we do? You must hide upstairs

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

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

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

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

"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

"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

"But I'm so softhearted," 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

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,

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

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 twentyfour hours

before. I could not take my eyes off them till they were gone. And when I looked for my revolver, it also had

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

A log fire was smouldering in the open grate. I darted to it, and had a heavy, halfburned 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

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.

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 fourposter 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.

"And now better lid 'im to the nirrest polissstation; or weel you go and tell the poliss yourself?" asked the

"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

"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 'alfkeeled my good Jose; it is necessary for 'im to die."

"I agree with the senhor," said Harris, whose forehead was starred with stickingplaster. "It's him or us, an'

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

"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

"Oh, you're damned mule enough not to regret anything!" cried Rattray. "I see the sort you are; yet but for

"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

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

"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

I repeated the hurried disclosures made by Eva in the rhododendrons. He nodded grimly in confirmation of

"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.

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

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

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

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

"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

"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;

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 goodwill 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

"And where have you got this gold?" I asked him, in a low voice so promising that he instantly lowered his,

"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

"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

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.

"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

"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. Selfinterest is the one motive they understand. Your bare word would be good

"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

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

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

"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.

"Well," I cried, "she may never love me; but at least she doesn't loathe me as she loathes you yes, and the

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

"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

"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

"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;

"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

"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

"You stick to that?" he said, so rapidly that the words ran into one, so fiercely that his decision was as

"I do," said I, and could only sigh when he made yet one more effort to persuade me, in a distress not less

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 reentered.

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

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

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 selfdeliverance. 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

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 oakplantation 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

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.

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

"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;

While my wouldbe murderers were holding this whispered colloquy, I had stood halfpetrified 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 hidingplace 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

"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

"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."

And Rattray was in the room, a silvermounted pistol in each hand; the sight of these was a surprise to his

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

"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

And he stood with his back to the window, his pistols raised, and his head carried proudly happily like a

man whose selfrespect 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

"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 tweenbrother. 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.

"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

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 hidingplace. And, what is more, he

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

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

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

Rattray simply asked me what I had been doing in there, in a white flame of passion, and with such an oath

"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;

Brandy and the wineglass 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

"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

"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:

"No, no," said Santos; "not kind, but clever! Clever, spicious, and queeckweeted 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

"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

"Then talk to him, for God's sake," cried Rattray, "and I shall be only too glad if you can talk some sense into

"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

I could hardly believe my ears; still I knew that it was treachery, all treachery; and the morning I should never

"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

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

"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

It was a goodsized winecellar, 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, closedrawn like

mosquitocurtains. 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 muchneeded meat and drink, on the way

down. Thereafter they had conducted me through the booklined door of my undoing, down stone stairs

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

packingcases, 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

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

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

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

"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

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

"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

"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 whatnot, 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 campstool.

"Yes, it is always better to bury treasure," said he once more; but his tone was altered; it was more

contemplative; and many smokerings came from the shrunk lips before another word; but through them all,

"You are a treasure!" he exclaimed at last, softly enough, but quickly and emphatically for him, and with a

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

"Bury you? No, not alive," said Santos, in his playfully reproving tone. "It would be necessary to deeg so

Santos smiled again, benignantly enough this time: in contemplation also: as an artist smiles upon his work. I

"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

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

"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!

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

"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

But the door slammed; we heard the captain on the stairs; there was a rustle from the leaves outside., and then

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 pistolbarrel, cover me in the lamplight. 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

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

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

"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.

"I fight," said Santos, stalking to the door. "Have you no more ammunition for me, friend Cole? Then I must

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 sailorman 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 halfarmed," he said; "they've caught us fairly on the hop; it

should be fun! Goodby, Cole; I wish you'd had another round for that revolver. Goodby, 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

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 powdercharges, 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 halffainting, griefstricken form, shaken with sobs that it broke my heart to hear. I placed her on

the campstool. I knelt down and comforted her as well as I could, stroking her hands, my arm about her

heaving shoulders, with the goldbrown 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 pistolshot after pistolshot as loud as cannon in

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 bloodshed, death, and crime.

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

"That's Harris," said I, with, I fear, but little compassion in my tone or in my heart just then.

"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

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

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,

"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."

I did so, and was confronted by a short, thickset man, who recognized me with a smile, but whom I failed to

"I might have guessed it was Mr. Cole," said he. "I knew you were here somewhere, but I couldn't make head

"Then you've quite forgotten the inquisitive parson you met out fishing? You see I found out your name for

"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."

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?

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 hiltdeep 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

"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

"Bless you, no, we've had no time to think about her; the man had been seen about town, and we've done well

"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

"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

"We have a man posted there already. That woman is one of the gang, and we've got her safe. But I'll take

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

I had been so long, however, that her patience was exhausted, and as I returned to the library by one door, she

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.

"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 armchair 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

"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

"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

"Then you ove me?" she said slowly, in a low, awestruck 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

"Love you?" I echoed. "With every fibre of my being! With every atom of my heart and soul and body! I love

I felt as though a cold hand had checked my heart at its hottest, but I mastered myself sufficiently to face her

"Yes!" I cried; "well enough even to do that, if it was for your happiness; but I might be rather difficult to

"You are very strong and true," she murmured. "Yes, I can trust you as I have never trusted anybody else! But

"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

twentyfour hours without coming to you drove me nearer to madness than ever I was on the hencoop.

That's how I love you, Eva," I concluded; "that's how I love and will love you, for ever and ever, no matter

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

"How wicked I am!" she moaned. "How ungrateful I must be! You offer me the unselfish love of a strong,

"But some day you may," I urged, quite happily in my ignorance. "It will come. Oh, surely it will come, after

"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

"Why not?" I cried in an ecstasy. "My darling, it will do for me! It is more than I dared to hope for; thank

"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

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

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

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.

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

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

"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

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 torturechamber. It

had been something more before I left it, but in it I could think only of the first occupant of the campstool.

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

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

They fell apart on the instant. Rattray glared at me, yet I saw that his eyes were dim. Eva clasped her hands

She looked at him standing by, his head bowed, his arms folded; next moment she was very close to me, and

And the silly ego in me the endless and incorrigible I imagined her pouting for a withdrawal of those

None the less had I to turn from her to hide my anguish. I leaned my elbows on the narrow stone

chimneypiece, 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

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

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!"

I saw him glancing wistfully at my great revolver lying on the table under the lamp. I thrust it upon him, and

"You go first. She shall follow. You will not grudge me one last word? Yes, I will take your hand. If you

He was gone. Without, there was a voice still calling me; but now it sounded overhead.

"You are in a very great hurry," said she, in the sharp little voice of her bitter moments.

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

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

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

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.

"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

"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 twentyfour 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

homewardbounders, 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 heyday 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

"'Why rob me?' said he. 'I have only ten pounds in my pocket, and the punishment will be the same as though

"'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

"'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

"'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 policestation. 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 weatherboard bungalow, scantily

furnished, but comfortable enough. And there he seriously repeated the proposal he had made me offhand 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

"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 golddust 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;

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

"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 quarterdeck. He said it might have come out about the gold in the gig, during the fire. It was safer to run

"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 quartermaster of the Lady Jermyn for ringleaders. 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

"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

"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

"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 selfdefence; 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

"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

"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

"I am an outlaw from my country. I am morally a transported felon. Only in this noman'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

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

"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

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.

"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.