A sky of liquid blue freighted with lazy argosies of clouds; the green lift of the Hoe under, like England on its feet to cry them God speed; drums and fiddles sounding on the quay; sunshine and merriment and colour in infinite variety coming up from the water and going down to it; beyond all, the ships themselves, resplendent painted craft, beflagged and picture-sailed, webbed with glistening shrouds, their fighting tops streaming blood-red pennons, like giant beacons alive with tongues of flame, their prows and side galleries minutely carved and frosted with gilding, coats of arms emblazoned on their poops, eyes of excitement appearing even in their port-holes, where each gun seemed to have thrust up its own little window to peep forth and see what all the fun was about—so, to such views and accompaniments, was brazen Adventure launched in Brion’s day, and so had been his. He had found it all very right and inspiring. He could have seen no reason in the world why serious business should go clothed in drab raiment, as if it feared the issue. Colour had its definite value in the scheme of things, and limbs were no less sturdy nor hearts strong because silk and velvet covered them. There was tough oak under the gilding, as there was invincible valour under the bright feathers and doublets, the shining morions and breastplates. Enterprise, it was felt, lost nothing in a brave send-off, nor would lose again, for all that the ships which now weighed so gallantly should come staggering back to their moorings, after long months of adventure, soiled, battered, befouled, stripped to the very bedrock of their unconquerable stubbornness.

So—ships and music and cheering crowds and dancing water and blue sky and green hills—Brion had seen the picture, and gone down into it and become part of it, until the world was suddenly moving before his eyes, and he had discovered that it was not it that was leaving him but he it. It sounds simple, but it was a wonderful discovery: so also was that which shortly presented himself to himself as something immeasurably small and insignificant, the result of a first experience on the open sea. On land he had had his own little place, which he could always shift at will: here his will was the will of the mutable waters which bore him helpless on their surface. The feeling had a little shocked him in its first realisation; but he had quickly come to appreciate it at its better worth. He had nothing any longer to fret or worry him, because it was quite useless to fret or feel anxiety about anything. As an individual responsible to himself for his actions he had ceased to count; the whole business of himself had been taken over by Destiny. All sense of care seemed to slip away wonderfully under that conviction, he felt in a manner the joy of one suddenly disembodied.

They weighed and sailed on that bright morning of the 9th April, seven of them in all, to wit the Tiger of 140 tons, which was the Admiral’s ship, the Roebuck, a fly-boat of like burden, but built for speed and narrow waters, the Lion of 100 tons, the Elizabeth of 50, and a barque, the Dorothy, with a couple of small pinnaces for light work. Strictly, it was Sir Walter’s most personal adventure, he chiefly financing it and supplying the majority of the craft; but for reasons already given he did not accompany his own enterprise, though he was there to cheer it on its way. He had come down into that part of the county to attend the wedding of the Mayor of Plymouth—no less a man than the great Francis Drake himself, who had just seized an interval in his abounding duties to marry, for his second wife, the young Mistress Sydenham, heiress to a knightly Somersetshire family—and had taken advantage of his proximity to Plymouth to kill two birds with one stone. He had a great confidence in his brother-in-law, Sir Richard Grenville, to whom he had deputed the command of the expedition, and bade Brion observe him for his excellences as a navigator and a leader of men combined, which made him the ideal character for such an undertaking. All which Brion was quite ready to believe, without unduly criticizing the qualities which made a man what he was; and, indeed, if Sir Richard’s tongue was rough to brutality, he kept the smooth side of it in a quite wonderful way for the young man, for whom he seemed to entertain a curious liking, the first of which he showed by nominating both him and Clerivault to a berth on his own flag-ship, which was a roomy vessel for those days, and well appointed, though lacking in much of the luxury which was an ostentation with some of the famous captains of the time. Even the incomparable Drake had not been guiltless of it, and the Admiral used to inveigh with a fierce scorn against the silver-engraved plate, and the demulcent lutes and violins, and the silken cushions and stifling perfumes with which that mighty sailor had thought fit to furnish his cabin in the Pelican. There were no perfumes on the Tiger, save of burning gunpowder; but sharp claws and fierce colouring, as was martial and fitting. She carried ten guns a side, and two on her upper deck, and was ready for her spring at any time, though not an ounce of silver adorned either her table or her musket-locks. Music there might be in moderation, since you could not keep natural songsters from singing; but Grenville would have none of it in his own quarters, not even on the offer of young Anthony Russe, who was a gentleman adventurer like Brion, and had a voice like a merry bird’s. He was a captivating young fellow, was this Anthony, one of the few whom Brion had already met in London, and the two soon attached themselves to one another and became fast friends. Attachment, indeed, was a common condition of that life, for what with the colonists, who numbered 108 males in all, and with the crews, and supervisors, and fighting men, the vessels had all that they could pack, though the Admiral’s ship was less crowded than the others. But, fortunately for comfort, the voyage was destined to be, almost from start to finish, a prosperous one, and the only sharp storm they encountered was early met with and soon weathered. They caught it in the Bay of Portugal, which they had reached in three days from the start with a fair following wind, and Brion and Master Anthony were sick and sorry youths until they had rendered unto Cæsar the things that were Cæsar’s, and emerged vacant but happy from that chastening ordeal. Thereafter a smooth run of a couple of days brought them to the Canaries, whence they shaped their course south-west for the little Antilles and the island of Dominica, which they made on the seventh of May, after a happy but eventless passage across the Atlantic.

All this, the sights and sounds, the abounding freedom of the life, the foreign ports and foreign people, was to Brion, after the somewhat narrow restrictions of his custom, an incessant novelty and delight. Only one thing so far was wanting to his and to the general content—they had encountered no Spaniard with whom to pick a quarrel on any or no terms, and plain sailing, though pleasant enough in itself, was mere mariners’ satisfaction without that crowning grace to spice it.

This shocking lack of trouble was a subject for discussion one evening between the two young gentlemen, when the fleet had just sailed from Dominica on a north-westerly course. They sat high on the poop-deck where the great horn lanterns were, and in dolefully sarcastic vein acclaimed the perfections of the peace which surrounded them. It was a heavenly evening, indeed; born of the dreams of the south sea, whose bosom, like the bosom of the sleeping beauty, placidly rose and fell to her ‘tender-taken breath’: a dream of crystal air and golden water; of a sun hanging like a bubble of blown amber above the Western horizon; of a surface so still that the ships in their deep reflections seemed as if melting and dissolving into the placid fire which they rode, with scarce enough way on them to keep their steersmen awake. Brion and Master Anthony had supped exuberantly, and, after the way of youth under such circumstances, were in voluble mood. They had come up on deck to escape the reek of the confined cabin, where the Admiral’s company, professional and civilian, still hung about the table over their wine. Anthony had his lute with him, and thrummed it indifferently to extempore recitative or broken scraps of song.

‘What about?’ said Brion.

‘About the beauties of a quiet life, to be sure,’ answered the musician. ‘Do you not thank your stars for them? I met our general this morning. “Sir,” says I, “we should be your grateful servants.” “For what?” says he. “For taking us from the fighting turmoil of our civil lives,” says I, “and showing us the blessings of a bloodless tranquillity.”’

‘And what did he answer?’

‘Why, I blush for him. He said that if I was looking for trouble he could accommodate me then and there. Poor little Tony!

‘Well, are you not hard to please?’

‘Don’t ask me. I am little John Nobody that durst not speak.’

‘What is it you want?’

‘Never mind. I am little John Nobody that durst not speak.’

‘Is it trouble?’

‘No, peace, of course. But then I am little John Nobody.

But I durst not speak.’

A dark form came up the stairs, and stood lankly silhouetted against the glowing sky.

‘Is that you, Master Clerivault?’ asked the singer. ‘Is not this peace a lovely thing?’

‘A lovely thing, Sir.’

‘We are well rewarded in it for our enterprise?’

‘Very well rewarded, Sir.’

‘And, so it could last continually, we might count ourselves the very blest of Providence?’

‘God’s ’slid, Sir—I think so.’

‘Look you, Master Clerivault! is not that a Spanish sail under the sun?’

Clerivault spun round. Brion scrambled to his feet:—

‘Where, Tony—where, o’ God’s name?’

‘No, I was mistaken: it was a mosquito on my nose. But, how thankful we should be!’

Brion threw himself upon him and the two struggled and rolled on the deck together. Presently Tony emerged, and, sitting up dishevelled, blew out an eldritch shriek, at the moment that a party, coming from the cabin, set foot on the poop.

‘Who was that?’ said Grenville’s deep voice.

‘’Twas little Johnny Nobody,’ murmured the culprit.

‘O! it’s you, Master Russe,’ said the General. ‘Still looking for trouble?’

‘No, he has just found it, Sir Richard,’ said Brion. ‘A mosquito hath bit his nose.’

Grenville gave a gruff laugh:—

‘All that? By the token, a prick from a Spanish-pike should bring a cry from him to split our mainsail.’

But he liked the boy well enough, and could appreciate at its worth the spirit which chafed under such tame inaction.

Still the fine weather held, while they ran up the Leeward Islands under a halcyon sky, making for St John’s, in the Virgin group, where was reported to be a Spanish settlement. On the 10th May they dropped anchor under the green shores of a little island called Cotesa, a day’s run from St John’s, and there landed, rejoiced to stretch their cramped limbs, and spent the day in rest and pleasant feasting; whence, resuming their course on the 12th they reached St John’s itself, and coming to anchor in a small bay of the island, called the Bay of Mosquitos, at a falcon’s shot from the beach, prepared for the first time for a show of business. Here the best part of the company, going ashore, engaged to throw up a temporary fort, in view of any possible mischief which might be designed them, seeing the nature of their mission, and how the Spaniards, deeming themselves owners of the New World, might desire to nip in the bud any such invasion of their self-elected privileges. And here Brion got his first true estimate of the forceful and tyrannical character of their commander; for Sir Richard, the moment hard action was called for, neither spared nor considered his men at anything less than the utmost which by oaths and violence he could wring out of them. Despatch was necessary, and despatch he would have, even to the exhaustion in such tropic heat of many of the crew. But the result was he got his fort built timely—though much of the wood for it had to be felled and fetched on trucks from a point three miles and more inland—and all the while till it was finished not a Spaniard showed his face. It was set against the estuary of a shallow river which here ran into the sea, and, having its back to the ocean, was encompassed on its two remaining sides with thick woodland. And now, his fort once completed, Sir Richard began to put into effect a design of his, which was to fashion within its shelter yet a third pinnace out of the timber brought down; which was done in something over ten days, and fitted and launched.

During all this time, until the 24th of the month, on which day the company departed from the island, only desultory acquaintance with the Spanish settlers was made. On the 16th there appeared for the first time a party of eight of them, horsemen, who rode out of the woods, and halted at a quarter mile distance to survey the fort; but on ten shot of the Admiral’s force being detached to approach them, they wheeled and galloped away.

Six days later again a body numbering twenty mounted Spaniards appeared on the other side of the river; seeing whom Sir Richard despatched a score of footmen to oppose them, together with two mounted on a couple of horses which had been found and seized on the island. And these two were no other than our young gallants, to whom had been deputed the glad task of leadership in a possible fray.

‘Look for trouble, but invite it not,’ were Sir Richard’s sole directions; and the couple went off rejoicing, proud of the trust committed to them, and so far resolved, within discretion, not to abuse it. But at the very outset their hearts fell, for there were the Spaniards already showing a flag of truce, and making signs for a parley.

‘They will not fight,’ said Brion, ‘unless by our will.’

‘I am little Johnny Nobody, and in your hands,’ said Tony.

Two of the Spaniards rode out upon the sands, where the river ran thin and scattered, and Brion and his companion pricked over to meet them. They were typical Southerners, lean and hot-eyed as hawks, but lavish in the sort of courtly ceremonial which precedes a duel to the death with rapiers. One of them spoke quite good English, and it was he addressed himself to the strangers. He opened with elaborate salutations:—

‘Greetings, senores. We make you many welcome to St John’s.’

Brion thanked him, with a return of his courtesy.

‘We take your welcome in good part, Sir,’ said he.

‘Ah!’ said the Spaniard; ‘but not in the best part, since you come to fortify against us in our own land.’

‘It is the mosquitos we wanted to keep out,’ said Brion politely. ‘They are very fierce in this island of yours, Sir.’

Young Russe could not repress a small explosion; but the Spaniard remained as solemn as a church.

‘It is not well, senor,’ he said, ‘so to requite our hospitality.’

‘It is the first we have heard of it,’ said Brion. ‘May I ask, senor, does it extend to supplying us with some things of which we stand in need—fresh meat and water among others?’

‘If I say no, senor, you will seize these things by force, is it so?’

‘The answer, I am afraid, senor, is that we shall.’

The Spaniard considered gravely.

‘Bien está,’ he said at last. ‘We will supply you then all you want, and without delaying. I go, senor, to make the instant provision.’

He bowed profoundly, and drew on his rein.

‘Why wouldn’t the hidalgo fight?’ said Russe discontentedly as they rode back.

‘I wouldn’t answer for him yet,’ said Brion.

The General received their report with a grumph, which might have meant satisfaction or incredulity. He bided his time, it seemed. On the following day the new pinnace was launched; and the day after, having in the meanwhile heard or seen nothing of the Spaniards, he marched a considerable company some four miles into the country, to discover, if he might, the reason of the delay; when, failing to obtain any sort of report or satisfaction, out of revenge for the bad faith kept, he fired all the woods thereabouts—which Brion thought privily a mean and senseless action—and so returned to the fort, which he fired also, thereafter re-embarking all his force in preparation to sail the next morning, which was done.

And now, as if in truth Honour gave into his hands the means by which to retaliate on that abuse of her, about evening of the same day they fell in with a Spanish frigate, which, having approached cautiously, they discovered to be abandoned of her crew in a panic at the mere sight of the English flotilla, so that she fell an easy prize to the Admiral: and so was she scarce seized and manned when early in the following morning a second frigate was seen and overtaken, and surrendered without a blow, being found richly freighted, and with some passengers of account in her, who were presently fain to pay ransom in a good round sum for the privilege of their being set ashore on St John’s. Sir Richard despatched these to the island, in one of the new-taken vessels, under custody of Master Ralph Lane—who was the Governor appointed for the forthcoming colony—with orders to this his Lieutenant to proceed to Roxo Bay, on the south-west side, and thence procure salt, of which the fleet stood in need. Which, under the guidance of a Spanish pilot seized on the frigate, Master Lane successfully accomplished, landing on the sands, with a party of twenty men, and immediately entrenching himself about one of the salt-hills, from which he took as much as he required. While so at work a great troop of Spaniards, both horse and foot, came down above the shore as if to dispute the appropriation. But it seemed they durst not advance any further, but contented themselves with watching the spoliation at a distance, and making menacing gestures which counted for nothing. Yet were they in number more than two to one, and many of them mounted, which set Brion, who had been allowed, on his own earnest solicitation, to join this little subsidiary expedition, thinking of what it was that constituted a conquering race. An Englishman, he observed, dared in proportion as the odds were against him, while a Spaniard would dare nothing unless the odds were overwhelmingly in his favour.

He and his friend were by now in a state of high excitement over the turn of events, and looked from this time to taking nothing less than a ship a day. But in that, alas! they were doomed to disappointment; for, so it happened, only once more in all the voyage were they destined to encounter a Spanish vessel, and then to such sorrowful result as regarded Brion’s happiness that he would have given all the fortune of the past to avert this one blow, could he have foreseen it.

In the meantime, and lacking any signal adventure to recount, the record of the voyage must be condensed. Generally, so far as impressions were concerned, it was to the young traveller one glowing panorama of hot fertile lands and strange races; of aromatic foliage and splendid flowers and luscious fruits; of maize, millet, cassava, plantains, cocoa-nuts, mangoes, yams and pineapples; of game and fish in prodigious abundance; of tropical heats and the ugly sweltering things engendered of them—scorpions, and great toads and lizards, and the malignant mosquitos, which had signalised their departure from St John’s with such an attack in force as had completely routed the invaders, and sent them at the last flying for their ships as if the fourth plague of Egypt were let loose on them.

On the first day of June they came to the great island of Hispaniola, or Little Spain, and, coasting along its northern shore, cast anchor off Isabella, which was the seat of the Spanish settlement, and sent up courteously to notify the Governor of their arrival. Who, having received flattering reports of the General’s chivalry and hospitality to sundry of his countrymen who had been entertained by him, presently, in a day or two, came down to the shore with a score of his gentlemen, with their negroes and servants and a corpulent Spanish priest, all being ready to exchange amenities with the strangers, and to eschew as for the occasion the least thought of mistrust or hostility. And if, on the Spaniard’s part, that was to make a virtue of necessity, certainly they made it, and with a handsome grace and dignity which were all their own, not even being impaired by the sight of the prizes which lay off the shore in full view for any who might to remark. But gentleman fraternised with gentleman, and fellow with fellow, and harmony was the order of the day. The sailors built two spacious bowers of green branches, and thereunder entertained the Spaniards to the best the ships could afford; which the priest found so well, indeed, that under the influence of a ben-bowse, as the seamen called it, he offered to absolve every heretic of them all, and afterwards fell asleep with his head in a dish of custard. After the feast, the Spaniards, not to be outdone in civility, organised a hunt for their visitors, mounting such as would on good horses, and having a herd of white bulls driven down from the hills, from which they selected three that offered good sport. These then they chased for a space of three hours, when all were killed, whereafter the whole company went to rest and wine, well satisfied. An exchange of gifts followed, many handsome presents being bestowed on either side; and on the following day ensued the more serious business of barter, the Englishmen acquiring by way of truck or purchase a quantity of live-stock, besides sugar, ginger, pearls, and some bales of the tobacco then first coming into vogue.

So, with seeming goodwill, whatever secret passions underlay these courtesies, the last compliments were paid, and on the seventh of the month the fleet weighed and departed.

The next day nearly saw the end of the Admiral and some others, among whom were Brion and young Russe, with him. For having rowed in one of the pinnaces to a little island reported to contain seals, they were capsized, trying to land, in the heavy surf, and only escaped through the boat fortuitously righting itself at the critical moment. Thence, still keeping a north-westerly course, they touched at Caicos in the Bahamas, and afterwards at various small islands, until, on the 20th, they fell in with the main of Florida. Sailing therefrom up the coast, on the 23rd, the wind rising with a rough gray sea, they came to within an ace of being wrecked on the point known as Cape Fear, but more by good luck than good seamanship weathered the promontory, and ran to smooth anchorage in a little harbour beyond, which was so full of fish that the morning following, the wind and sea having abated in the interval, as many were caught in one tide as would have supplied all London for a week. And so, two days later, they sighted the land of North Carolina, as it was presently to be called, and running up in shoal water under slack sail to the island of Roanoke, which lay like a long reef or rampart to the main, cast anchor off a place called Wococon, and knew the first part of their business successfully accomplished.

The rest, from Brion’s point of view, appeared all a grotesque gallanty-show, in which the pieces and the action moved according to some fantastic law having no known relation to a man’s normal experiences. It was an absorbing, yet, somehow, an unearthly dream of expeditions made in the ships’ boats up steaming rivers to barbarous kraals miscalled towns; of oily brick-red skins clothed in hides like chasubles; of beads and wampum; of mahogany-faced warriors, and squaws with their long black hair bound in chaplets of white coral, and carcanets of pearls, sometimes, hanging from the lobes of their ears; of councils and calumets and pow-wows and tomtoms. The ostensible object of all the palaver was to flatter the local monarch, one Wingina, into suffering the settlement within his territory of a band of foreign interlopers, and so consolidating a sort of provisional agreement said to have been made with him by the Captains Amadas and Barlowe who had conducted the expedition of the year before. It was an early example, in fact, of the peaceful penetration which has not the least intention of taking no for an answer, and was characterised by all the blunders common to that state of mind. The force which was resolved to insist had not the wit to disguise itself, and at the first sign of opposition betrayed its real purpose. It happened in this way. The expedition inland in the boats, which were four in number, and all fully manned, armed, and victualled for a week’s trip, came by the so-called towns of Pomeiok, Aquascogok and Secotan, and was well entertained by the savages in all places. But it so happened that, at the second-named, a silver cup belonging to the Admiral was stolen by a redskin, and not being delivered to him, as he had demanded, on his return, Sir Richard, in his swift, relentless way, burned and spoiled the town and the crops standing about it, so that the place was made a waste and all its people fled. Now the savages had hitherto behaved with great forbearance and hospitality, so that hardly a day passed but what they had brought for the fleet offerings of fat bucks, conies, hares, fish, and divers gourds and fruits, and this was their return. What could they think, then, of the true meaning of this ‘peaceful penetration,’ but that it was the first insidious step towards their own ousting and perhaps extermination? The consequences were what any but a blunder-headed martinet might have foreseen. So long as the show of force remained to overawe them, the natives maintained an hypocritical attitude of friendliness and conciliation; the moment the same was withdrawn, they vented their spite and fury upon the colonists remaining, so starving and harassing them that the poor men were glad to seize an opportunity to escape at the end of a year, while some subsequent attempts by others to procure a footing in the land met with even worse disaster, all engaged in them being attacked by the savages and miserably slain, only their bones remaining stark on the beach to witness to their fate.

Brion, who with his friend and Clerivault was present at that deed of wanton destruction, had the sense and the humanity to deplore its folly as much as its wickedness.

‘It is not so,’ he said, ‘that we shall establish our lady’s fame for reason and sweet justice. He wrongs us as much as the land he misrepresents.’

‘We shall leave but footprints of sorrow where we came with palms of love,’ said Clerivault, in a melancholy voice. ‘May God forgive us!’

‘And these poor devils, the colonists,’ quoth Master Russe, ‘who will have to reap what we have sown.’

However, the mischief was done, and no talking could mend it. Its immediate effect, even, was to produce in the savages an increased show of deference and propitiation, of the sort wholly to deceive so poor a psychologist as the Admiral. He imagined them definitely cowed, and on that supposition acted with an arrogance which hitherto he had made shift to repress. The rest of the history of the expedition consisted of establishing the colonists in the land, with the stores and victuals brought for their accommodation; of cruisings and explorations up and down the coast; of interviews with the king’s brother, Grangino, and of one with Wingina himself, whom the Admiral, taking a strong escort with him, travelled to see in his own savage capital of Weapomeiok. Brion was not invited to this excursion; but he had plenty otherwise to engage and interest him in the way of divers sport on land and water, and of keenly observing and studying the habits and customs of the strange people among whom a curious fate had cast him.

So the time of their stay drew to an end, being from first to last two whole months while they lay and cruised off the coast; and on the 25th August the Tiger, much lightened, weighed anchor—the rest of the fleet having been sent on some twenty days ahead—and set her sails for home.

CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE TAKING OF THE CARACK

‘What ails thee, melancholy wight?’

Brion gazed, with that smiling question, into Clerivault’s eyes. The ship was six days out on the broad Atlantic, running before a westerly breeze in hazy weather, and they looked over the gray unpeopled waste of waters and thought of home.

Clerivault heaved up his lean shoulders with a sort of renunciatory sigh.

‘Nothing ails me, sweetheart—and yet nothing may be a sad complaint.’

‘I’faith you’re cryptic. How does this illness of nothing take you?’

‘In the heart, Sir. It is a void, a blankness, an unfulfilment. It is the word for wasted opportunities, for frustrate hopes, for the thing that should have been but was not. I have known it much infecting the Law; and it may be I carried the seed of it in me to curse our high emprise.’

‘What stuff is this?’

‘Is it stuff?’

‘Fustian, I doubt not. Come, sad soul’—he put a hand cheerily on the poor fellow’s shoulder—‘be of good heart. These are empty humours, that come of nothing. The seed in thee was never no man’s curse.’

Clerivault shook his head. For some days past he had been in a curiously dejected mood, silent and low-spirited. Often Brion had caught him with his eyes fixed upon him in a yearning wistful way, the meaning of which he could in no wise interpret. But it made him uneasy. Was the dear man sickening for something, he wondered? The thought gave him a queer turn. He had never even put to himself what the loss of Clerivault might, would mean to him; he had never so much as associated the image of death with that tough, wiry constitution. Nor would he now: merely to think of it seemed to bring the Impossible within the bounds of startling Possibility.

‘You do not feel ill, do you,’ he asked anxiously—‘in body, I mean?’

‘Never sounder, Sir.’

‘Then, what sick fancy is this? Has our enterprise proved a failure? Ask our Admiral what he thinks of it.’

The wild eyes opened at that, with a spark of fury in them.

‘Hark ye, Sir. His England is not my England. I’ll not take his word for that success. What blows we have struck have been against, not for, my England. Will her gentle heart not hate me for it?’

‘O, Clerivault, my dear! I see what haunts your mind. Well, we took no hand in those same felon blows.’

‘Should we not have rather—to counter and invalidate them?’

‘Ay, if we were resolved to meet with Master Doughty’s fate.’

‘So would our England at least have known us for her true lovers; so would the professed passion of our hearts for her have been vindicated. Now I return to her in shame, a discredited champion, whom she will never wish to trust again.’

‘O, this is foolish! What could we do in reason but what we have done? Treachery to our friends would not have sweetened England’s name.’

The paragon sighed profoundly.

‘That may be so,’ said he: ‘yet would I fain have struck one blow for her in our own right way, though I died for it.’

‘No need to talk of dying.’

‘What; would you miss me, sweetheart?’

‘Peace, thou dear old croaker!’

‘And my good master would miss me. Sometimes I think we should never have left him.’

Brion frowned. Those words touched a certain disquiet which had already more than once come to darken his own mind.

‘Well,’ he said, a little fretfully, ‘not the Fates can make us walk in our own footsteps backwards. If we have done wrong, we are speeding to retrieve it.’

‘Nay’—the eyes softened lovingly—‘I meant no blame to thee, sweetling. Yet that is a strange thought of thine. Is Death indeed returning to that home of Time from which we started; and Hell, perhaps, retracing all our sins in loathing of them?’

The look-out in the foretop shouted suddenly a sail. The two started and turned to the loud cry: and there, forged unexpectedly out of the mists on their larboard bow, rode a huge carack. She was so close, within a mile or two, that it seemed she must have blundered half-asleep into their ken; or perhaps, like some majestic leviathan, had disdained to alter her course for such insignificant fry. She swam as if deep-laden, flying the Spanish colours, and her burden was 300 tons, if an ounce.

In a moment the Tiger’s deck was swarming, and the Admiral’s orders issued sharp and violent. He grunted with satisfaction, rubbing his hands. Here was amends for much inglorious trafficing for one who, according to a contemporary chronicler, was ‘very unquiet in his mind, and greatly affected to war,’ and who would always rather, in a question of acquisition, plunder than barter. Nor were those he commanded less excited over the prospect than himself. At a breath all peevish humours were forgotten, all mortuary moods and talk of death and failure. The light of battle sprang to Clerivault’s eyes; with a silent clap of his hand on Brion’s shoulder, he hurried below to equip himself for the coming fray. Russe passed him, hastening to his friend’s side. ‘Good sooth, a monster!’ he said: ‘and with a double row of teeth, like a shark. There will be some credit in capturing her.’ He never doubted the issue. It was the spirit destined to wrest from the Spaniard his long undisputed sovereignty of the seas.

They luffed and made for the stranger, overhauling her hand over hand. In the light wind blowing they sailed two knots for her one. Every soul on board stood at the prick of expectancy; each gunner waited at his piece, linstock in hand. At long range they bore up and held away, running parallel with, but a little abaft, the carack, which kept her course, as if in stately indifference. At that distance she towered above them, a very behemoth of the deep. Suddenly there was a double flash from her sides, a slam, and a rending crash. A spout of splinters went up from the Tiger, almost under Brion’s feet, it seemed. A human scream or two, mingling horribly with the uproar, for an instant rocked his heart; and then fury and fire, as if over some damnable wickedness, blazed in his blood. He saw red, and screeched with frenzied triumph as the Tiger, shooting abeam of the other, ran up her blazing ensign, and simultaneously delivered her whole larboard broadside into the quivering hull of the monster; then yawed, and, letting the enemy forge ahead, passed under her stern, and gave her the other broadside full through her cabin windows, raking her fore and aft, and making her stagger as if she had struck on a rock.

And now was witnessed an example of the tactics which afterwards came to be used to such profit in the English game of sea-war; the nimble-heeled Tiger manœuvring so deftly about her unwieldy adversary as to allow her no breathing time for reflection, or power to shift her range, so that most of her shots, sped wildly, flew over her indefatigable tormentor, or, at best, smacked through her rigging, while every broadside driven home into herself tore her vitals to pieces. It was the game of the whale and sword-fish—seamanship versus mere weight of wood and metal, and had the inevitable ending. In the thick of the fury, when coming about for another swoop and stab, a roaring cheer went up from the Tiger; and there was the Spaniard’s ensign fluttering down, and the mighty prize was won.

As the noise subsided, the Admiral bade Master Thomas Candish, who was his shipmaster, to put his helm up and slip under the quarter of the carack; and thereat a lamentable discovery was made. For it appeared that the very last shot which the enemy had fired had carried away the best part of the Tiger’s rudder, so that she would not answer to her helm, and was become virtually unmanageable. Slowly, as the reek and fume of the guns dissipated, the ships fell apart—and the Tiger had not a boat left to her name. The Admiral stamped and swore like a maniac. By God, he would not lose her, though every member of the crew had to swim to take possession. He cursed in a very frenzy, striding up and down the deck, like some maddened marooned thing, watching the distance widen—when someone had an inspiration. Why not an extempore raft? He jumped at the suggestion, roaring at the man who had spoken to start and give effect to his idea, instead of gaping there like a bran-stuffed quocker-wodger. In a moment planks and empty chests were being hurried up, and lowered into the water, and bound into some hasty semblance of a raft. It was a crazy insecure contrivance, but enough for the temper of the moment. Before it was well finished Sir Richard was on board, and Brion and Tony had tumbled down beside him. A score of others followed, and the frail craft put off, urged on its way by hurriedly improvised sweeps. The waves jeered at and buffeted it, it laboured and wallowed; but still it made way. If the Spaniards had had any evil left in them, they might have sunk it with a single shot. But they had lost, it seemed, all stomach for the fight. The ridiculous thing lobbed on, sluggish and scarce manageable. It began to gape and cast its lashings—still it lobbed on. Its boards were actually parting as it drifted, rather than was directed, against the Spaniard’s side, and ropes and ladders were lowered for its crew to board by. To such a right and chastened frame of mind had terror of English guns and seamanship brought the once overbearing Don.

The prize proved to be the Santa Anna, homeward bound from Hispaniola, with a full cargo of mahogany, dye-woods and cotton, and carrying also a quantity of pearls and specie—altogether a very valuable seizure. She was in a dreadful state from the guns—dead and mangled bodies lying everywhere, and all the splendour of her interior fabric knocked into blackened splinters. The sight revolted Brion, and cured for the time being his battle-fever. But he was not allowed long to be affected by it, for the Admiral sent him off in one of the ship’s boats to desire Mr Candish to take command of the Tiger during his absence, for that he himself purposed to remain on the prize and navigate her into port. The young man was glad to escape, and without stipulating that he should be permitted to return and rejoin his leader on the Santa Anna. He preferred the thought of the Tiger, even without the companionship of Anthony Russe.

He had boarded, and given his message to the shipmaster, when some one came to him to say that Master Clerivault, who had been wounded in the fight and lay below, was incessantly crying for him, and that if he wished to see the man alive he had better come at once.

An instant hand of ice seemed laid on Brion’s heart. He stared as if he were the victim of some shocking insult. In the fury of the contest he had lost all sense of individuality or personal association: he had not given one thought to Clerivault since that cry of the foretopman had sent them apart to prepare for the crash. Since, if he had assumed anything, it was that his old friend and comrade was somewhere near him, following in his footsteps, sharing his blood-drunken enthusiasm. And instead——

All the melancholy and foreboding of the last few days rushed back upon him with overwhelming force. To this it had tended, then; thither had the fatal finger, that he would not recognize, been pointing all the time. With a long-drawn gasp, he motioned to his informant, and the two hurried below together.

They had laid him on a table in the forecastle, near by where he had received his injury. It had come with the first guns fired, and the cry shocked from him had been one of those which had sickened Brion’s senses. To think of it!—to think of it! And he had gone on his way unheeding. A round shot had shattered all the poor creature’s lower body, and only a little space of time remained to him. He had passed long ago, but for the will in him to live to see his darling. He greeted Brion’s appearance with a white and ghastly smile. They had covered his lower limbs with a cloak: he was from the first beyond the reach of their rough surgery.

With hot and burning eyes the young man stooped over his friend, and took and pressed one chilling hand to his breast.

‘Clerivault!’ he whispered.

He would not ask him not to go and leave him, lest it should but add a futile pang to that mortal passing. The blue lips moved, and he bent to them.

‘Lower, sweetheart.’

‘Here, Clerivault.’

‘Lower—I had much to say—but there is only a moment—left. I must use it—to confess.’

‘What, dear?’

‘Is it only you that hears? I have—lied to you.’

‘How?’

‘I am not really—of English blood—I have not a drop of it—in my veins.’

‘Dear Clerivault; I knew. What then?’

‘You knew? And yet—would let me speak—for England—claim—to represent her?’

‘O, Clerivault, Clerivault! Whatever your blood, you have an English heart. You have loved England and died for her. Now are you for ever more one of her dearest sons.’

A radiance came into the fading eyes; the dying man rose with a sudden powerful effort from his pillow. ‘England!’ he cried hoarsely. A rush of blood rumbled from his mouth, and he fell back dead.

* * * * * *

They dropped him the next day into the blue sea, with a shot at his feet. Brion looked on with tearless eyes and a numbed brain. It was all right, he supposed, and they could do nothing else; but he wished they had lashed them together first, and ended the whole business then and there. He had a curious feeling of being half-dead himself, as if a moiety of his vitality had been withdrawn with that dear inseparable comrade. How could he ever care for life again without Clerivault? His love, and now his friend? Surely Destiny had dealt with him unduly at so early an age. He was sad and alone—no longer with any definite object in the world.

So he thought in his unhappiness, poor soul. He had gone forth so radiantly, and only, after all, to find Desolation. With that he was returning to face the desolate house, his home; with that to vindicate his desertion of a trust and duty. His dead comrade’s words returned upon him with a pitiful force which shook his heart. Ought he to have allowed himself to be tempted away? A fever was upon him all at once to be back in England—in Devonshire; a mad longing to cancel the intervening space which lay between him and surety.

So, in his loneliness and despair, there returned to him, and with a wonderful new sense of restfulness, a thought which had already half troubled, half bewitched his mind. He knew in what soft and gentle bosom he could find, if he would, the welcome and the comradeship his soul so longed for. Why not abandon the struggle, yield for once and for all his scruples, and so turn the tables on the fate which had thought finally to bereave him? The very reflection was balm out of sickness. It steadied the agitation of his nerves and induced in him a feeling of tranquil resignation. Thenceforth the turmoil in his mind subsided, and he set himself to face with sober philosophy the weary days of the voyage which yet lay before him. He was no longer in any hurry to reach home; which testified to the rationality of his resolve, if it did not to any compelling force of passion behind it.

Until the 10th September the Tiger and the Santa Anna ran in company; when, foul weather intervening, they were cast apart, and the lighter ship so gained on the other as quickly to lose sight of her in the murk. Nor was she to see her again during the remainder of the run, which for her part she completed some twelve days ahead of her consort. Of this time there is nothing of interest to record; the finish of the voyage was uneventful, and on the 6th of October the Tiger fell in with the Land’s End, and the same day cast anchor at Falmouth, where Brion parted from her, and went ashore.

It was six months near to a day since he had left his native land; and with what varied emotions he set foot again on her dear soil may be imagined. He made no stay in the town—which indeed was little better than a fishing colony—but took boat that afternoon for Plymouth, where he was to put up for the night before completing the rest of his journey, which he was resolved to do on the morrow. Only he did not. Something intervened.

CHAPTER XXIX.
THE VIPER ON THE HEARTH

Whether or not the vulnerary water distilled from the plantain in the year of its becoming a bird possessed the phœnix-like properties attributed to it by its concoctor, certain it is that from the moment of Mrs Harlock’s taking the stranger in hand the man’s hurts began to mend; and within a month of his being received into the house he was pronounced by his attendant in a fit state to take himself out of it. He demurred over the verdict, protesting that only his own resolution and desire to appear grateful were feigning a cure which in his inner self he knew to be far from assured; but his precise plaints, after a private consultation among the conspirators, were ignored, and he was given definite notice that, as from the first day of May, he was to consider them discharged of any further obligations regarding him, and must make his plans accordingly. He submitted perforce, and, it is to be assumed, took them at their word, for his plans, when he came to develop them, showed a full appreciation of the independence of action presented to him, and were very certainly his own. He went—but only to return.

During those weeks of his convalescence no least hint of his presence in the Grange had been allowed to percolate through to its master, who, indeed, more than ever since his nephew’s departure, had shut himself away in complete isolation from his household. Nor had a whisper of the secret the place contained been let penetrate to the outer world. Absolute loyalty to their service was, as Brion had very well known, an assured asset with those faithful souls, and observance to the letter of his instructions could be depended on. So rigidly, indeed, had his directions been followed that from first to last the invalid had been able to inform himself in no solitary particular of the constitution of the household into which he had been admitted. He knew from Brion the name of its head, and that was all. That, it may be said, had conveyed something to him, but something which required substantiation and consideration. The question was, how to bring about, what he most desired, a personal interview. It was already, to his mind, a sheer Providence which had brought him, though by way of travail, to a house actually marked for early visitation on his list. For there is need no longer to skirmish about the truth regarding Master John Melton. He was in very fact one of those agents provocateurs already alluded to as being sent by the Jesuit Allen to England to test popular feeling and sow sedition. Not in Orders himself, he was possessed, nevertheless, of sufficient dogmatism to qualify him for such a mission, his English blood further suiting him for the task. He was, moreover, a dry and crafty creature, born for an Inquisitor. Part of his business was to analyse the sources of disaffection, and to involve such waverers as he could in the conspiracy against the Queen’s life, which even then was germinating in the breasts of certain Catholic extremists. Among such presumptive confederates, it seemed, the name of Quentin Bagott figured as that of one who had secretly recanted his heresy, and might be used as a local agent for the insidious dissemination of treason. How the information had been acquired is of little matter; it was of a piece with much that jumped to certain conclusions from insufficient premises. In any case a visit to the ex-Judge had been assigned a foremost place in the itinerary mapped out for Allen’s emissary.

And here he was, by a very Providence, as has been said—inscrutably severe in its methods though it might be—actually on the premises which he might in vain have sought to enter lacking that Divine castigation. It seemed incredible that his good fortune stood to be stultified through the perversity of a party of fools, too obstinately loyal to their instructions to give him the least tether for his operations. Nor should it be—on that he was determined—whatever close watch they kept over their tongues, or over his movements when once he was in a condition to rise and creep about his room. He was able to learn so much—that he owed this rigid supervision to the man who had rescued him, and could form, perhaps, his own shrewd conclusions as to some of Brion’s reasons for desiring to keep him and his Uncle apart. For this Melton was as sharp as a ferret, and had that sort of microscopic mental eye which can discover whole truths in grains of unconsidered suggestion. So, when the time came, he went, quite quietly and tamely, and his watchers breathed a sigh of relief that their responsibility was at an end.

That same night Quentin Bagott was sitting in his chamber alone. A solitary lamp burned over his head, diluting but not obliterating a patch of moonlight which fell through the open casement upon the floor. The window looked out upon the waste ground to the rear of the Grange, and was flung wide, for the night was still and warm. He sat, his eyes fixed on the carpet, on the patch of moonlight there, drearily hypnotised by it. There was a criss-cross pattern in it which seemed to entangle his brain. Wrenching himself once free from the obsession, he turned to the table to drink, and again came round to stare at the carpet. Something had happened to it. In the thick of the moonlit lattice lay a folded scrap of paper which had not been there before. It looked as if entangled in the meshes—or in his brain. He sat staring at it, trying to think. Suddenly he rose unsteadily, and stooped, and gained the thing, and unfolded it and read. He stood a long time reading; then went softly and quickly to the window and bent out.

‘Lavabo inter innocentes manus meas,’ he said low into the night.

A man came out of the shadows and approached the window.

‘Et circumdabo altare tuum, Domine,’ he responded, small and quiet.

‘Whence come you—and wherefore?’ asked Bagott in a fearful voice.

‘From Heaven—for your salvation,’ was the solemn answer.

So, by way of the main gate, and the tree across the moat, had Melton achieved his purpose. He had simply ‘evacuated’ to order, had gone straight round by the copse, and had lain hidden all day in the secret place of which only he knew. Then at night he had emerged, and by good fortune had reached his quarry.

He was never again to drop what he had seized until he had sucked it dry. From that moment he had the sodden and bewildered brain at his mercy. By what specious arts he had prevailed could never afterwards be known; but somehow, working upon his victim’s superstitious fears, he ended by establishing a complete control over him. He was to go brazenly about it, too, never before witnesses so much as hinting at the question of religion, but letting it be assumed that the tie between him and Bagott was purely one of mutual liking and good-will. In all this he was guided by a very definite purpose, which only ultimately came to light. Whatever at the outset might have been the singleness of his motives, temptation changed it into one of gripping and savage cupidity. He had suddenly seen his way to the acquisition of unexpected wealth, and the prospect was too much for his caution. He dared to stake on the chance, and he came within an ace of succeeding.

As to the tricked and jockeyed household, the knowledge of their humiliation came soon enough to them. It synchronised with the arrival before his master’s door of Nol porter, prepared to perform at the usual hour his usual bedtime duties. He heard voices speaking within, and stood stupefied to listen; then heaved away on creaking boot-tips to call Phineas. The master-cook came. ‘Anan?’ said he.

‘Hist!’ whispered Nol: ‘Put thy ear hither, and tell me. Who is it?’

Phineas listened, and came about, his long face aghast.

‘John Melton,’ said he.

Nol stared a moment; then, his jaw set grim, opened the door and walked into the room. His master sat facing him; the stranger stood by the table, a thin, wintry, but wholly unperturbed smile upon his lips.

‘Soyez le bienvenu!’ he murmured, with an indrawn snigger.

Nol made an ugly gesture:—

‘Out of this you go!’ said he.

The stranger just glanced at his host. Bagott half rose in his chair, his eyes red with fury:—

‘Away, thou dog, thou villain!’ he roared. ‘What; you’d so dare to my guest, and before my face! I’ll requite thee, dog!’

He rocked and panted, mouthing like a mad thing.

‘’Twas Master Brion’s order,’ said Nol sulkily.

The Judge banged his fist on the table.

‘Who is master here, thou beast? Disobey me at thy peril. I have not yet so abrogated my authority’—he made a sudden effort to command himself; and went on in a quieter voice, which yet shook with agitation: ‘Master Brion judged within the limits of his knowledge, which was not all, nor near all. I have learned the whole truth from this gentleman, who indeed was on his way to visit me when that misfortune befell him. My nephew did well and prudently, acting for the best; and you did well to follow his instructions. But that is done. Henceforth this becomes my guest, whom I commit to your duty to serve and honour. Attend to it well.’

He sank back in his chair, waving the two from the room, and with dismay at their hearts they left him. What was to be done? Nothing that they could see. They were on the horns of as bitter a dilemma as could have perplexed two honest, troubled heads. They could not act in opposition to their lawful master: they dared not make a public scandal of the business, lest its consequences should visit themselves on that loved but dishonoured head. There was nothing, for their part, but to continue to keep the fact of the stranger’s presence in the house a secret from the world, and to abide whatever issue might arise, pending their young lord’s return. How the man had succeeded in procuring that interview was a mystery to them; but they had done their part faithfully, and were not in any way to blame for the miscarriage of their plans.

Thence ensued a strange glooming time, which, running into months, was destined to culminate in nothing less than tragedy. The man remained on, an accepted inmate of the house, and steadily assuming a position of authority in it. Whatever moral hold he had acquired over the haunted mind of its master he used with crafty effect to advantage himself in the name of the Cause. He was served, as directed, but with a sullenness and repressed hostility which he did not fail to note and record. After all, he had the courage of his qualities, and was playing a desperate game, whose success depended upon the audacity of the ‘bluff’ he could bring to bear upon it.

Still time—being, in the commercial sense, of the essence of the contract—had to be considered in the maturation of his designs. An inopportune return of the nephew might upset all his calculations, and what was to be done must be done unhurriedly but promptly. However he went about his work, he went about it effectively, approaching his end step by step. It became soon enough apparent that Quentin Bagott was falling under the complete domination of this interloper, whom he had taken to his heart and confidence. He deferred to him, clung to him, gave it to be understood that he had delegated to him his own authority in domestic matters, to issue what directions he thought fit. The household accepted the situation, with a sort of mutinous resignation to a state of things they could not help; but evil was in their hearts. It seemed to them that their master was yielding the last remains of his vitality to this sinister, thin-lipped bloodsucker; that, under the dark influence to which he had succumbed, he was waxing steadily in feebleness and dependence. There came a time when he would hardly allow John Melton out of his sight, holding to him as if upon him alone depended his own last hope of moral and material safety. It was strange and pitiful; but worse was to follow.

One day Nol was called in by his master, and instructed by him to ride into Ashburton with a note to a certain scrivener and attorney, much in demand locally, requesting that gentleman to attend, with his clerk, at the Grange at his early convenience. The two came, and had been closeted with their client but a brief time, when Nol and Phineas were ordered into the presence. They came, wondering, to find the men of law standing at the table, their master sunk into the great chair where he habitually sat, and Melton withdrawn into the window, where he stood viewing the waste prospect, as if wholly absorbed in it.

Quentin Bagott regarded the newcomers, as they entered, from deep eyes sunk in hollow sockets. He looked wasted and exhausted; but his voice, when he spoke, measured out its words as if he had rehearsed them all carefully beforehand. He held a document, which he lifted and tapped in a slow feeble way.

‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I have sent for ye two to mark and digest the substance of that which is in my hand. It is my last Will and testament, drawn up by me, a lawyer, revoking all former Wills, duly executed, and witnessed by these two in whose presence I have attached my signature. Would ye, who cannot read, know what are its terms? They are briefly stated. To my dear friend, John Melton, I give and bequeath unconditionally all this messuage and dwelling-house known as the Moated Grange, to do and devise with it, his heirs and assigns, as shall be his pleasure from the date of my death thenceforth. And I ask him, if he will, and so he survive me, to continue to employ and make provision for such of my good and faithful retainers as shall be in my service at the time.’

Mr Melton turned in his place at the window, and bent to a little dry bow, silently acquiescing. No one might have guessed from his sober manner the cold jubilation which was thrilling his breast. He had won to the anteroom of that for which, during these long months, he had been steadily scheming with all the craft and finesse at his command, and it would be his own fault now if he failed in the final fruition of his hopes. But poor rueful Nol cared nothing for that provision affecting his own well-being. He stood all amazed, understanding only enough of the legal jargon to gather that it deposed his young lord from his full and equitable rights. Fairly blubbering, he threw himself on his knees before the Judge, and bellowed out a protest:—

‘Don’t do it, Sir. Think of our poor young master!’

Bagott regarded the suppliant without animus. He even smiled indulgently on him.

‘I have not forgotten him, good Nol,’ he said. ‘The residue of the estate is his—of more independent value to a young man than this hampering property ever would or could be. I have not forgotten him, my good, faithful fellow.’

But Nol would not be comforted. ‘Wait till he returns, good master,’ he cried. ‘Think again once and twice before you do it.’

‘I have thought a thousand times,’ answered Bagott, still with a strange mildness, ‘and always to the same end. None of you knows, none of you can know, all that I owe to this my friend, since he came to fill the vacant place caused by another’s secession.’

‘He hath corrupt your mind,’ cried Nol despairingly.

‘Harkee, good man,’ answered his master: ‘I bear with you because I love you. I love you all, who have served me so long and singly; and because of my love I would have you abet, not balk me in a step my very conscience demands. Come, Nol, come Phineas, please your old master by pleasing him who will one day take his place, it may be in no great time.’

That set Nol howling; but it conquered him, poor simple soul. He swore, and Phineas swore, that they would all, answering for the others, try to act up to their lord’s wishes, and so they stumbled out. When they were gone, Bagott produced wine, with which he regaled the mildewed men of law—too accustomed, like undertakers, to the laying-out and burying of human hopes to be in any way affected by the grief they had witnessed, but flattered over their employment by so great a lawyer—and, having presently got rid of them, turned to his inseparable companion, and said pantingly, as he placed the Will in his hands:—

‘In trust, then, Melton, for the future, when the true faith is restored to our land, and the seminary we wot of shall form itself within these desolate walls, and the Chapel be reconsecrated to the service of the holy Mass.’

Significant words, betraying something of the trend of recent events.

‘I accept the trust,’ said Melton simply, as he received the document—‘in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.’ But the thought beneath the words ran as thus: ‘Hot hands. He will be the worse for this rally. How long? Will he last till the nephew’s return? The worse for me: but even then, not failure. We must pile on the fuel.’

‘Bagott,’ he said aloud; ‘this effort has been too much for you. You must take means to restore the vital spark, or I will not answer for the consequences.’

He poured liberally from a flask, while the other watched him with a sort of dull, exhausted eagerness; and once, twice, thrice he poured again—and so gained his end.

‘You drunken dog,’ he said to the insensible figure. ‘Will you never die?’

Three weeks later Nol, being called in betimes to support his master to his bedchamber, and having hard ado, despite his great strength, to keep the almost inert form from slipping to the floor, paused at the first landing to breathe himself before proceeding. As he stood for a moment, with a sudden convulsive wrench Bagott stiffened his whole body, tore free, and swaying one instant, before the other could clutch at him, went down, and rolled crashing from the stair-head into the hall. When they picked him up he was dead.