Mr. Badcock shivered. "In our parish church," said he, "we used to take up a collection for these poor prisoners every Septuagesima. Many a sermon have I listened to and wondered at their sufferings, yet idly, as no doubt Axminster folk would wonder at this plight of mine, could they hear of it at this moment."

"My father, his wrath being yet recent, did not spare to paint our peril of capture and the possible consequences in lively colours; but observing that Nat and I had drawn near to listen, he put on a cheerfuller tone.

"He will turn all this to the note of love, and within five minutes," I whispered to Nat, "or I'll forfeit five shillings."

My father could not have heard me; yet pat on the moment he rose to the bet as a fish to a fly.

"Yet love," said he, "love, the star of our quest, has shone before now into these dungeons, these dark ways of blood, these black and cruel hearts, and divinely illuminated them; as a score of histories bear witness, and among them one you shall hear."

THE STORY OF THE ROVER AND THE LORD PROVOST'S DAUGHTER.

"In Edinburgh, in the Canongate, there stands a tenement known as Morocco Land, over the second floor of which leans forward, like a figure-head, the wooden statue of a Moor, black and naked, with a turban and a string of beads; and concerning this statue the following tale is told.

"In the reign of King James or King Charles I.—I cannot remember which—there happened a riot in Edinburgh. Of its cause I am uncertain, but in the progress of it the mob, headed by a young man named Andrew Gray, set fire to the Lord Provost's house. The riot having been quelled, its ringleaders were seized and cast into the Tol-booth, and among them this Andrew Gray, who in due course was brought to judgment, and in spite of much private influence (for he came of good family) condemned to die. Before the day of execution, however, his friends managed to spirit him out of prison, whence he fled the country; and so escaped and in time was forgotten.

"Many years after, at a time when the plague was raging through Edinburgh, a Barbary corsair sailed boldly up the Firth of Forth and sent a message ashore to the Lord Provost, demanding twenty thousand pounds ransom, and on a threat, if it were not paid within twenty-four hours, to burn all the shipping in the firth and along the quays. He required, meanwhile, a score of hostages for payment, and among them the Lord Provost's own son.

"The Lord Provost ran about like a man demented; since, to begin with, audacious as the terms were, the plague had spared him scarcely a hundred men capable of resistance. Moreover, he had no son, but an only daughter, and she was lying sick almost to death with the distemper. So he made answer, promising the ransom, but explaining that he for his part could send no hostage. To this the Sallee captain replied politely—that he had some experience of the plague, and possessed an elixir which (he made sure) would cure the maiden if the Lord Provost would do him the honour to receive a visit; nay, that if he failed to cure her, he would remit the city's ransom.

"You may guess with what delight the father consented. The pirate came ashore in state, and was made welcome. The elixir was given; the damsel recovered; and in due course she married her Paynim foe, who now revealed himself as the escaped prisoner, Andrew Gray. He had risen high in the service of the Emperor of Morocco, and had fitted out his ship expressly to be revenged upon the city which had once condemned him to death. The story concludes that he settled down, and lived the rest of his life as one of its most reputable citizens."

"But what was the elixir?" inquired Mr. Badcock.

"T'cht!" answered my father testily.

"I agree with you, sir," said Mr. Fett. "Mr. Badcock's question was a foolish one. Speaking, however, as a mere man of business, and without thought of rounding off the story artistically, I am curious to know how they settled the ransom?"

Captain Pomery had taken in all canvas, to be as little conspicuous as possible; and all that day we lay becalmed under bare poles. Not content with this, he ordered out the boat, and the two seamen (Mike Halliday and Roger Wearne their names were) took turns with Nat and me in towing the Gauntlet off the coast. It was back-breaking work under a broiling sun, but before evening we had the satisfaction to lose all sight of land. Still we persevered and tugged until close upon midnight, when the captain called us aboard, and we tumbled asleep on deck, too weary even to seek our hammocks.

At daybreak next morning (Sunday) my father roused me. A light wind had sprung up from the shore, and with all canvas spread we were slipping through the water gaily; yet not so gaily (doubted Captain Pomery) as a lateen-sailed craft some four or five miles astern of us—a craft which he announced to be a Moorish xebec.

The Gauntlet—a flattish-bottomed ship—footed it well before the wind, but not to compare with the xebec, which indeed was little more than a long open boat. After an hour's chase she had plainly reduced our lead by a mile or more. Then for close upon an hour we seemed to have the better of the wind, and more than held our own; whereat the most of us openly rejoiced. For reasons which he kept to himself Captain Pomery did not share in our elation.

For sole armament (besides our muskets) the ketch carried, close after of her fore-hatchway, a little obsolete 3-pounder gun, long since superannuated out of the Falmouth packet service. In the dim past, when he had bid for her at a public auction, Captain Pomery may have designed to use the gun as a chaser, or perhaps, even then, for decoration only. She served now—and had served for many a peaceful passage—but as a peg for spare coils of rope, and her rickety carriage as a supplement, now and then, for the bitts, which were somewhat out of repair. My father casting about, as the chase progressed, to put us on better terms of defence, suggested unlashing this gun and running her aft for a stern-chaser.

Captain Pomery shook his head. "Where's the ammunition? We don't carry a single round shot aboard, nor haven't for years. Besides which, she'd burst to a certainty."

"There's time enough to make up a few tins of canister," argued my father. "Or stay—" He smote his leg.

"Didn't I tell you old Worthyvale would turn out the usefullest man on board?"

"What's the matter with Worthyvale?"

"While we've been talking, Worthyvale has been doing. What has he been doing?" Why, breaking up the ballast, and, if I'm not mistaken, into stones of the very size to load this gun."

"Give Badcock and me some share of credit," pleaded Mr. Fett. "Speaking less as an expert than from an imagination quickened by terror of all missiles, I suggest that a hundredweight or so of empty bottles, nicely broken up, would lend a d—d disagreeable diversity to the charge—"

"Not a bad idea at all," agreed my father.

"And a certain sting to our defiance; since I understand these ruffians drink nothing stronger than water," Mr. Fett concluded.

We spent the next half-hour in dragging the gun aft, and fetching up from the hold a dozen basket-loads of stone. It required a personal appeal from my father before old Worthyvale would part with so much of his treasure.

During twenty minutes of this time, the xebec, having picked up with the stronger breeze, had been shortening her distance (as Captain Pomery put it) hand-over-fist. But no sooner had we loaded the little gun and trained her ready for use, than my father, pausing to mop his brow, cried out that the Moor was losing her breeze again. She perceptibly slackened way, and before long the water astern of her ceased to be ruffled. An oily calm spreading across the sea from shoreward overhauled her by degrees, overtook, and held her, with sails idle and sheets tautening and sagging as she rolled on the heave of the swell.

Captain Pomery promptly checked our rejoicing, telling us this was about the worst that could happen. "We shall carry this wind for another ten minutes at the most," he assured us. "And these devils have boats."

So it proved. Within ten minutes our booms were swinging uselessly; the sea spread calm for miles around us; and we saw no fewer than three boats being lowered from the xebec, now about four miles away.

"There is nothing but to wait for 'em," said my father, seating himself on deck with his musket across his knees. "Mr. Badcock!"

"Sir?"

"To-day is Sunday."

"It is, sir. Six days shalt thou labour and do all thou hast to do, but on the Seventh day (if you'll excuse me) there's a different kind of feeling in the air. At home, sir, I have observed that even the rooks count on it."

"You have a fine voice, Mr. Badcock, and have been, as I gather, an attentive hearer of sermons."

"I may claim that merit, sir."

"If you can remember one sufficiently well to rehearse it to us, I feel that it would do us all good."

Mr. Badcock coughed. "Oh, sir," he protested, "I couldn't! I reelly couldn't. You'll excuse me, but I hold very strong opinions on unlicensed preaching." He hesitated; then suddenly his brow cleared. "But I can read you one, sir. Reading one is altogether another matter."

"You have a book of sermons on board?"

"Before starting, sir, happening to cast my eye over the book-case in the bedroom . . . a volume of Dr. South's, sir, if you'll excuse my liberty in borrowing it."

He ran and fetched the volume, while we disposed ourselves to listen.

"Where shall I begin, sir?"

"Wherever you please. The book belongs to my brother Gervase. For myself I have not even a bowing acquaintance with the good Doctor."

"The first sermon, sir, is upon Human Perfection."

"It should have been the last, surely?"

"Not so, sir; for it starts with Adam in the Garden of Eden."

"Let us hear, then."

Mr. Badcock cleared his throat and read:

"The image of God in man is that universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul, by which they stand apt and disposed to their respective offices and operations."

"Hold a moment," interrupted my father, whose habit of commenting aloud in church had often disconcerted Mr. Grylls. "Are you quite sure, Mr. Badcock, that we are not starting with the Doctor's peroration?"

"This is the first page, sir."

"Then the Doctor himself began at the wrong end. Prosper, will you take a look astern and report me how many boats are coming?"

"Three, sir," said I. "The third has just pushed off from the ship."

"Thank you. Proceed, Mr. Badcock."

"And first for its noblest faculty, the understanding. It was then sublime, clear, and aspiring, and as it were the soul's upper region, lofty and serene, free from the vapours and disturbances of the inferior affections. . . . Like the sun it had both light and agility; it knew no rest but in motion; no quiet but in activity. . . . It did arbitrate upon the several reports of sense, and all the varieties of imagination; not like a drowsy judge, only hearing, but also directing their verdict. In sum, it was vegete quick and lively; open as the day, untainted as the morning, full of the innocence and sprightliness of youth; it gave the soul a bright and a full view into all things."

"A fine piece of prose," remarked Mr. Fett as Mr. Badcock drew breath.

"A fine fiddlestick, sir!" quoth my father. "The man is talking largely on matters of which he can know nothing; and in five minutes (I bet you) he will come a cropper."

Mr. Badcock resumed—

"For the understanding speculative there are some general maxims and notions in the mind of man, which are the rules of discourse and the basis of all philosophy."

"As, for instance, never to beg the question," snapped my father, who from this point let scarce a sentence pass without pishing and pshawing.

"Now it was Adam's happiness in the state of innocence to have these clear and unsullied. He came into the world a philosopher—"

("Instead of which he went and ate an apple.")

"He could see consequents yet dormant in their principles, and effects yet unborn and in the womb of their causes."

("'Tis a pity, then, he took not the trouble to warn Eve.")

"His understanding could almost pierce to future contingencies. . . ."

("Ay, 'almost.' The fellow begins to scent mischief, and thinks to set himself right with a saving clause. Why 'almost'?" )

"his conjectures improving even to prophecy, or to certainties of prediction. Till his fall he was ignorant of nothing but sin; or, at least, it rested in the notion without the smart of the experiment."

My father stamped the butt of his musket upon deck. "'Rested in the notion,' did it? Nothing of the sort, sir! It rested in the apple, which he was told not to eat; but, nevertheless, ate. Born a philosopher, was he? And knew the effect of every cause without knowing the difference between good and evil? Why, man, 'twas precisely against becoming a philosopher that the Almighty took pains to warn him!"

Mr. Badcock hastily turned a page.

"The image of God was no less resplendent in that which we call man's practical understanding—namely, that storehouse of the soul in which are treasured up the rules of action and the seeds of morality. Now of this sort are these maxims: 'That God is to be worshipped,' 'That parents are to be honoured,' 'That a man's word is to be kept.' It was the privilege of Adam innocent to have these notions also firm and untainted—"

My father flung up both hands. "Oh! So Adam honoured his father and his mother?"

"Belike," suggested Billy Priske, scratching his head, "Eve was expecting, and he invented it to keep her spirits up."

"I assure you, sir," Mr. Badcock protested with dignity, "Dr. South was the most admired preacher of his day. Her late Majesty offered him the Deanery of Westminster."

"I could have found a better preferment for him, then; that of Select Preacher to the Marines."

"If you will have patience, sir—"

"Prosper, how near is the leading boat?"

"A good mile away, sir, as yet."

"Then I will have patience, Mr. Badcock."

"The Doctor, sir, proceeds to make some observations on Love, with which you will find yourself able to agree. Love, he says—

"'is the great instrument and engine of Nature, the bond and cement of society; the spring and spirit of the universe. . . . Now this affection in the state of innocence was happily pitched upon its right object—'"

"'Happily,' did you say? 'Happily'? Why, good heavens, sir! how many women had Adam to go gallivanting after? Enough, enough, gentleman! To your guns! and in the strength of a faith which must be strong indeed, to have survived its expositors!"

By this time, through our glasses, we could discern the faces of the pirates, who, crowded in the bows and stern-sheets of the two leading boats, weighted them almost to the water's edge. The third had dropped, maybe half a mile behind in the race, but these two came on, stroke for stroke, almost level—each measuring, at a guess, some sixteen feet, and manned by eight rowers. They bore down straight for our stern, until within a hundred yards; then separated, with the evident intention of boarding us upon either quarter. At fifty yards the musketeers in their bows opened fire, while my father whistled to old Worthyvale, who, during Dr. South's sermon, had been bringing the points of half a dozen handspikes to a red heat in the galley fire. The two seamen, Nat and I, retorted with a volley, and Nat had the satisfaction to drop the steersman of the boat making towards our starboard quarter. Unluckily, as it seemed—for this was the boat on which my father was training our 3-pounder—this threw her into momentary confusion at a range at which he would not risk firing, and allowed her mate to run in first and close with us. The confusion, however, lasted but ten seconds at the most; a second steersman stepped to the helm; and the boat came up with a rush and grated alongside, less than half a minute behind her consort.

Now the Gauntlet, as the reader will remember, sailed in ballast, and therefore carried herself pretty high in the water. Moreover, our enemies ran in and grappled us just forward of her quarter, where she carried a movable panel in her bulwarks to give access to an accommodation ladder. While Nat, Captain Pomery, Mr. Fett, and the two seamen ran to defend the other side, at a nod from my father I thrust this panel open, leapt back, and Mr. Badcock aiding, ran the little gun out, while my father depressed its muzzle over the boat. In our excess of zeal we had nearly run her overboard; indeed, I believe that overboard she would have gone had not my father applied the red-hot iron in the nick of time. The explosion that followed not only flung us staggering to right and left, but lifted her on its recoil clean out of her rickety carriage, and kicked her back and half-way across the deck.

Recovering myself, I gripped my musket and ran to the bulwarks. A heave of the swell had lifted the boat up to receive our discharge, which must have burst point-blank upon her bottom boards; for I leaned over in bare time to see her settling down in a swirl beneath the feet of her crew, who, after vainly grabbing for hold at the Gauntlet's sides, flung themselves forward and were swimming one and all in a sea already discoloured for some yards with blood.

My father called to me to fire. I heard; but for the moment the dusky upturned faces with their bared teeth fascinated me. They looked up at me like faces of wild beasts, neither pleading nor hating, and in response I merely stared.

A cry from the larboard bulwarks aroused me. Three Moors, all naked to the waist, had actually gained the deck. A fourth, with a long knife clenched between his teeth, stood steadying himself by the main rigging in the act to leap; and in the act of turning I saw Captain Pomery chop at his ankles with a cutlass and bring him down. We made a rush on the others. One my father clubbed senseless with the butt of his musket; another the two seamen turned and chased forward to the bows, where he leapt overboard; the third, after hesitating an instant, retreated, swung himself over the bulwarks, and dropped back into the boat.

But a second cry from Mr. Fett warned us that more were coming. Mr. Fett had caught up a sack of stones, and was staggering with it to discharge it on our assailants when this fresh uprush brought him to a check.

"That fellow has more head than I gave him credit for," panted my father. "The gun, lad! Quick, the gun!"

We ran to where the gun lay, and lifted it between us, straining under its weight; lurched with it to the side, heaved it up, and sent it over into the second boat with a crash. Prompt on the crash came a yell, and we stared in each other's faces, giddy with our triumph, as John Worthyvale came tottering out of the cook's galley with two fresh red-hot handspikes.

The third boat had come to a halt, less than seventy yards away. A score of bobbing heads were swimming for her, the nearer ones offering a fair mark for musketry. We held our fire, however, and watched them. The boat took in a dozen or so, and then, being dangerously overcrowded, left the rest to their fate, and headed back for the xebec. The swimmers clearly hoped nothing from us. They followed the boat, some of them for a long while. Through our glasses we saw them sink one by one.



CHAPTER XII.

HOW WE LANDED ON THE ISLAND.

"Friend Sancho," said the Duke, "the isle I have promised you can neither stir nor fly. And whether you return to it upon the flying horse, or trudge back to it in misfortune, a pilgrim from house to house and from inn to inn, you will always find your isle just where you left it, and your islanders with the same good will to welcome you as they ever had."— Don Quixote.

Night fell, and the xebec had made no further motion to attack: but yet, as the calm held, Captain Pomery continued gloomy; nor did his gloom lift at all when the enemy, as soon as it was thoroughly dark, began to burn flares and torches.

"That will be a signal to the shore," said he. "Though, please God, they are too far for it to reach."

The illumination served us in one way. While it lasted, no boat could push out from the xebec without our perceiving it. The fires lasted until after eight bells, when the captain, believing that he scented a breeze ahead, turned us out into the boat again, to tow the ketch toward it. For my part, I tugged and sweated, but scented no breeze. On the contrary, the night seemed intolerably close and sultry, as though brooding a thunderstorm. When the xebec's fires died down, darkness settled on us like a cap. The only light came from the water, where our oars swirled it in pools of briming,[1] or the tow-rope dropped for a moment and left for another moment a trail of fire.

Neither Mr. Fett nor Mr. Badcock could pull an oar, and old Worthyvale had not the strength for it. The rest of us—all but the captain, who steered and kept what watch he could astern—took the rowing by hourly relays, pair and pair: Billy Priske and I, my father and Mike Halliday, Nat and Roger Wearne.

It had come round again to Billy's turn and mine, and the hour was that darkest one which promises the near daylight. Captain Pomery, foreboding that dawn would bring with it an instant need of a clear head, and being by this time overweighted with drowsiness, had stepped below for forty winks, leaving Wearne in charge of the helm. My father and Nat had tumbled into their berths. We had left Mr. Badcock stationed and keeping watch on the larboard side, near the waist; and now and then, as we tugged, I fancied I could see the dim figures of Mr. Fett and Mike Halliday standing above us in converse near the bows.

Of imminent danger—danger close at hand—I had no fear at all, trusting that the still night would carry any sound of mischief, and, moreover, that no boat could approach without being signalled, a hundred yards off, by the briming in the water. So intolerably hot and breathless had the night become that I spoke to Billy to ease a stroke while I pulled off my shirt. I had drawn it over my head and was slipping my arms clear of the sleeves, when I felt, or thought I felt, a light waft of wind on my right cheek—the first breath of the gathering thunderstorm—and turned up my face towards it. At that instant I heard a short warning cry from somewhere by the helm; not a call of alarm, but just such a gasp as a man will utter when slapped on the shoulder at unawares from behind; then a patter of naked feet rushing aft; then a score of outcries blending into one wild yell as the whole boatload of Moors leapt and swarmed over the starboard bulwarks.

The tow-rope, tautening under the last stroke of our oars, had drawn the boat back in its recoil, and she now drifted close under the Gauntlet's jibboom, which ran out upon a very short bowsprit. I stood up, and reaching for a grip on the dolphin-striker, swung myself on to the bobstay and thence to the cap of the bowsprit, where I sat astride for a moment while Billy followed. We were barefoot both and naked to the waist. Cautiously as a pair of cats, we worked along the bowsprit to the foremast stay, at the foot of which the foresail lay loose and ready for hoisting. With a fold of this I covered myself and peered along the pitch-dark deck.

No shot had been fired. I could distinguish no sound of struggle, no English voice in all the din. The ship seemed to be full only of yellings, rushings to-and-fro of feet, wild hammerings upon timber, solid and hollow: and these pell-mell noises made the darkness, if not darker, at least more terribly confusing.

The cries abated a little; the noise of hammering increased, and at the same time grew persistent and regular, almost methodical. I had no sooner guessed the meaning of this—that the ruffians were fastening down the hatches on their prisoners—than one of them, at the far end of the ship, either fetched or found a lantern, lit it, and stood it on the after-hatch. Its rays glinted on the white teeth and eyeballs and dusky shining skins of a whole ring of Moors gathered around the hatchway and nailing all secure.

Now for the first time it came into my mind that these rovers spared to kill while there remained a chance of taking their prisoners alive; that their prey was ever the crew before the cargo; and that, as for the captured vessel, they usually scuttled and sank her if she drew too much water for their shallow harbours, or if (like the Gauntlet) she lacked the speed for their trade. The chances were, then, that my father yet lived. Yet how could I, naked and unarmed, reach to him or help him?

A sound, almost plumb beneath me, recalled me to more selfish alarms. The Moors, whether they came from the xebec or, as we agreed later, more probably from shore, in answer to the xebec's signal-lights— must have dropped down on us without stroke of oars. It may be that for the last half a mile or more they had wriggled their boat down to the attack by means of an oar or sweep shipped in the stern notch: a device which would avoid all noise and, if they came slowly, all warning but the ripple of briming off the bows. In any case they had not failed to observe that the ketch was being towed; and now, having discharged her boarding-party, their boat pushed forward to capture ours, which lay beneath us bumping idly against the Gauntlet's stem. I heard some half a dozen of them start to jabber as they found it empty. I divined—I could not see—the astonishment in their faces, as they stared up into the darkness.

Just then—perhaps in response to their cries—a comrade on deck ran forward to the bows and leaned over to hail them, standing so close to me that his shoulder brushed against the fold of the foresail within which I cowered. Like me he was bare to the waist, but around his loins he wore a belt scaled with silver sequins, glimmering against the ray of the lantern on the after-hatch, and maybe also in the first weak light of the approaching dawn. . . .

A madness took me at the sight. In a sudden rage I gripped the forestay with my left hand, lowered my right, and, slipping my fingers under his belt, lifted him—he was a light man—swung him outboard and overboard, and dropped him into the sea.

I heard the splash; with an ugly thud, which told me that some part of him had struck the boat's gunwale. I waited—it seemed that I waited many seconds—expecting the answering yell, or a shot perhaps. Still gripping the forestay with my left hand, I bent forward, ready to leap for deck. But even as I bent, the bowsprit shook under me like a whip, and the deck before me opened in a yellow sheet of fire. The whole ship seemed to burst asunder and shut again, the flame of the explosion went wavering up the rigging, and I found myself hanging on to the forestay and dangling over emptiness. While I dangled I heard in the roaring echoes another splash, and knew that Billy Priske had been thrown from his hold; a splash, and close upon it a heavy grinding sound, a crash of burst planks, an outcry ending in a wail as the lifting sea bore back the Moor's boat and our own together upon the Gauntlet's stem and smashed them like egg-shells.

Then, as the ketch heaved and heaved again in the light of the flames that ran up the tarry rigging, at one stride the dawn was on us; with no flush of sunshine, but with a grey, steel-coloured ray that cut the darkness like a sword. I had managed to hoist myself again to the bowsprit, and, straddling it, had time in one glance aft to take in the scene of ruin. Yet in that glance I saw it—the yawning hole, the upheaved jagged deck-planks, the dark bodies hurled to right and left into the scuppers—by three separate lights: by the yellow light of the flames in the rigging, by the steel-grey light of dawn, and by a sudden white-hot flush as the lightning ripped open the belly of heaven and let loose the rain. While I blinked in the glare, the mizzen-mast crashed overside. I cannot tell whether the lightning struck and split it, or whether, already blasted by the explosion, it had stood upright for those few seconds until a heave of the swell snapped the charred stays and released it. Nay, even the dead beat of the rain may have helped.

In all my life I have never known such rain. Its noise drowned the thunderclap. It fell in no drops or threads of drops, but in one solid flood as from a burst bag. It extinguished the blaze in the rigging as easily as you would blow out a candle. It beat me down prone upon the bowsprit, and with such force that I felt my ribs giving upon the timber. It stunned me as a bather is stunned who, swimming in a pool beneath a waterfall, ventures his head into the actual cascade. It flooded the deck so that two minutes later, when I managed to lift my head, I saw the bodies of two Moors washed down the starboard scuppers and clean through a gap in the broken bulwarks, their brown legs lifting as they toppled and shot over the edge.

No wind had preceded the storm. The lightning had leapt out of a still sky—still, that is, until jarred and set vibrating by the explosion. But now, as the downpour eased, the wind came on us with a howl, catching the ship so fierce a cuff, as she rolled with mainsail set and no way on her, that she careened until the sea ran in through her lee scuppers, and, for all the loss of her mizzen-mast, came close to being thrown on her beam ends.

While she righted herself—which she began to do but slowly—I leapt for the deck and ran aft, avoiding the jagged splinters, in time to catch sight of my father's head and shoulders emerging through the burst hatchway.

"Hullo!" he sang out cheerfully, lifting his voice against the wind. "God be praised, lad! I was fearing we had lost you."

"But what has happened?" I shouted.

Before he could answer a voice hailed us over stern, and we hurried aft to find Billy Priske dragging himself towards the ship by the raffle of mizzen-rigging. We hoisted him in over the quarter, and he dropped upon deck in a sitting posture.

"Is my head on?" he asked, taking it in both hands.

"You are hurt, Billy?"

"Not's I know by," answered Billy, and stared about him. "What's become o' the brown vermin?"

"They seem to have disappeared," said my father, likewise looking about him.

"But what on earth has happened?" I persisted, catching him by the shoulder and shouting in his ear above the roar of a second sudden squall.

"I—blew up—the ship. Captain wouldn't listen—academical fellows, these skippers—like every one else brought up in a profession. So I mutinied and blew—her—up. He's wounded, by the way."

"Tell you what," yelled Billy, staggering up, "we'll be at the bottom in two shakes if somebody don't handle her in these puffs. Why, where's the wheel?"

"Gone," answered my father. "Blown away, it appears."

"And she don't right herself!"

"Ballast has shifted. The gunpowder blew it every way. Well, well—poor old John Worthyvale won't mourn it. I left him below past praying for."

"Look here, Master Prosper," shouted Billy. "If the ship won't steer we must get that mains'l in, or we're lost men. Run you and cast off the peak halliards while I lower! The Lord be praised, here's Mike, too," he cried, as Mike Halliday appeared at the hatchway, nursing a badly burnt arm. "Glad to see ye, Mike, and wish I could say the same to poor Roger. The devils knifed poor Roger, I reckon."

"No, they did not," said my father, in a lull of the wind. "They knocked him on the back of the head and slid his body down the after-companion. The noise of him bumping down the ladder was what first fetched me awake. He's a trifle dazed yet, but recovering."

"'Tis a short life he'll recover to, unless we stir ourselves." Billy clutched my father's arm. "Look 'ee, master! See what they heathens be doin'!"

"We have scared 'em," said my father. "They are putting about."

"Something has scared 'em, sure 'nough. But if 'tis from us they be in any such hurry to get away, why did they take in a reef before putting the helm over? No, no, master: they know the weather hereabouts, and we don't. We've been reckonin' this for a thunderstorm—a short blow and soon over. They know better, seemin' to me. Else why don't they tack alongside and finish us?"

"I believe you are right," said my father, after a long look to windward.

"And I'm sure of it," insisted Billy. "What's more, if we can't right the ballast a bit and get steerage way on her afore the sea works up, she'll go down under us inside the next two hours. There's the pumps, too: for if she don't take in water like a basket I was never born in Wendron parish an' taught blastin'. Why, master, you must ha' blown the very oakum out of her seams!"

My father frowned thoughtfully. "That's true," said he; "I have been congratulating myself too soon. Billy, in the absence of Captain Pomery I appoint you skipper. You have an ugly job to face, but do your best."

"Skipper, be I? Then right you are!" answered Billy, with a cheerful smile. "An' the first order is for you and Master Prosper here to tumble below an' heft ballast for your lives. Be the two specimens safe?"

"Eh?" It took my father a second, maybe, to fit this description to Messrs. Badcock and Fett. "Ah, to be sure! Yes, I left them safe and unhurt."

"What's no good never comes to harm," said Billy. "Send 'em on deck, then, and I'll put 'em on to the pumps."

We left Billy face to face with a job which indeed looked to be past hope. The wheel had gone, and with it the binnacle; and where these had stood, from the stump of the broken mizzen-mast right aft to the taffrail, there yawned a mighty hole fringed with splintered deck-planking. The explosion had gutted after-hold, after-cabin, sail-locker, and laid all bare even to the stern-post. 'Twas a marvel the stern itself had not been blown out: but as a set-off against this mercy—and the most grievous of all, though as yet we had not discovered it—we had lost our rudder-head, and the rudder itself hung by a single pintle.

"Nevertheless," maintained my father, as we toiled together upon the ballast, "I took the only course, and in like circumstances I would venture it again. The captain very properly thought first of his ship: but I preferred to think that we were in a hurry."

"How did you contrive it?" I asked, pausing to ease my back, and listening for a moment to the sound of hatchets on deck. (They were cutting away the tangle of the mizzen rigging.)

"Very simply," said he. "There must have been a dozen hammering on the after-hatch, and I guessed they would have another dozen looking on and offering advice: so I sent Halliday to fetch a keg of powder, and poured about half of it on the top stair of the companion. The rest Halliday took and heaped on a sea-chest raised on a couple of tables close under the deck. We ran up our trains on a couple of planks laid aslant, and touched off at a signal. There were two explosions, but we timed them so prettily that I believe they went off in one."

"They did," said I.

"My wits must have been pretty clear, then—at the moment. Afterwards (I don't mind confessing to you) I lay for some minutes where the explosion flung me. In my hurry I had overdone the dose."

We had been shovelling for an hour and more. Already the ship began to labour heavily, and my father climbed to the deck to observe the alteration in her trim. He dropped back and picked up his shovel again in a chastened silence. In fact, deputy-captain Priske (who had just accomplished the ticklish task of securing the rudder and lashing a couple of ropes to its broken head for steering-gear) had ordered him back to work, using language not unmixed with objurgation.

For all our efforts the Gauntlet still canted heavily to leeward, and as the gale grew to its height the little canvas necessary to heave-to came near to drowning us. Towards midnight our plight grew so desperate that Billy, consulting no one, determined to risk all— the unknown dangers of the coast, his complete ignorance of navigation, the risk of presenting her crazy stern timbers to the following seas—and run for it. At once we were called up from the hold and set to relieve the half-dead workers at the pumps.

All that night we ran blindly, and all next day. The gale had southerned, and we no longer feared a lee-shore: but for forty-eight hours we lived with the present knowledge that the next stern wave might engulf us as its predecessor had just missed to do. The waves, too, in this inland sea, were not the great rollers—the great kindly giants—of our Atlantic gales, but shorter and more vicious in impact: and, under Heaven, our only hope against them hung by the two ropes of Billy's jury steering-gear.

They served us nobly. Towards sunset of the second day, although to eye and ear the gale had not sensibly abated, and the sea ran by us as tall as ever, we knew that the worst was over. We could not have explained our assurance. It was a feeling—no more—but one which any man will recognize who has outlived a like time of peril on the sea. We did not hope again, for we were past the effort to hope. Numb, drenched, our very skins bleached like a washerwoman's hands, our eyes caked with brine, our limbs so broken with weariness of the eternal pumping that when our shift was done, where we fell there we lay, and had to be kicked aside—we had scarcely the spirit to choose between life and death. Yet all the while we had been fighting for life like madmen.

Towards the close of the day, too, Roger Wearne had made shift to crawl on deck and bear a hand. Captain Pomery lay in the huddle of the forecastle, no man tending him: and old Worthyvale awaited burial, stretched in the hold upon the ballast.

At whiles, as my fingers cramped themselves around the handle of the pump, it seemed as though we had been fighting this fight, tholing this misery, gripping the verge of this precipice for years upon years, and this nightmare sat heaviest upon me when the third morning broke and I turned in the sudden blessed sunshine—but we blessed it not—and saw what age the struggle had written on my father's face. I passed a hand over my eyes, and at that moment Mr. Fett, who had been snatching an hour's sleep below—and no man better deserved it— thrust his head up through the broken hatchway, carolling—

"To all you ladies now at land We men at sea indite, But first would have you understand How hard it is to write: Our paper, pen, and ink and we Roll up and down our ships at sea, With a fa-la-LA!"

"Catch him!" cried my father, sharply; but he meant not Mr. Fett. His eyes were on Billy Priske, who, perched on the temporary platform, where almost without relief he had sat and steered us, shouting his orders without sign of fatigue, sank forward with the rudder ropes dragging through, his hands, and dropped into the hold.

For me, I cast myself down on deck with face upturned to the sun, and slept.

I woke to find my father seated close to me, cross-legged, examining a sextant.

"The plague of it is," he grumbled, "that even supposing myself to have mastered this diabolical instrument, we have ne'er a compass on board."

Glancing aft I saw that Mike Halliday had taken Billy's place at the helm. At my elbow lay Nat, still sleeping. Mr. Badcock had crawled to the bulwarks, and leaned there in uncontrollable sea-sickness. Until the gale was done I believe he had not felt a qualm. Now, on the top of his nausea, he had to endure the raillery of Mr. Fett, whose active fancy had already invented a grotesque and wholly untruthful accusation against his friend—namely, that when assailed by the Moors, and in the act of being kicked below, he had dropped on his knees and offered to turn Mohammedan.

That evening we committed old Worthyvale's body to the sea, and my father, having taken his first observation at noon, carefully entered the latitude and longitude in his pocket-book. On consulting the chart we found the alleged bearings somewhere south of Asia-Minor—to be exact, off the coast of Pamphylia. My father therefore added the word "approximately" to his entry, and waited for Captain Pomery to recover.

Though the sea went down even more quickly than it had arisen, the pumps kept us fairly busy. All that night, under a clear and starry sky, we steered for the north-east with the wind brisk upon our starboard quarter.

"I have no chart, No compass but a heart,"

quoted I in mischief to Nat. But Nat, having passed through a real gale, had saved not sufficient fondness for his verse to blush, for it. We should have been mournful for old Worthyvale, but that night we knew only that it was good, being young, to have escaped death. Under the stars we made bad jokes on Mr. Badcock's sea-sickness, and sang in chorus to Mr. Fett's solos—

"With a fa-la, fa-la, fa-la-la! To all you ladies now at land . . ."

Next morning Captain Pomery (whose hurt was a pretty severe concussion of the skull, the explosion having flung him into the panelling of the ship's cabin, and against the knee of a beam) returned to duty, and professed himself able, with help, to take a reckoning. He relieved us of another anxiety by producing a pocket-compass from his fob.

My father held the sextant for him, while Nat, under instructions, worked out the sum. With a compass, upon a chart spread on the deck, I pricked out the bearings—with a result that astonished all as I leapt up and stared across the bows.

"Why, lad, by the look of you we should be running ashore!" exclaimed my father.

"And so we should be at this moment," said I, "were not the reckoning out."

Captain Pomery reached out for the paper. "The reckoning is right enough," said he, after studying it awhile.

"Then on what land, in Heaven's name, are we running?" my father demanded testily.

"Why, on Corsica," I answered, pointing with my compass's foot as he bent over the chart. "On Corsica. Where else?"

It wanted between three and four hours of sunset when we made the landfall and assured ourselves that what appeared so like a low cloud on the east-north-eastern horizon was indeed the wished-for island. We fell to discussing our best way to approach it; my father at first maintaining that the coast would be watched by Genoese vessels, and therefore we should do wisely to take down sail and wait for darkness.

Against this, Captain Pomery maintained—

1. That we were carrying a fair wind, and the Lord knew how long that would hold.

2. That the moon would rise in less than three hours after dark, and thenceforth we should run almost the same risk of detection as by daylight.

3. That in any case we could pass for what we really were, an English trader in ballast, barely escaped from shipwreck, dismasted, with broken steerage, making for the nearest port.

"Man," said Captain Pomery, looking about him, "we must be a poor set of liars if we can't pitch a yarn on this evidence!"

My father allowed himself to be persuaded, the more easily as the argument jumped with his impatience. Accordingly, we stood on for land, making no concealment; and the wind holding steady on our beam, and the sun dropping astern of us in a sky without a cloud, 'twas incredible how soon we began to make out the features of the land. It rose like a shield to a central boss, which trembled, as it were, into view and revealed itself a mountain peak, snowcapped and shining, before ever the purple mist began to slip from the slopes below it and disclose their true verdure. No sail broke the expanse of sea between us and the shore; and, as we neared it, no scarp of cliff, no house or group of houses broke the island's green monotony. From the water's edge to the high snow-line it might have been built of moss, so vivid its colour was, yet soft as velvet, and softer and still more vivid as we approached.

Within two miles of shore, and not long before dark, the wind (as Captain Pomery had promised) broke off and headed us, blowing cool and fresh off the land. I was hauling in the foresheet and belaying when a sudden waft of fragrance fetched me upright, with head thrown back and nostrils inhaling the breeze.

"Ay," said my father, at my elbow, "there is no scent on earth to compare with it. You smell the macchia, lad. Drink well your first draught of it, delicious as first love."

"But somewhere—at some time—I have smelt it before," said I. "The same scent, only fainter. Why does it remind me of home?"

My father considered. "I will tell you," he said. "In the corridor at home, outside my bedroom door, stands a wardrobe, and in it hang the clothes I wore, near upon twenty years ago, in Corsica. They keep the fragrance of the macchia yet; and if, as a child, you ever opened that wardrobe, you recall it at this moment."

"Yes," said I, "that was the scent."

My father leaned and gazed at the island with dim eyes.

Still no sign of house or habitation greeted us as we worked by short tacks towards a deep bay which my father, after a prolonged consultation of the chart, decided to be that of Sagona. A sharp promontory ran out upon its northern side, and within the shelter of this Captain Pomery looked to find good anchorage. But the Gauntlet, after all her battering, lay so poorly to the wind that darkness overtook us a good mile from land, and before we weathered the point and cast anchor in a little bight within, the moon had risen. It showed us a steep shore near at hand, with many grey pinnacles of granite glimmering high over dark masses of forest trees, and in the farthest angle of the bight its rays travelled in silver down the waters of a miniature creek.

The hawser ran out into five fathoms of water. We had lost our boat: but Billy Priske had spent his afternoon in fashioning a raft out of four empty casks and a dozen broken lengths of deck-planking; and on this, leaving the seamen on board, the rest of us pushed off for shore. For paddles we used a couple of spare oars.

The water, smooth as in a lake, gave us our choice to make a landing where we would. My father, however, who had taken command, chose to steer straight for the entrance of the little creek. There, between tall entrance rocks of granite, we passed through it into the shadow of folding woods where the moon was lost to us. Sounding with our paddles, we found a good depth of water under the raft, lit a lantern, and pushed on, my father promising that we should discover a village or at least a hamlet at the creek-head.

"And you will find the inhabitants—your subjects, Prosper— hospitable, too. Whatever the island may have been in Seneca's time, to deserve the abuse he heaped on it in exile, to-day the Corsicans keep more of the old classical virtues than any nation known to me. In vendetta they will slay one another, using the worst treachery; but a stranger may walk the length of the island unarmed—save against the Genoese—and find a meal at the poorest cottage, and a bed, however rough, whereon he may sleep untroubled by suspicion."

The raft grated and took ground on a shelving bank of sand, and Nat, who stood forward holding the lantern, made a motion to step on shore. My father restrained him.

"Prosper goes first."

I stepped on to the bank. My father, following, stooped, gathered a handful of the fine granite sand, and holding it in the lantern's light, let it run through his fingers.

"Hat off, lad! and salute your kingdom!"

"But where," said I, "be my subjects?"

It seemed, as we formed ourselves into marching order, that I was on the point to be answered. For above the bank we came to a causeway which our lanterns plainly showed us to be man's handiwork; and following it round the bend of a valley, where a stream sang its way down to the creek, came suddenly on a flat meadow swept by the pale light and rising to a grassy slope, where a score of whitewashed houses huddled around a tall belfry, all glimmering under the moon.

"In Corsica," repeated my father, leading the way across the meadow, "every householder is a host."

He halted at the base of the village street.

"It is curious, however, that the dogs have not heard us. Their barking, as a rule, is something to remember."

He stepped up to the first house to knock. There was no door to knock upon. The building stood open, desolate. Our lanterns showed the grass growing on its threshold.

We tried the next and the next. The whole village lay dead, abandoned. We gathered in the street and shouted, raising our lanterns aloft. No voice answered us.

[1] Phosphorescence.



CHAPTER XIII.

HOW, WITHOUT FIGHTING, OUR ARMY WASTED BY ENCHANTMENT.

"ADRIAN. The air breathes upon us here most sweetly. . . . GONZALO. Here is everything advantageous to life. ANTONIO. True: save means to live."

"CALIBAN. Be not afeard; the isle is full of noises, Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not." The Tempest.

Upon a sudden thought my father hurried us towards the tall belfry. It rose cold and white against the moon, at the end of a nettle-grown lane. A garth of ilex-oaks surrounded it; and beside it, more than half-hidden by the untrimmed trees, stood a ridiculously squat church. By instinct, or, rather, from association of ideas learnt in England, I glanced around this churchyard for its gravestones. There were none. Yet for the second time within these few hours I was strangely reminded of home, where in an upper garret were stacked half a dozen age-begrimed paintings on panel, one of which on an idle day two years ago I had taken a fancy to scour with soap and water. The painting represented a tall man, crowned and wearing Eastern armour, with a small slave in short jacket and baggy white breeches holding a white charger in readiness; all three figures awkwardly drawn and without knowledge of anatomy. For background my scouring had brought to light a group of buildings, and among them just such a church as this, with just such a belfry. Of architecture and its different styles I knew nothing; but, comparing the church before me with what I could recollect of the painting, I recognized every detail, from the cupola, high-set upon open arches, to the round, windowless apse in which the building ended.

My father, meanwhile, had taken a lantern and explored the interior.

"I know this place," he announced quietly, as he reappeared, after two or three minutes, in the ruinous doorway; "it is called Paomia. We can bivouac in peace, and I doubt if by searching we could find a better spot."

We ate our supper of cold bacon and ship-bread, both slightly damaged by sea-water—but the wine solaced us, being excellent—and stretched ourselves to sleep under the ilex boughs, my father undertaking to stand sentry till daybreak. Nat and I protested against this, and offered ourselves; but he cut us short. He had his reasons, he said.

It must have been two or even three hours later that I awoke at the touch of his hand on my shoulder. I stared up through the boughs at the setting moon, and around me at my comrades asleep in the grasses. He signed to me not to awake them, but to rise and follow him softly.

Passing through the screen of ilex, we came to a gap in the stone wall of the garth, and through this, at the base of the hillside below the forest, to a second screen of cypress which opened suddenly upon a semicircle of turf; and here, bathed in the moon's rays that slanted over the cypress-tops, stood a small Doric temple of weather-stained marble, in proportions most delicate, a background for a dance of nymphs, a fit tiring-room for Diana and her train.

Its door—if ever it had possessed one—was gone, like every other door in this strange village. My father led the way up the white steps, halted on the threshold, and, standing aside lest he should block the moonlight, pointed within.

I stood at his shoulder and looked. The interior was empty, bare of all ornament. On the wall facing the door, and cut in plain letters a foot high, two words in Greek confronted me—

PHILOPATRI STEPHANOPOULOI.

"A tomb?" I asked.

"Yes, and a kinsman's; for the Stephanopouli were of blood the emperors did not disdain to mate with. In the last rally the Turks had much ado with them as leaders of the Moreote tribes around Maina, and north along Taygetus to Sparta. Yes, and there were some who revived the Spartan name in those days, maintaining the fight among the mountains until the Turks swarmed across from Crete, overran Maina and closed the struggle. Yet there was a man, Constantine Stephanopoulos, the grandfather of this Philopater, who would buy nothing at the price of slavery, but, collecting a thousand souls— men, women, and children—escaped by ship from Porto Vitilo and sailed in search of a new home. At first he had thought of Sicily; but, finding no welcome there, he came (in the spring of 1675, I think) to Genoa, and obtained leave from the Genoese to choose a site in Corsica."

"And it was here he planted his colony?"

"In this very valley; but, mind you, at the price of swearing fealty to the Republic of Genoa—this and the repayment of a beggarly thousand piastres which the Republic had advanced to pay the captain of the ship which brought them, and to buy food and clothing. Very generous treatment it seemed. Yet you have heard me say before now that liberty never stands in its worst peril until the hour of success; then too often men turn her sword against her. So these men of Lacedaemon, coming to an island where the rule of Genoa was a scourge to all except themselves, in gratitude, or for their oath's sake, took sides with the oppressor. Therefore the Corsicans, who never forget an injury, turned upon them, drove them for shelter to Ajaccio, and laid their valley desolate; nor have the Genoese power to restore them.

"Fate, Prosper, has landed you on this very spot where your kinsmen found refuge for awhile, and broke the ground, and planted orchards, hoping for a fair continuance of peace and peaceful tillage.

"'Per varios casus, per tot discrimina rerum Tendimus in Latium—'

"How will you read the omen?"

"You say," said I, "that had we found our kinsmen here we had found them in league against freedom, and friends of the tyranny we are here to fight?"

"Assuredly."

"Then, sir, let me read the omen as a lesson, and avoid my kinsmen's mistake."

My father smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. "You say little, as a rule, Prosper. It is a good fault in kings."

We walked back to the churchyard, where Mr. Fett sat up, rubbing his eyes in the dawn, and hailed us.

"Good morning, signors! I have been dreaming that I came to a kingdom which, indeed, seemed to be an island, but on inspection proved to be a mushroom. What interpretation have you when a man dreams of mushrooms?"

"Why, this," said I, "that we passed some score of them in the meadow below. I saw them plain by the moonlight, and kicked at them to make sure."

"I did better," said Mr. Fett; I gathered a dozen or two in my cap, foreseeing breakfast. Faith, and while you have been gadding I might have had added a rasher of bacon. Did you meet any hogs on your way? But no; they turned back and took the path that appears to run up to the woods yonder."

"Hogs?" queried my father.

"They woke me, nosing and grunting among the nettles by the wall— lean, brown beasts, with Homeric chines, and two or three of them huge as the Boar of Calydon. I was minded to let off my gun at 'em, but refrained upon two considerations—the first, that if they were tame, to shoot them might compromise our welcome here, and perhaps painfully, since the dimensions of the pigs appeared to argue considerable physical strength in their masters; the second, that if wild they might be savage enough to defend themselves when attacked."

"Doubtless," said my father, "they belong to some herdsman in the forest above us, and have strayed down in search of acorns. They cannot belong to this village."

"And why, pray?"

"Because it contains not a single inhabitant. Moreover, gentlemen, while you were sleeping I have taken a pretty extensive stroll. The vineyards lie unkempt, the vines themselves unthinned, up to the edge of the forest. The olive-trees have not been tended, but have shed their fruit for years with no man to gather. Many even have cracked and fallen under the weight of their crops. But no trace of beast, wild or tame, did I discover; no dung, no signs of trampling. The valley is utterly desolate."

"It grows mushrooms," said Mr. Fett, cheerfully, piling a heap of dry twigs; "and we have ship's butter and a frying-pan."

"Are you sure," asked Mr. Badcock, examining one, "that these are true mushrooms?"

"They were grown in Corsica, and have not subscribed to the Thirty-nine Articles; still, mutatis mutandis, in my belief they are good mushrooms. If you doubt, we can easily make sure by stewing them awhile in a saucepan and stirring them with a silver spoon, or boiling them gently with Mr. Badcock's watch, as was advised by Mr. Locke, author of the famous 'Essay on the Human Understanding.'"

"Indeed?" said my father. "The passage must have escaped me."

"It does not occur in the 'Essay.' He gave the advice at Montpellier to an English family of the name of Robinson; and had they listened to him it would have robbed Micklethwaite's 'Botany of Pewsey and Devizes' of some fascinating pages."

MR. FETT'S STORY OF THE FUNGI OF MONTPELLIER.

"About the year 1677, when Mr. Locke resided at Montpellier for the benefit of his health, and while his famous 'Essay' lay as yet in the womb of futurity, there happened to be staying in the same pension an English family—"

"Excuse me," put in my father, "I do not quite gather where these people lodged."

"The sentence was faultily constructed, I admit. They were lodging in the same pension as Mr. Locke. The family consisted of a Mrs. Robinson, a widow; her son Eustace, aged seventeen; her daughter Laetitia, a child of fourteen, suffering from a slight pulmonary complaint; her son's tutor, whose name I forget for the moment, but he was a graduate of Peterhouse, Cambridge, and an ardent botanist; and a good-natured English female named Maria Wilkins, an old servant whom Mrs. Robinson had brought from home—Pewsey, in Wiltshire—to attend upon this Laetitia. The Robinsons, you gather, were well-to-do; they were even well connected; albeit their social position did not quite warrant their story being included in the late Mr. D'Arcy Smith's 'Tragedies and Vicissitudes of Our County Families.'

"It appears that the lad Eustace, perceiving that his sister's delicate health procured her some indulgences, complained of headaches, which he attributed to a too intense application upon the 'Memorabilia' of Xenophon, and cajoled his mother into packing him off with the tutor on a holiday expedition to the neighbouring mountains of Garrigues. From this they returned two days later about the time of dejeuner, with a quantity of mushrooms, which the tutor, who had discovered them, handed around for inspection, asserting them to be edible.

"The opinion of Mr. Locke being invited, that philosopher took up the position he afterwards elaborated so ingeniously, declaring that knowledge concerning these mushrooms could only be the result of experience, and suggesting that the tutor should first make proof of their innocuousness on his own person. Upon this the tutor, a priggish youth, retorted hotly that he should hope his Cambridge studies, for which his parents had pinched themselves by many small economies, had at least taught him to discriminate between the agarici. Mr. Locke in vain endeavoured to divert the conversation upon the scope and objects of a university education, and fell back on suggesting that the alleged mushrooms should be stewed, and the stew stirred with a silver spoon, when, if the spoon showed no discolouration, he would take back his opinion that they contained phosphorus in appreciable quantities. He was called an empiricist for his pains; and Mrs. Robinson (who hated a dispute and invariably melted at any allusion to the tutor's res angusta domi) weakly gave way. The mushrooms were cooked and pronounced excellent by the entire family, of whom Mrs. Robinson expired at 8.30 that evening, the tutor at 9 o'clock, the faithful domestic Wilkins and Master Eustace shortly after midnight, and an Alsatian cook, attached to the establishment, some time in the small hours. The poor child, who had partaken but sparingly, lingered until the next noon before succumbing."

"A strange fatality!" commented Mr. Badcock.

Mr. Fett paused, and eyed him awhile in frank admiration before continuing.

"The wonder to me is you didn't call it a coincidence," he murmured.

"Well, and so it was," said Mr. Badcock, "only the word didn't occur to me."

"The bodies," resumed Mr. Fett, "in accordance with the by-laws of Montpellier, were conveyed to the town mortuary, and there bestowed for the time in open coffins, connected by means of wire attachments with a bell in the roof—a municipal device against premature interment. The wires also carried a number of small bells very sensitively hung, so that the smallest movement of reviving animation would at once alarm the night-watchman in an adjoining chamber.

"This watchman, an honest fellow with literary tastes above his calling, was engaged towards midnight in reading M. de la Fontaine's 'Elegie aux Nymphes de Vaux,' when a sudden violent jangling fetched him to his feet, with every hair of his head erect and separate. Before he could collect his senses the jangling broke into a series of terrific detonations, in the midst of which the bell in the roof tolled one awful stroke and ceased.

"I leave to your imagination the sight that met his eyes when, lantern in hand, he reached the mortuary door. The collected remains, promiscuously interred next day by the municipality of Montpellier, were, at the request of a brother-in-law of Mrs. Robinson, and through the good offices of Mr. Locke, subsequently exhumed and despatched to Pewsey, where they rest under a suitable inscription, locally attributed to the pen of Mr. Locke. His admirers will recognize in the concluding lines that conscientious exactitude which ever distinguished the philosopher. They run—

"'And to the Memory of one FRITZ (? Sempach) a Humble Native of Alsace whose remains, by Destiny commingled with the foregoing, are for convenience here deposited. II. Kings iv. 39.'

"But the extraordinary part of my story, gentlemen, remains to be told. Some six weeks ago, happening, in search of a theatrical engagement, to find myself in the neighbourhood of Stonehenge, I fell in with a pedestrian whose affability of accost invited me to a closer acquaintance. He introduced himself as the Reverend Josias Micklethwaite, a student of Nature, and more particularly of the mosses and lichens of Wilts. Our liking (I have reason to believe) was mutual, and we spent a delightful ten days in tracking up together the course of the Wiltshire Avon, and afterwards in perambulating the famous forest of Savernake. Here, I regret to say, a trifling request—for the loan of five shillings, a temporary accommodation—led to a misunderstanding, and put a period to our companionship, and I remain his debtor but for some hours of profitable intercourse.

"Coming at the close of a day's ramble to Pewsey, a small town near the source of the Avon, we visited its parish churchyard and happened upon the memorial to the unfortunate Robinsons. An old man was stooping over the turf beside it, engaged in gathering mushrooms, numbers of which grew in the grass around this stone, but nowhere else in the whole enclosure. The old man, who proved to be the sexton, assured us not only of this, but also that previous to the interment of the Robinsons no mushrooms had grown within a mile of the spot. He added that, albeit regarded with abhorrence by the more superstitious inhabitants of Pewsey, the fungi were edible, and gave no trouble to ordinary digestions (his own, for example); nor upon close examination could Mr. Micklethwaite detect that they differed at all from the common agaricus campestris. So, sirs, concludes my tale."

Mr. Fett ended amid impressive silence.

"I don't feel altogether so keen-set as I did five minutes back," muttered Billy Priske.

"For my part," said Mr. Fett, anointing the gridiron with a pat of ship's butter, "I offer no remark upon it beyond the somewhat banal one by which we have all been anticipated by Hamlet. 'There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio—'."

"Faith, and so there are," broke in Nat Fiennes, catching me on a sudden by the arm. "Listen!"

High on the forest ridge, far and faint, yet clear over the pine-tops, a voice was singing.

The voice was a girl's—a girl's, or else some spirit's; for it fell to us out of the very dawn, pausing and anon dropping again in little cadences, as though upon the waft of wing; and wafted with it, wave upon wave, came also the morning scent of the macchia.

We could distinguish no words, intently though we listened, or no more than one, which sounded like Mortu, mortu, mortu, many times repeated in slow refrain before the voice lifted again to the air. But the air itself was voluble between its cadences, and the voice, though a woman's, seemed to challenge us on a high martial note, half menacing, half triumphant.

Nat Fiennes had sprung to his feet, musket in hand, when another and less romantic sound broke the silence of the near woods; and down through a glade on the slope above us, where darkness and day yet mingled in a bluish twilight under the close boughs, came scampering back the hogs described to us by Mr. Fett. Apparently they had recovered from their fright, for they came on at a shuffling gallop through the churchyard gate, nor hesitated until well within the enclosure. There, with much grunting, they drew to a standstill and eyed us, backing a little, and sidling off by twos and threes among the nettles under the wall.

"They are tame hogs run wild," said my father, after studying them for a minute. "They have lost their masters, and evidently hope we have succeeded to the care of their troughs."

He moistened a manchet of bread from his wine-flask and flung it towards them. The hogs winced away with a squeal of alarm, then took courage and rushed upon the morsel together. The most of them were lean brutes, though here and there a fat sow ran with the herd, her dugs almost brushing the ground. In colour all were reddish-brown, and the chine of each arched itself like a bent bow. Five or six carried formidable tusks.

These tusks, I think, must have struck terror in the breast of Mr. Badcock, who, as my father enticed the hogs nearer with fresh morsels of bread until they nuzzled close to us, suddenly made a motion to beat them off with the butt of his musket, whereupon the whole herd wheeled and scampered off through the gateway.

"Why, man," cried my father, angrily, "did I not tell you they were tame! And now you have lost us good provender!" He raised his gun.

But here Nat touched his arm. "Let me follow them, sir, and see which way they take. Being so tame, they have likely enough some master or herdsman up yonder—"

"Or herdswoman," I laughed. "Take me with you, Nat."

"Nay, that I won't," he answered, with a quick blush. "You have the temper of Adonis—

"'Hunting he lov'd, but love he laughed to scorn,'

"and I fear his fate of you, one little Adonis among so many boars!"

"Then take me" urged Mr. Badcock. "Indeed, sir," he apologized, turning to my father, "the movement was involuntary. I am no coward, sir, though a sudden apprehension may for the moment flush my nerves. I desire to prove to you that on second thoughts I am ready to face all the boars in Christendom."

"I did not accuse you," said my father. "But go with Mr. Fiennes if you wish."

Nat nodded, tucked his musket under his arm, and strode out of the churchyard with Mr. Badcock at his heels. By the gateway he halted a moment and listened; but the voice sang no longer from the ridge.

We watched the pair as they went up the glade, and turned to our breakfast. The meal over, my father proposed to me to return to the creek and fetch up a three days' supply of provisions from the ship, leaving Mr. Fett and Billy Priske to guard the camp. (In our confidence of finding the valley inhabited, we had brought but two pounds of ship's biscuit, one-third as much butter, and a small keg only of salt pork.)

We were absent, maybe, for two hours and a half; and on our way back fell in with Billy, who, having suffered no ill effects from his breakfast of mushrooms (though he had eaten them under protest), was roaming the meadow in search of more. We asked him if the two explorers had returned.

He answered "No," and that Mr. Fett had strolled up into the wood in search of chestnuts, leaving him sentry over the camp.

"And is it thus you keep sentry?" my father demanded.

"Why, master, since this valley has no more tenantry than Sodom or Gomorrah, cities of the plain—" Billy began confidently; but his voice trailed off under my father's frown.

"You have done ill, the pair of you," said my father, and strode ahead of us across the meadow.

At the gate of the enclosure he came to an abrupt halt.

The hogs had returned and were routing among our camp-furniture. For the rest, the churchyard was empty. But where were Nat Fiennes and Mr. Badcock, who had sallied out to follow them? And where was Mr. Fett?

We rushed upon the brutes, and drove them squealing out of the gateway leading to the woods. They took the rise of the glade at a scamper, and were lost to us in the undergrowth. We followed, shouting our comrades' names. No answer came back to us, though our voices must have carried far beyond the next ridge. For an hour we beat the wood, keeping together by my father's order, and shouting, now singly, now in chorus. Nat, likely enough, had pressed forward beyond earshot, and led Mr. Badcock on with him. But what had become of Mr. Fett, who, as Billy asseverated, had promised to take but a short stroll?

My father's frown grew darker and yet darker as the minutes wore on and still no voice answered our hailing. The sun was declining fast when he gave the order to return to camp, which we found as we had left it. We seated ourselves amid the disordered baggage, pulled out a ration apiece of salt pork and ship's bread, and ate our supper in moody silence.

During the meal Billy kept his eye furtively on my father.

"Master," said he, at the close, plucking up courage as my father filled and lit a pipe of tobacco, "I be terribly to blame."

My father puffed, without answering.

"The Lord knows whether they be safe or lost," went on Billy, desperately; "but we be safe, and those as can ought to sleep to-night."

Still my father gave no answer.

"I can't sleep, sir, with this on my conscience—no, not if I tried. Give me leave, sir, to stand sentry while you and Master Prosper take what rest you may."

"I don't know that I can trust you," said my father.

"'Twas a careless act, I'll allow. But I've a-been your servant, Sir John, for twenty-two year come nest Martinmas; and you know—or else you ought to know—that for your good opinion, being set to it, I would stand awake till I watched out every eye in my head."

My father crammed down the ashes in his pipe, and glanced back at the sun, now dropping into the fold of the glen between us and the sea.

"I will give you another chance," he said.

Thrice that night, my dreams being troubled, I awoke and stretched myself to see Billy pacing grimly in the moonlight between us and the gateway, tholing his penance. I know not what aroused me the fourth time; some sound, perhaps. The dawn was breaking, and, half-lifted on my elbow, I saw Billy, his musket still at his shoulder, halt by the gateway as if he, too, had been arrested by the sound. After a moment he turned, quite casually, and stepped outside the gate to look.

I saw him step outside. I was but half-awake, and drowsily my eyes closed and opened again with a start, expecting to see him back at his sentry-go. He had not returned.

I closed my eyes again, in no way alarmed as yet. I would give him another minute, another sixty seconds. But before I had counted thirty my ears caught a sound, and I leapt up, wide awake, and touched my father's shoulder.

He sat up, cast a glance about him, and sprang to his feet. Together we ran to the gateway.

The voice I had heard was the grunting of the hogs. They were gathered about the gateway again, and, as before, they scampered from us up the glade.

But of Billy Priske there was no sign at all. We stared at each other and rubbed our eyes; we two, left alone out of our company of six. Although the sun would not pierce to the valley for another hour, it slanted already between the pine-stems on the ridge, and above us the sky was light with another day.

And again, punctual with the dawn, over the ridge a far voice broke into singing. As before, it came to us in cadences descending to a long-drawn refrain—Mortu, mortu, mortu!

"Billy! Billy Priske!" we called, and listened.

"Mortu, mortu, mortu!" sang the voice, and died away behind the ridge.

For some time we stood and heard the hogs crashing their way through the undergrowth at the head of the glade, with a snapping and crackling of twigs, which by degrees grew fainter. This, too, died away; and, returning to our camp, we sat among the baggage and stared one another in the face.



CHAPTER XIV.

HOW BY MEANS OF HER SWINE I CAME TO CIRCE.

"So saying I took my way up from the ship and the sea-shore. But on my way, as I drew near through the glades to the home of the enchantress Circe, there met me Hermes with his golden rod, in semblance of a lad wearing youth's bloom on his lip and all youth's charm at its heyday. He clasped my hand and spake and greeted me. 'Whither away now, wretched wight, amid these mountain-summits alone and astray? And yonder in the styes of Circe, transformed to swine, thy comrades lie penned and make their lairs!'"—Odyssey, bk. X.

"Prosper," said my father, seriously, "we must return to the ship."

"I suppose so," I admitted; but with a rising temper, so that my tone contradicted him.

"It is most necessary. We are no longer an army, or even a legation."

"Nothing could be more evident. You may add, sir, that we are badly scared, the both of us. Yet I don't stomach sailing away, at any rate, until we have discovered what has happened to the others." I cast a vicious glance up at the forest.

"Good Lord, child!" my father exclaimed. "Who was suggesting it?"

"You spoke of returning to the ship."

"To be sure I did. She can work round to Ajaccio and repair. She will arrive evidently from the verge of total wreck, an ordinary trader in ballast, with nothing suspicious about her. No questions will be asked that Pomery cannot invent an answer for off-hand. She will be allowed to repair, refit, and sail for reinforcements."

"Reinforcements? But where will you find reinforcements?"

"I must rely on Gervase to provide them. Meanwhile we have work on hand. To begin with, we must clear up this mystery, which may oblige us to camp here for some time."

"O-oh!" said I.

"You do not suggest, I hope, that we can abandon our comrades, whatever has befallen them?"

"My dear father!" I protested.

"Tut, lad! I never supposed it of you. Well, it seems to me we are more likely to clear up the mystery by sitting still than by beating the woods. Do you agree?"

"To be sure," said I, "we may spare ourselves the trouble of searching for it."

"I propose then, as our first move, that we step down to the ship together and pack Captain Pomery off to Ajaccio with his orders—"

"Excuse me, sir," I interrupted. "You shall step down to the ship, while I wait here and guard the camp."

"My dear Prosper," said he, "I like the spirit of that offer: but, upon my word, I hope you won't persist in it. These misadventures, if I may confess it, get me on the raw, and I cannot leave you here alone without feeling damnably anxious."

"Trust me, sir," I answered, "I shall be at least as uncomfortable until you return. But I have an inkling that—whatever the secret may be, and whether we surprise it or it surprises us—it will wait until we are separated. Moreover, I have a theory to test. So far, every man has disappeared outside the churchyard here and somewhere on the side of the forest. The camp itself has been safe enough, and so have the meadow and the path down to the creek. You will remember that Billy was roaming the meadow for mushrooms at the very time we lost Mr. Fett: yet Billy came to no harm. To be sure, the enemy, having thinned us down to two, may venture more boldly; but if I keep the camp here while you take the path down to the creek, and nothing happens to either, we shall be narrowing the zone of danger, so to speak."

My father nodded. "You will promise me not to set foot outside the camp?"

"I will promise more," said I. "At the smallest warning I am going to let off my piece. You must not be annoyed if I fetch you back on a false alarm, or even an absurd one. I shall sit here with my musket across my knees, and half a dozen others, all loaded, close around me: and at the first sign of something wrong—at the crackling of a twig, maybe—I shall fire. You, on your way to the creek, will keep your eyes just as wide open and fire at the first hint of danger."

"I don't like it," my father persisted.

"But you see the wisdom of it," said I. "We must stay here: that's agreed. So long as we stay here we shall be desperately uncomfortable, fearing we don't know what: that also is agreed. Then, say I, for God's sake let us clear this business up and get it over."

My father nodded, stood up and shouldered his piece. I knew that his eyes were on me, and avoided meeting them, afraid for a moment that he was going to say something in praise of my courage, whereas in truth I was horribly scared. That last word or two had really expressed my terror. I desired nothing but to get the whole thing over. My hand shook so as I turned to load the first musket that I had twice to shorten my grasp of the ramrod before I could insert it in the barrel.

From the gateway leading to the lane my father watched till the loading was done.

"Good-bye and good luck, lad!" said he, and turned to go. A pace or two beyond the gateway he halted as if to add a word, but thought better of it and resumed his stride. His footsteps sounded hollow between the walls of the narrow lane. Then he reached the turf of the meadow, and the sound ceased suddenly.

I wanted—wanted desperately—to break down and run after him. By a bodily effort—something like a long pull on a rope—I held myself steady and braced my back against the bole of the ilex tree, which I had chosen because it gave a view through the gateway towards the forest. Upon this opening and the glade beyond it I kept my eyes, for the first minute or two scarcely venturing to wink, only relaxing the strain now and again for a cautious glance to right and left around the deserted enclosure. I could hear my heart working like a pump.

The enclosure—indeed the whole valley—lay deadly silent in the growing heat of the morning. On the hidden summit behind the wood a raven croaked; and as the sun mounted, a pair of buzzards, winging their way to the mountains, crossed its glare and let fall a momentary trace of shadow that touched my nerves as with a whip. But few birds haunt the Corsican bush, and to-day even these woods and this watered valley were dumb of song. No breeze sent a shiver through the grey ilexes or the still paler olives in the orchard to my right. On the slope the chestnut trees massed their foliage in heavy plumes of green, plume upon plume, wave upon wave, a still cascade of verdure held between jagged ridges of granite. Here and there the granite pushed a bare pinnacle above the trees, and over these pinnacles the air swam and quivered.

The minutes dragged by. A caterpillar let itself down by a thread from the end of the bough under which I sat, in a direct line between me and the gateway. Very slowly, while I watched him, he descended for a couple of feet, swayed a little and hung still, as if irresolute. A butterfly, after hovering for a while over the wall's dry coping, left it and fluttered aimlessly across the garth, vanishing at length into the open doorway of the church.

The church stood about thirty paces from my tree, and by turning my head to the angle of my right shoulder I looked straight into its porch. It struck me that from the shadow within it, or from one of the narrow windows, a marksman could make an easy target of me. The building had been empty over-night: no one (it was reasonable to suppose) had entered the enclosure during Billy's sentry-go; no one for a certainty had entered it since. Nevertheless, the fancy that eyes might be watching me from within the church began now to worry, and within five minutes had almost worried me into leaving my post to explore.

I repressed the impulse. I could not carry my stand of muskets with me, and to leave it unguarded would be the starkest folly. Also I had sworn to myself to keep watch on the gateway towards the forest, and this resolution must obviously be broken if I explored the church. I kept my seat, telling myself that, however the others had vanished, they had vanished in silence, and therefore all danger from gunshot might be ruled out of the reckoning.

I had scarcely calmed myself by these reflections when a noise at some distance up the glade fetched my musket halfway to my shoulder. I lowered it with a short laugh of relief as our friends the hogs came trotting downhill to the gateway.

For the moment I was glad; on second thoughts, vexed. They explained the noise and eased my immediate fear. They brought back—absurd as it may sound—a sense of companionship: for although half-wild, they showed a disposition to be sociable, and we had found that a wave of the arm sufficed to drive them off when their advances became embarrassing. On the other hand, they would certainly distract some attention which I could very ill afford to spare.

But again I calmed myself, reflecting that if any danger lurked close at hand, these friendly nuisances might give me some clue to it by their movements. They came trotting down to the entrance, halted and regarded me, pushing up their snouts and grunting as though uncertain of their welcome. Apparently reassured, they charged through, as hogs will, in a disorderly mob, rubbing their lean flanks against the gateposts, each seeming to protest with squeals against the crush to which he contributed.

One or two of the boldest came running towards me in the hope of being fed; but, seeing that I made no motion, swerved as though their courage failed them, and stood regarding me sideways with their grotesque little eyes. Finding me still unresponsive, they began to nose in the dried grasses with an affected unconcern which set me smiling; it seemed so humanlike a pretence under rebuff. The rest, as usual, dispersed under the trees and along the nettle-beds by the wall. It occurred to me that, if I let these gentlemen work round to my rear, they might distract my attention—perhaps at an awkward moment—by nosing up to the forage-bags or upsetting the camp-furniture, so with a wave of my musket I headed them back. They took the hint obediently enough, and, wheeling about, fell to rooting between me and the entrance. So I sat maybe for another five minutes, still keeping my main attention on the gateway, but with an occasional glance to right and left, to detect and warn back any fresh attempt to work round my flanks.

Now, in the act of waving my musket, I had happened to catch sight of one remarkably fine hog among the nettles, who, taking alarm with the rest, had winced away and disappeared in the rear of the church, where a narrow alley ran between it and the churchyard wall. If he followed this alley to its end, he would come into sight again around the apse and almost directly on my right flank. I kept my eye lifting towards this corner of the building, Waiting for him to reappear, which by-and-by he did, and with a truly porcine air of minding his own business and that only.

His unconcern was so admirably affected that, to test it, instead of waving him back I lifted my musket very quietly, almost without shifting my position, and brought the butt against my shoulder.

He saw the movement; for at once, even with his head down in the grasses, he hesitated and came to a full stop. Suddenly, as my fingers felt for the trigger-guard, my heart began to beat like a hammer.

There lay my danger; and in a flash I knew it, but not the extent of it. This was no hog, but a man; by the start and the quick arrested pose in which the brute faced me, still with his head low and his eyes regarding me from the grasses, I felt sure of him. But what of the others? Were they also men? If so, I was certainly lost, but I dared not turn my eyes for a glance at them. With a sudden and most natural grunt the brute backed a little, shook his head in disgust, and sidled towards the angle of the building. "Now or never," thought I, and pulled the trigger.

As the musket kicked against me I felt—I could not see—the rest of the hogs swerve in a common panic and break for the gateway. Their squealing took up the roar of the report and protracted it. They were real hogs, then.

I caught up a second musket, and, to make sure, let fly into the mass of them as they choked the gateway. Then, without waiting to see the effect of this shot, I snatched musket number three, and ran through the drifting smoke to where my first victim lay face-downwards in the grasses, his swine's mask bowed upon the forelegs crossed—as a man crosses his arms—inwards from the elbow. As I ran he lifted himself in agony on his knees—a man's knees. I saw a man's hand thrust through the paunch, ripping it asunder; and, struggling so, he rolled slowly over upon his back and lay still. I stooped and tore the mask away. A black-avised face stared up at me, livid beneath its sunburn, with filmed eyes. The eyes stared at me unwinking as I slipped his other hand easily out of its case, which, even at close view, marvellously resembled the cleft narrow hoof of a hog. I could not disengage him further, his feet being strapped into the disguise with tight leathern thongs: but having satisfied myself that he was past help, I turned on a quick thought to the gateway again, and ran.

A second hog—a real hog—lay stretched there on its side, dead as a nail. Its companions, scampering in panic, had by this time almost reached the head of the glade. Forgetting my promise to my father, I started in pursuit. The thought in my mind was that, if I kept them in sight, they would lead me to my comrades; a chance unlikely to return.

The glade ran up between two contracting spurs of the hill. As I climbed, the belt of woodland narrowed on either side of the track, until the side-valley ended in a cross ridge where the chestnuts suddenly gave place to pines and the turf to a rocky soil carpeted with pine needles. Here, in the spaces between the tree-trunks, I caught my last glimpse of the hogs as two or three of the slowest ran over the ridge and disappeared. I followed, sure of getting sight of them from the summit. But here I found myself tricked. Beyond the ridge lay a short dip—short, that is, as a bird flies. Not more than fifty yards ahead the slope rose again, strewn with granite boulders and piled masses of granite, such as in Cornwall we call "tors"; and clear away to the mountain-tops stretched a view with never a tree, but a few outstanding bushes only. Yet from ridge to ridge green vegetation filled every hollow, and in the hollow between me and the nearest the hogs were lost.

I heard, however, their grunting and the snapping of boughs in the undergrowth: and in that clear delusive air it seemed but three minutes' work to reach the next ridge. I followed then, confidently enough—and made my first acquaintance with the Corsican macchia by plunging into a cleft twenty feet deep between two rocks of granite. I did not actually fall more than a third of the distance, for I saved myself by clutching at a clematis which laced its coils, thick as a man's wrist, across the cleft. But I know that the hole cannot have been less than twenty feet deep, for I had to descend to the bottom of it to recover my musket.

That fall committed me, too. Within five minutes of my first introduction to the macchia I had learnt how easily a man may be lost in it; and in less than half of five minutes I had lost not only my way but my temper. To pursue after the hogs was nearly hopeless: all sound of them was swallowed up in the tangle of scrub. Yet I held on, crawling through thickets of lentisk, tangling my legs in creepers, pushing my head into clumps of cactus, here tearing my hands and boots on sharp granite, there ripping my clothes on prickly thorns. Once I found what appeared to be a goat-track. It led to another cleft of rock, where, beating down the briers, I looked down a chasm which ended, thirty feet below, in a whole brake of cacti. The scent of the crushed plants was divine: and I crushed a plenty of them.

After a struggle which must have lasted from twenty minutes to half an hour, I gained the ridge which had seemed but three minutes away, and there sat down to a silent lesson in geography. I had given up all hope of following the hogs or discovering my comrades. I knew now what it means to search for a needle in a bottle of hay, but with many prickles I had gathered some wisdom, and learnt that, whether I decided to go forward or to retreat, I must survey the macchia before attempting it again.

To go forward without a clue would be folly, as well as unfair to my father, whom my two shots must have alarmed. I decided therefore to retreat, but first to mount a craggy pile of granite some fifty yards on my left, which would give me not only a better survey of the bush, but perhaps even a view over the tree-tops and down upon the bay where the Gauntlet lay at anchor. If so, by the movements on board I might learn whether or not my father had reached her with his commands before taking my alarm.

The crags were not easy to climb: but, having hitched the musket in my bandolier, I could use both hands, and so pulled myself up by the creepers which festooned the rock here and there in swags as thick as the Gauntlet's hawser. Disappointment met me on the summit. The trees allowed me but sight of the blue horizon; they still hid the shores of the bay and our anchorage. My eminence, however, showed me a track, fairly well defined, crossing the macchia and leading back to the wood.

I was conning this when a shout in my rear fetched me right-about face. Towards me, down and across the farther ridge I saw a man running—Nat Fiennes!

He had caught sight of me on my rock against the skyline, and as he ran he waved his arms frantically, motioning to me to run also for the woods. I could see no pursuer; but still, as he came on, his arms waved, and were waving yet when a bush on the chine above him threw out a little puff of grey smoke. Toppling headlong into the bushes he was lost to me even before the report rang on my ears across the hollow.

I dropped on my knees for a grip on the creepers, swung myself down the face of the crag, and within ten seconds was lost in the macchia again, fighting my way through it to the spot where Nat lay. Wherever the scrub parted and allowed me a glimpse I kept my eye on the bush above the chine; and so, with torn clothes and face and hands bleeding, crossed the dip, mounted the slope and emerged upon a ferny hollow ringed about on three sides with the macchia. There face-downward in the fern lay Nat, shot through the lungs.

I lifted him against one knee. His eyelids flickered and his lips moved to speak, but a rush of blood choked him. Still resting him against my knee, I felt behind me for my musket. The flint was gone from the lock, dislodged no doubt by a blow against the crags. With one hand I groped on the ground for a stone to replace it. My fingers found only a tangle of dry fern, and glancing up at the ridge, I stared straight along the barrel of a musket. At the same moment a second barrel glimmered out between the bushes on my left. "Signore, favorisca di rendersi," said a voice, very quiet and polite. I stared around me, hopeless, at bay: and while I stared and clutched my useless gun, from behind a rock some twenty paces up the slope a girl stepped forward, halted, rested the butt of her musket on the stone, and, crossing her hands above the nozzle of it, calmly regarded us.

Even in my rage her extraordinary wild beauty held me at gaze for a moment. She wore over a loose white shirt a short waist-tunic of faded green velvet, with a petticoat or kilt of the same reaching a little below her knees, from which to the ankles her legs were cased in tight-fitting leathern gaiters. Her stout boots shone with toe-plates of silver or polished steel. A sad-coloured handkerchief protected her head, its edge drawn straight across her brow in a fashion that would have disfigured ninety-nine women in a hundred. But no head-dress availed to disfigure that brow or the young imperious eyes beneath it.

"Are you a friend of this man?" she asked in Italian.

"He is my best friend," I answered her, in the same language. "Why have you done this to him?"

She seemed to consider for a moment, thoughtfully, without pity.

"I can talk to you in French if you find it easier," she said, after a pause.

"You may use Italian," I answered angrily. "I can understand it more easily than you will use it to explain why you have done this wickedness."

"He was very foolish," she said. "He tried to run away. And you were all very foolish to come as you did. We saw your ship while you were yet four leagues at sea. How have you come here?"

"I came here," answered I, "being led by your hogs, and after shooting an assassin in disguise of a hog."

"You have killed Giuseppe?"

"I did my best," said I, turning and addressing myself to three Corsicans who had stepped from the bushes around me. "But whatever your purpose may be, you have shot my friend here, and he is dying. If you have hearts, deal tenderly with him, and afterwards we can talk."

"He says well," said the girl, slowly, and nodded to the three men. "Lift him and bring him to the camp." She turned to me. "You will not resist?" she asked.

"I will go with my friend," said I.

"That is good. You may walk behind me," she said, turning on her heel. "I am glad to have met one who talks in Italian, for the rest of your friends can only chatter in English, a tongue which I do not understand. Step close behind me, please; for the way is narrow. For what are you waiting?"