Chapter VII: Part FOUR: The Fire on the Beach (1)

The file grated for an instant and then bit air. Andrew gave a tug at the bar and nearly fell over backward as it came out in his hand. He stared at it incredulously. The end of their work had come.

"We're through, Sebastian," he whispered, "Sebastian, Sebastian, give me a hand with the stone!"

The stone was stubborn, but at last they managed to pry it free. Then they stood and gazed at the gap for a second of triumph.

It only lasted a second. Even while they gazed at it they knew, dreadfully, that they had miscalculated. The hole was just too small. Both tried it, hopefully, defiantly, hopelessly.

"Cut through another bar," said Andrew, finally, when they knew they were beaten, "Cut through another bar." The thought of starting in at the beginning again appalled him so that he could not trust himself to say any more. This last stroke, at the very edge of deliverance, was the worst of all. He had thought himself free of Fear--he had been a child shaking a rattle. Fear had only crept away for a moment to make its return more deadly--now it settled into his back like a huge, soft animal whose claws were iron needles. He could feel the cold, salt sweat of it on his forehead and hands.

"Anyhow, it will give us two weapons instead of one," muttered Sebastian with bitter philosophy as he worked in a contained fury of haste. Andrew could have hated him for saying that, if there had been time. But there was no time for either hate or thought or self-pity--there was only time for fear and the continuous, muffled grate of the file.

After a while they discovered that, with the stone gone, they could cramp themselves against each other perilously in such a way that both could file. Even so, it took an eternity till the second bar was cut through. But at last that too was accomplished.

"Now," said Sebastian, shivering. "Now, my friend."

Half the window was blocked by his shoulders--then he was worming out on his side. Andrew's last view of him was of a pair of shoe-soles that waggled absurdly for a moment and disappeared. He waited ten breaths. No sound. Sebastian must be safe in the ditch. He transferred the iron thing he was clutching to his left hand. It was cold in his hand. He gulped and started to follow Sebastian.

He slid into the ditch head-first, and lay there on his belly, flat as a lizard. After his days of confinement the outside world seemed formidably large and open. He was glad for the walls of the ditch--even with their protection, he felt as lonely and conspicuous as a shelled oyster. He listened. All that he could hear was the distant bubble of water in an irrigation canal and the mutter of wind in the palms. Now the wind rattled a dry leaf somewhere, like a boy shaking a fan, and he started. Where was Sebastian? He stretched out his hand, by inches, and was enormously relieved when at last it touched a shod heel.

"Sebas--" he started to whisper.

"Ssh," a whisper answered "Sentry." The heel started to writhe away from him. He followed it, doing his best to make no noise. That had been the plan, to worm along the ditch till they were on the side of the prison farthest from the guard-room, opposite the smaller storehouse. Then they would have to take to the open.

This crawling was a slow, ludicrous business, especially when you had to carry a bar of iron in one hand. For a moment he was reminded of a sack-race, and almost giggled aloud. How the devil did Sebastian get ahead so fast? He could get along faster if he dropped this silly bar. No, better not.

They were around the corner now. He raised his head, gingerly, and caught a glimpse of the black bulk of the storehouse. Sebastian had stopped. A hand came back through the darkness and dug into his shoulder. Keep quiet, that meant. He lay frozen to the ground.

Suddenly, and without the slightest warning, a grumbling voice spoke out of invisibility--a voice that seemed not a dozen feet away from his head.

"Devil fly away with this musket--my arm's gone asleep again!" it said, in tones of cockney irritation. Something stamped on the ground.

"Shut your mouth, you misbegotten son of a sweep," said another voice, low and irate, "Are you a soldier or a nursemaid?"

"I'm a nursemaid," grumbled the first voice--Andrew knew it now--it belonged to one of the privates who had marched him to prison--the other voice was the sergeant's. "A bloody private nursemaid to a couple of stinkin' prisoners what's going to escape and what never escapes. Why in 'ell can't 'Is Majesty let 'em escape in daylight wen a man can see to shoot?"

"You let them get through and you'll find out what, soon enough," said the other voice, grimly. "Orders are, take alive or dead. Remember that."

"Just button 'em up in my pocket I suppose," said the first voice in an unimpressed whine. The other voice seemed to choke for a while. When it recovered it discussed a question of ancestry with some vividness.

"Oh, all right, sergeant, all right," commented the first voice, resignedly. "But a man can't 'elp 'is feelin's. If it was an eskylade now, I'd be breathin' as easy as a babby. But this 'ole and corner work ain't work for a soldier. W'y can't 'Is Majesty shoot the pore buggers 'imself if 'e wants 'em shot? Tell me that, now," it concluded triumphantly, "an' I'll stand you a pot o' beer."

"Go ask him," said the sergeant's voice, very bitterly, "Go ask him, Bowbells. He's in the guardroom now, just waiting for some son of a whore to ask him a question like that. By God, he'd crucify you."

"Like enough," grunted the other. "Doctor 'e calls 'imself." He spat. "_I_ wouldn't trust him to poison a sergeant."

"You're a drunk disgrace to the British Army," said the sergeant's voice with sour finality, "And I'd have you in the calabooze this minute if--"

"Aye," said the other, thoughtfully, "_If_ I wasn't a pearl o' marksmen--and if you could draw a cordon round 'ere without me--and _hif_ I didn't know 'oo buggered the last payroll--Most likely. Run along, sergeant, and wipe the other boys' noses for 'em. You can rest easy about this side--there'll be two beautiful corpses to show 'Is Majesty if they tries to run my post."

"You're drunk, you fool," said the sergeant acridly, and departed. "Wish I was," said the other voice, a trifle plaintively, as Andrew heard the heavy boots crunch away.

He raised his head cautiously, inch by inch. There was a little bush at the lip of the ditch--it would hide him as he reconnoitered.

The sentry was just too far away, in the shadowed door of the storehouse. For all his sleepy arm, he seemed terribly alert and there were at least thirty yards of open moonlit ground between him and them. If they rushed him, one of them would be killed or disabled in the rush and the other would have to kill at once, in his turn, before the shot brought up the rest of the guard.

It was like Dr. Gentian, this. Very like him. He could see Dr. Gentian in a cane-chair in the guardroom, waiting composedly for his birds to fly into the snare.

He sank back into the ditch again. He felt stiff and cramped. Dying couldn't be much worse. Sebastian had turned around somehow, he could see his face. He put his own face close. "When you say, Sebastian," his lips formed, without sound. He saw Sebastian's body grow taut and his own muscles tightened. Then Sebastian's expression changed. "Not yet," he whispered. He hunched down and began to crawl still farther along the ditch.

Andrew followed him without hope. As he crawled, he thought of a rat he had seen once in a stable. It was an old, sick-looking rat with grey streaks in its fur and it had been hitching slowly along the wall, looking for its hole. When it had heard his step it had shown yellow teeth in a weak snarl and crouched to the floor and he had realized that its eyes were white and blind. He felt a certain kinship now for that rat.

They had reached the end of the ditch on that side of the guardhouse. Sebastian had stopped and was raising himself up a little. Madness. No, not entirely. The ground fell away sharply beyond this part of the ditch. If they could take five steps across a swathe of moonlight they could roll into a shadow. But even as Andrew saw this, the sentry at the storehouse turned his head slowly toward them. He ducked his head down again with a little gulp. If a cloud would only cross the moon! But there seemed to be no real clouds in all the expanse of heaven--only a few little wisps of silver wool that would hardly veil the bright face for more than an instant.

Sebastian was fumbling in the bottom of the ditch for something--a stone. He crouched with the stone in his hand, looking up at the sky. One of the little wisps was blowing toward the moon like a drifted feather. Sebastian drew his arm back, waiting. Now the feather touched the disk, and, for an instant, as Sebastian's stone, cleanly flung, crashed into the bushes at the sentry's left, the heart went out of the moonlight.

The next moment they were out of the ditch and huddled together in the shadow. Andrew, out of the tail of his eye, had somehow caught a glimpse of the sentry whirling away from them to face the bushes where the stone had fallen. Now every moment he waited for a cry or a musket shot, but moment after moment passed, and there was neither shot nor cry. Luck was with them--so far, they had not been seen. He wondered where the other sentries were posted.

They crawled along to the edge of their shadow, hugging it fondly. The slight fall in ground deepened to a little gully that hid them better--now the storehouse was between them and the first sentry and they could breathe a trifle easier. They were going in the opposite direction from the wharves, but that they could not help till they were sure of having passed beyond the cordon. When it seemed that they must have done so, they began to circle back, Sebastian leading the way. He slipped along like an Indian, Andrew tried despairingly to copy his lightness of foot. At last they were down below the storehouse and the way ahead seemed clear. Andrew snatched a look at the sentry through a screen of brush. The man was yawning, eyes squinted, head thrown back. He had a ridiculous impulse to flip a pebble at the gaping mouth, and between that and dreading the sound of his own feet was so absorbed that when Sebastian, creeping ahead of him, suddenly darted into the door of a deserted and roofless hut by the side of the wood-path his nerves jerked like plucked fiddlestrings.

Once inside the hut, he soon knew the reason for their taking cover. There were footsteps and a mumble of talk coming up toward the hut from the lower road. "Tricked," said a leaden accent, "Tricked, by God. A pack of lousy indigo-diggers to trick us so." Andrew recognized the dull, detested voice with a pang of hate. A lucid whisper--serene pulse of gold trembling in hollow of crystal shell--answered the voice and soothed it. "It does not matter, Charles. We can do without the Mahonese."

"Aye," said Cave. "Aye. We'll have to do without them, now. But--tricked, by God. I can't get over it, sweetheart. Who'd have thought they had the guts in them to run away?"

"Charles, Charles, don't think of that now. We are wasting time."

There was a mutter, then the voices sank. Andrew glared cautiously through a chink in the rotten wall of the hut. It was folly he knew, but he could not lie there and listen without trying to see. Not ten steps away, in a patch of moonlight, stood Sparta and Mr. Cave. They were talking together in soft, tense voices--she had her hand on his wrist, she was wheedling him as if he were an unruly child.

She was dressed entirely in dark stuffs, a dark handkerchief hid her hair, the cold chastity of the light gave her features a new beauty, severe, untainted by color, the sharp beauty of the cutting edge. Andrew thought of a silver axe in a scabbard of black glass--she had put away gold for the time and with it the burning gleam of dayspring and planet--the dark handkerchief capped her head as smoothly and reticently as a helmet--she looked like the merciless genius of combat itself, neither man nor woman nor spirit, but something arisen out of the ground with an arrow in its hand. He could see her standing in a chariot, Hippolyta, the amazon queen with the maimed and iron breast, wrapped in the glittering fleece of a golden ram and urging her cloud-born horses like harnessed gods across the tarnished bodies of the dead. For an instant, as her face sank into his mind, it seemed just that it should be so, and he forgot alike that he had loved her and that she had betrayed him.

She had too much of her father in her to live securely, with an even heart. Only violence and the brittle lodestone of danger could release from its cage of sleep, the immortal enemy which lay enchained in that flesh like an archangel in bonds. Now he saw it released, a pillar of darkness, and trembled, but not wholly with fear or hate. The beauty it had was the beauty of the tiger and the killing frost, but it was beauty, and somewhere at a point beyond the system of the stars, the unappeasable ecstasy of its pain lay down on a glittering field and slept between a dove and a hooded eagle. Cave was a different matter--his darkness was the muddy darkness of a fire of wet straw--and Andrew felt he could have killed him without the slightest compunction. But in Sparta, as she was tonight, there was something that would have turned his hand aside.

Now the two separated, having come to some decision between them that Andrew was unable to catch, and Sparta glided away toward the rear of the storehouse. Andrew could only follow her progress vaguely, but it seemed to him that she left a stir in the darkness behind her as she passed. Cave remained where he was for some moments, biting his nails. Andrew gestured to Sebastian, inquiringly--attack him? Sebastian shook his head violently, jerked a thumb toward the way that Sparta had gone and made motions of counting a troop of men. Andrew nodded, his heart thumping. There were others, then--they had blundered into the hut just in time.

He regarded Mr. Cave's back with sullen distaste--would he never move away and set them free? Now he turned, his eye fell casually on the hut, he made as if to come closer but thought better of it. Andrew felt the muscles of his belly contract, and his fingers clench on the bar. A mocking-bird whistled from somewhere, and Mr. Cave grew still. It whistled again and he put his shoulders back and started to walk toward the sentry, crackling the twigs underfoot deliberately as he went as if he wanted the sentry to hear.

The sentry heard and stiffened, musket to his shoulder. "Who goes there?" he challenged softly.

Mr. Cave stopped just on the edge of the open ground. "Overseer Cave," he said in a flat voice, his bearish shoulders stooped.

"Come out where I can look at you, overseer," said the sentry briskly, his eye along the barrel.

Mr. Cave approached slowly. "It's all right, Jenkin," he said in a confidential voice, "I know your orders. They don't apply to me. I've a message for the Doctor."

"Sorry, overseer," said the sentry, lowering his musket, "Have to wait till the sergeant makes rounds again. Strict orders--nobody to pass."

"You can read, I suppose," said Mr. Cave with heavy sarcasm, coming nearer, "I have a pass. Dr. Gentian's signature."

The sentry shook his head.

"Don't know anything about passes," he said. "Show it to the sergeant," but he brought his musket down and leaned forward as if to inspect a paper.

"But I'm in a hurry, I tell you," said Mr. Cave, very near him. Then, to Andrew's astonishment, the sentry continued to lean forward till he had passed his center of balance and, with a gasp, was falling as if he intended to embrace Mr. Cave in his outstretched arms. Mr. Cave caught him deftly and lowered him to the ground.

"Well done, lass," he said in a whisper to the skirted shadow that had crept around the other corner of the storehouse and struck the sentry down from behind. He raised his voice a little. "Come on, boys," he called softly, and the night was suddenly populous with catlike shapes. One stooped over the fallen sentry--his hand glittered with something thin and bright--there was the chuck of a flat stone striking water on its edge, and a horrible, muffled coughing.

"Sergeant of the Guard!" came a doleful howl from another quarter of the compass, "Sergeant of the Guard!" A musket shot clanged on the moonlight. Then events began to succeed each other far too rapidly for Andrew to keep track of them.

He was out of the hut, with Sebastian, and running. A man with big white teeth which glittered like dominoes, rose out of a bush like an evil fairy and struck at him violently with a long, curved hook. He felt the iron bar in his hand whirl down and hit something that smashed like a loaded egg and jarred his wrist. He stumbled and fell. There was shouting in his ears and a pop-pop-pop of musketry abruptly silenced. He caught a glimpse of their lugubrious jailer-corporal jabbing furiously at something behind a tree. Mr. Cave bellowed a command--an even voice that Andrew knew called orders in reply. Something that hummed like a wasp snipped a twig from a bough in front of his face--he jerked and went into an irrigation ditch with a smacking splash--behind him somebody was screaming "Oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus, oh, Jesus!" in a high, affronted whine--now Sebastian was pulling him out of the ditch and they were running again. Then, abruptly, he was dragged into a dark pocket between two buildings while a dozen men whose leader carried a truss of blazing straw on a pole went by at a trot.

"Where are we?" he wheezed, lungs laboring. He discovered, with surprise, that the iron bar was still in his hand. The other end of it dripped.

"They've missed us," said Sebastian. "Too busy--up there--" He too was panting, but furiously busy, ramming home a charge in a musket he had somehow acquired.

"Where did"--began Andrew, staring at it, dazedly.

"Fool with a cap," panted Sebastian. It seemed sufficient explanation. "Look," he said, "Fire."

Andrew peeped around the corner of the building. They were still much nearer the guardhouse than he had supposed. On one hand the moon lit the scene with precise, bleak radiance, on the other, a little hut, to the right of the guardhouse, was burning like a spill of paper with fierce, brief flame.

Mr. Cave and his men had taken such cover as storehouse and trees afforded. He could see them swarming in the shadows like uneasy flies. On the lit and open ground between them and the guardhouse lay a number of broken dolls in attitudes of discomfort. One had on a red coat and lifted up an arm now, to let it drop again as if it were too heavy. There were various cries.

Andrew caught his breath. Dr. Gentian could not have more than a couple of men with him in the guardhouse now. Mr. Cave must have fifty at least. Yet Mr. Cave and his men had not been able to cross that little stretch of open, moonlit ground. True, the besieged were poorly armed and the besiegers had every advantage of shelter, but even so....

Even as he watched, a dozen men dashed out from cover, their heads down as if they were running into a rain, and made for the guardhouse door. They carried a log among them--the intent was evident. A loophole coughed at them and the leading man stumbled and fell as if something invisible had struck him across the shins. The charge wavered--a second man sank slowly to his knees, like a tired horse--the others broke, dropping the log--one of them was wringing his hand and putting it to his mouth, like a boy with burnt fingers. Mr. Cave was cursing.

Something tugged at Andrew's sleeve. "Give me one of your buttons," said Sebastian's voice in his ear, fierce and hurried. "They are silver, aren't they--I must have silver, too--no, a little one--"

Andrew wrenched one of the tarnished buttons loose from his coat and saw, uncomprehendingly, Sebastian take it, drop it into the narrow, black well of the musket-barrel, ram it down. Then Sebastian was crouching on one knee, muttering to himself, musket poised.

Mr. Cave was roaring in the trees like a bull, trying to lift his men across that patch of open ground. But they would not be lifted, they stuck where they were. There was a weight on their limbs, the invisible weight of a name, it pressed them to the earth. The beasts had turned on the beast-tamer, but they were still afraid of his whip.

Andrew caught a second's glimpse of Mr. Cave, as he darted from one shadow to another, raging. Sebastian cursed softly--the glimpse had been too short for him to fire. Now they heard a shrill, frightened squealing, and the thud of boots kicking flesh. Mr. Cave encouraging his followers. Then again, for an instant, he was in clear view, recklessly exposed against the glare of the burning hut. His hands were cupped to his mouth, he was calling aloud.

"Come out, you damned old wizard!" he roared, in a furious, weeping voice, "Come out and surrender--your life if you'll surrender!--if you don't, I by God, we'll roast you there in your shell!"

A flash answered from a window and Mr. Cave's broad hat spun from his head as if a gust of wind had tweaked it. Dr. Gentian's clear, sharp voice called back something in Italian, threat or promise, and Andrew could see the besiegers stir uneasily in the darkness. Then four things happened, almost in the same, instant.

A man with a bloody face and a naked scythe in his hand burst out of a clump of darkness, followed by a score of others, and fell upon the flank of Mr. Cave's forces. The clear, sharp voice cried out to them like a joyous cock. Mr. Cave, his body convulsed, leapt to rally his men--and the musket in Sebastian's hands exploded.

It was a long shot, and at first Andrew thought that it had missed. Then he saw Mr. Cave hitch, queerly, in his stride, get on again, and then collapse slowly into the ground, as if quicksand had taken him. A form that must have been Sparta's, for it had streaming hair, ran out of an eddy of conflict and fell upon the body like a dog on a grave.

"The wharves!" called the clear, sharp voice, weaker now, but still very joyous. "Head them off from the wharves, you Greeks--they're making for the wharves!"

They were running again. There was clamor and a flare behind them, where men hunted other men in the moon-splashed darkness like terriers chasing rats in a moonlit barn. Sebastian was ahead of him--behind there were many, but the beaten Italians were throwing their weapons away and calling "Surrender--Surrender--" in high, shrill voices. Andrew threw a glance over his shoulder, and saw, in a nightmare flicker, a fellow twenty yards behind him stare stupidly at a point of steel that stuck abruptly out of his breast and fall, tripping the man who had run him through the back. Then the ground under Andrew's feet rang hollow suddenly--the wharf. He slipped on greasy wood--was down on his knees--up again. "Here" called Caterina's voice--he caught at a hand--leapt--sprawled into the bottom of a rocking boat.

There was an oar somewhere--he grabbed at it and began to splash with it furiously. They were moving away from the wharf now, but the damn sail wouldn't catch the wind. _Row_! The boat seemed to stick in the water like a bug in a stream of molasses but the gap between it and the wharf was widening--just in time, for there was shouting behind them now. He stole a glance back. There was the man with the bloody face. His left arm dangled at his side like a broken stick. He was yelling something and pointing. There was a ragged spatter of sound--something jumped under Andrew's oar like a frog taking water--he heard a gasp from the bow of the boat. "Hit, Caterina?" he called, but "No, no," said a voice.

Then the sail filled at last, and the wind and the current took them. The man with the bloody face was shouting and dancing up and down, but his voice was fainter. They swept around a curve, he was blotted out. There was nothing left of New Sparta but a confused, diminishing uproar and a dying redness in the sky.

He stopped splashing with his oar and put it down. The boat must be the little pleasure-boat which he and Sparta had used in their expeditions for turtle, Andrew noticed now. He wondered how seaworthy it would be when they got outside the bay.

Another thought struck him. Carlos, the boy, who was to have been with them.

"What happened to Carlos?" he said.

"At the last moment, he was afraid," said Caterina, calmly. "So he went with them."

"With who?"

"With the other Minorcans. They heard they were to be killed tonight, so they went away."

"Went away! In God's name, how could they go away?"

"The soldiers were busy. Mr. Cave had been to them and told them to revolt, but they did not trust him. So the old people met and decided. They told Mr. Cave they would be ready tonight, but as soon as it was night, they tied up their overseers and began to go away, one by one. A few were left, to deceive. The Italians did not stop them, they thought it was part of the plan. When they found out, it was too late. Mr. Cave had to choose between running after them and fighting Dr. Gentian."

Andrew gasped. So that explained Mr. Cave's grumbling. "Tricked, by God!"

If Dr. Gentian had been watchful or Mr. Cave loyal, so appallingly obvious a plan could never have succeeded--but the Doctor's watchfulness had been employed solely upon Andrew and Sebastian and Mr. Cave's treachery had wrecked his own scheme. Add to this the firm belief in the animal stupidity of the Minorcans which both Cave and his master held as a tenet of faith, and the thing was done. After years of rule, men grew careless, forgetting the ruled can have any craft. If Mr. Cave had won, he would doubtless have blamed the slaughter of Dr. Gentian on the departed Minorcans and, with Sparta's word to back him, could have looted the plantation as he pleased. Andrew pondered these circumstances in his mind.

"Did you know of this, Sebastian?" he said.

"When you told me what that dead man planned, I thought there must be some way out for my people. I told Caterina to tell them to do what seemed best and not think of us--that we would rescue ourselves."

The fact of Mr. Cave's death struck Andrew now with a queer force--he had hardly taken it in before. Mr. Cave would never dabble his fingers in Sparta Gentian's hair again or rave impotently at the legitimate world. It seemed odd to think of that strong, bulky body empty of violence--those heavy hands no longer able to afflict or destroy. There must be something left--a soul?--where was it? He saw it fluttering in the wind like a burnt rag, maimed, stupid, defiant and alone. "Poor devil," he thought for a moment--the rag fluttered at him angrily--it did not want pity--it still wanted to hurt but it no longer had the power--the thought made him a little sick....

"Think they'll chase us?" he said, after a while.

"Have their hands full," said Sebastian. "Caterina says the Italians were going to pay off old scores and fire the Greek huts. If they did, they'll be fighting fire all the rest of the night."

They were far down the river now, the breeze had freshened, the current ran smooth and fast. All sound but the sound of water and wind and trees had died away. Andrew trailed his hand over the side and drew it up, dripping. His mind was quieting gradually. Already the furious scene in which, such a short time ago, he had taken such active part seemed unreal as a stage-play. Yet it had been real. He had passed through just such a painted and bedizened adventure as he had always envied and wished against hope might be his own, when he was a little boy playing under a table, listening to the ship-captains and soldiers tell their sparse, enthralling tales. He had broken a prison--he had killed a man--even now he was running away from death in a leaky pleasure-boat, perhaps to be wrecked on an island like Robinson Crusoe's, perhaps merely to drown. Yet it did not seem to him that this adventure was his, as the adventure in the tales had been his while he listened to them.

Now he knew why those tales had been so sparse and crudely-fashioned. When you were living a tale you did not have time to color it as it should be colored--your mind stuck on odd useless trifles--the teeth of a man you struck--the feel of an iron bar--the shape of a sail against the stars. Besides, in life, you were hungry and thirsty and had to make water--things which did not happen in a tale, or if they did, assumed heroic-proportions. He felt betrayed, somehow, as he thought of this. Even he should have a trace at least of attractive venturesomeness upon him now, but if it were there, he could not see or feel it. The thought of the long, baking voyage still ahead of them brought no flavor of romance with it, no smell of strange flowers. It would be hot and irksome and dangerous, and he would be very glad when it was done.

Something splashed overside--Caterina was bailing the boat. He sighed and started to help her. After a while she stopped, but he went on.

"Tired, Caterina?" he said, in a pause.

"No--yes--but it does not matter," she said, with face half turned. She shut her eyes for an instant--the moon laid a silver penny on each closed lid. He stared at her face. Then she started to bail again, and the slight charm was broken.

She gave a little sigh after a moment. "I think they hit me, after all," she said in a commonplace voice.

He crawled over to her, anguished suddenly. "Where is it?" he said.

"There--ah"--his fingers touched something sticky and warm. On her left side her dress was soaked--blood or water?--he could not tell.

"Do you hear, Sebastian? She's hurt," he said, in a sharp, angry voice. The dark figure at the tiller moved uneasily, the boat shifted, spray blew in Andrew's face.

"Is it deep, Caterina?"

"No, no--only a flesh wound--nothing--" But her voice seemed changed. "See, when I put my hand on it--it stops the blood."

Andrew put her hand aside, gently. He started to tear a strip from his shirt to bandage the wound. But the shirt was dirty and hard to tear. "Have you a handkerchief--anything--Caterina?" he asked anxiously. He felt in the darkness--she was wearing a scarf at her waist. He held her up and undid it.

"My poor scarf," she said, smiling. Her eyelids fluttered and closed again--her face looked more content.

He bandaged the wound as best he could with the scarf. "There, is that better?"

"Much," she said, and sighed, lazily. "Thank you, _señor_ Beard."

"Don't call me _señor_," said Andrew.

"I won't call you anything," she said, with a faint laugh. "I shall go to sleep. I am tired. Wake me when it is time to bail again."

He helped her to stretch out as comfortably as possible in the bottom of the boat, pillowing her head on the coat from which Sebastian had taken the button. Then he crawled back aft and crouched there, his head by Sebastian's knees. They were out in the little bay, now, the moonlight was ghostly on its white shelves of sand, the line of foam on the beach was a pale thread spun by a ghost on a shuttle of pearl. Presently they would run past the headland and the broad sea would take them.

Sebastian tested the wind. "Good," he muttered. "Can you handle her, amigo, after we get out of this bay?"

"Uh," said Andrew, nearly asleep. Sebastian laughed. "I'll wake you when you have to take her," he said.

Andrew threw back his head and looked up at the sky, breathing deep. The moon was a sailor's lamp now, a lamp of silver salt, sea-crusted, at the masthead of heaven. The stars were lights in a rigging. As he lay back he felt not only the movement of the boat, but a larger, vaguer roll, the roll of earth itself, a dark, huge ark plunging forward slowly through a black-and-silver waste. The slow way of that tremendous passage shook in his heart. He felt suddenly very happy and no longer dismayed by what might be in store for them. They had escaped, they were free. Caterina lay sleeping there in the bow: he could make out the huddle of her shoulder. In the morning he would see her as he had never seen her, familiar, friendly, with no mark of fear or oppression between her brows. They would live together always, somehow, Sebastian, Caterina and he--and gradually the stigmata of the stranger would depart from him and he would be able to read the runes enciphered in the ivory box of her heart.

His eyes, however, were closing. They could not really have closed, for it did not seem a moment before Sebastian nudged him to take the tiller and the sheet. Yet they stuck when he tried to open them, and when he had the tiller in his hand at last, the bay was gone and the boat was climbing endless hummocks of black-and-silver glass. It was rougher than it had been in the bay and the boat seemed diminished and apologetic in the wide face of ocean, but it settled to its work like a tired and patient pony, and after a few moments Andrew felt less afraid of drowning them all. The breeze was steady, he had little to do but follow the coastline and keep from going to sleep.

Twice he shipped unnecessary water and once just averted jibing disastrously in a sudden puff, then he settled back into the way of it as a man who has not ridden for some time settles back into the way of a horse. The heavy drowsiness of exhaustion no longer pawed at his throat--the black-and-silver monotony, the rushing of the near water, lulled him, but not toward sleep, rather into a shining, half-bodiless wakefulness. He felt that he could steer forever, through an endless, fluid universe of wet shadow streaked with radiance while the boat answered his hand.

2.

The sky was a flight of grey doves touched with faint, pink markings like the markings inside a seashell, the sea was a heap of rose-quartz and grey stones, the light that came seemed to struggle through dew and roughened glass. It was the illusory hour, the hour just before dawn, when the tide of the blood sets back toward life again, and birds ruffle their feathers, and a light wind rises from nowhere to run across the tops of grass-blades, shaking a crystal bauble, whose tiny clapperless bells utter only the ghost of sound.

Andrew, heavy-eyed, saw the boat and his companions solidify and emerge from a world where all was mist and water of light. Sebastian changed from a heap of sacks to a man asleep--there was a little fur of dew on his garments. Andrew looked down at his own shirt--yes, it too was damp and the tiller beyond his hand was beaded at the edges. Of a sudden he felt very cold and shivered. Well, he would be hot enough when the sun was up.

He stared at the shore-line, wondering how far they had come. He had no idea. Wet rocks and white beach--a palm-tree like a green feather duster on end--a hedge of wild Spanish bayonet on the brow of a cliff--it might be anywhere on the Florida coast. He felt lost and alone in a world, except for him and the sleepers in the boat, so completely deserted of humanity that he had the odd feeling he should breathe very slowly and gently or the whole misty picture of land and sea and sky would rise from around them in a sudden thunder of wings, like a flight of scared partridge, and leave boat and cargo swinging in a sparkling, measureless void. Now a gull rose squawking from between two humps of water and he took odd comfort in that harsh and living sound. The universe altered slowly from grey and rose as he watched the gull, the colors of morning deepened, the east caught fire from a burning bush.

The day would be hot and calm. Already the wind was changing and dying as it changed. All day they would crawl over flawed sapphire under the point of a brazen arrow. He must wake the others. He wondered how much fresh water they had on board. He had crept in too near the coast--they were on the edge of rocky waters. Wake Sebastian, yes.

He leaned over and shook Sebastian by the shoulder. "Wake up!" he said. Sebastian stirred and groaned. Should he wake Caterina? He looked over at her where she lay in the bow.

Her head had slipped off his coat in the night; it was pillowed on her arm now, uncomfortably. Her other arm lay lax--the hand trailed in a puddle of water. He rubbed his eyes--she must be very tired to sleep in so cramped a posture. Then he saw that the red color in the puddle was not the reflection of the sun, and that, if she were sleeping, she slept with open eyes.

He was stumbling over to her, wildly, across Sebastian's body. The boat yawed violently and nearly flung him overboard. He heard Sebastian give a startled shout. Then he had her in his arms and the world was steady again.

"You're not dead," he kept saying to her. "You can't be dead." His hand passed over her forehead a dozen times, smoothing it. He felt at her wrist, at her heart, there was nothing to feel but flesh. Her fingers were cool, but it was the insensate coolness of wax and stone. The blood on her dress was drying already--she must have bled a great deal for all the water around her was stained.

Still holding her, he stared anxiously down at her face, trying to realize. This at least--death could not have come in horror but only as a slow dissolving tincture, for, though there was no smile upon them, her features were composed. She looked very tired and a little stern, but not dead as he thought of death. There was a stain on her mouth where she had bitten her lip: he wiped it off with his sleeve.

No, to her death could not have been as horrible as it might have been, but to him it was most horrible that she should have died so quietly, without a word. Perhaps she had meant to call out and had been too weak--he tried to remember dizzily if he had heard a sound in the night--she must have made some sort of sound. He could remember nothing.

He looked back. Sebastian was staring at them fixedly from the helm. His hand lay on the tiller as if he had forgotten it--a little muscle twitched in his cheek--his eyes were fey. Andrew thought, oddly, that he looked much as a man looks who has just got a sharp, excruciating blow in the groin--his mouth had the same sick stiffness.

He laid Caterina down. Then, bending over her, he looked ahead and felt a hoarse, startled cry tear out of his throat. "Rocks!" he yelled. "Sebastian! We're going on the rocks!" and fell in the stained water in the bottom of the boat as the boat jerked and the sail slatted over. There was a firm little jar beneath him like a sharp push from a heavy hand--a ripping sound--then catastrophe had passed, and they were going on again.

"Get out farther--from coast--" he said weakly, scrambling up. He looked back. Another moment and they would have struck that jagged line of black stumps full on. As it was they had just scraped across the edge where the water simmered uneasily like a bubbling pot. They had just escaped.

His feet were wetter than they had been. He stared down. A little spring of water was pumping up in the bottom, diluting the bloody puddles with fresh clear green. That slight firm push had been enough to ruin them. The boat was filling.

"Have to beach her, Sebas'," he said in a lifeless voice. "We're sinking."

Sebastian did not seem to hear: he was still staring ahead, with those blind, busy eyes, as if he were intent on counting every wave in the sea.

"Christ," said Andrew, flatly, and went back to shake him alive.

They beached the boat just in time. Twenty yards more to go or a rougher sea and they could not have done it. As it was, when a slow, huge roller took her at last and sludged her nose in the sand, she hesitated in its grip like a flogged, unwieldy mare, and the sea nearly took her and Caterina back again before they could haul up into safety. When they had done so, they lifted out Caterina's body between them and carried it up on the beach.

They had landed in a little cove. The sand was very clean and white--their footsteps dinted it sharply. It was morning now--the dew had vanished--the world was a glittering toy of silver and blue enamel.

"We must bury her," said Sebastian dully. "We cannot take her with us to consecrated ground." The muscle throbbed in his cheek. It was the first time he had spoken.

"I wish there were a priest," he said, looking about. "We must put up a cross." His mouth jerked.

Andrew followed his glance. There were other marks on the sand beside the marks of their footsteps and those of the gulls. A long slouching track crossed the beach and broke off at the edge of the rocks, the pawprints indented freshly like the marks of a devil's signet-ring.

"We can't just bury her and leave her," he said, with a shudder. He stared at the tracks. In the darkness something came down from the woods and pawed at a new mound.

He turned to his friend.

"Help me get some wood, Sebastian," he said, with a sob. "They can't hurt her if we burn her."

They toiled all morning, making the pyre. There was driftwood scattered on the beach and, up a little gully, they came upon the dry, tindery carcass of a dead tree. At last, toward afternoon, they had enough and sat down to rest for a while and to try to eat. The hard bread and boucanned meat with which the boat had been provisioned was soaked and dirty, the water in the keg brackish and warm, but neither of them noted these things. Andrew heard the tinkle of running water, somewhere up in the woods. "Stream, Sebastian," he said, but he was too tired to go and look for it. He brushed the crumbs from his knees and rose. "Come along," he said.

The pyre was a tangled heap of wood--broken jackstraws cluttered together. They covered it with the sail, smoothing it out clumsily. Then they laid Caterina upon it. Sebastian had closed her eyes and her dress was as much in order as they could manage. Now Sebastian crossed her hands on her breast and, taking a little brass medal from a string about his neck, put it between them. "I should not have prayed for vengeance," he muttered, his mouth shaking. Then he got down.

They both stood for a moment, gazing. She lay reclined on the sail in a posture of stiff ease--she looked smaller than he remembered her, but neither pitiful nor strange. Andrew thought of the first time he had seen her, a barbarous saint, walking through the deep coils of night with a candle in her hand. She had seemed removed enough then, now she was forever removed. The fingers had been cool, the alien heart had carried a treasure secretly, wrapped in a gleaming cloth. Now the secret and she were air, he could follow them no longer, the treasure was lost, the runner in chains had shaken off the burden. What had been the mystery in the blood, so jealously guarded--the writing behind the eyes? Had she loved him, had she loved Sebastian, had she loved any man on earth? It did not matter now, she had taken her knowledge with her, clutched between stiff fingers, like a relic returned to its saint, secure alike from worshippers and blasphemers. It was gone, now, and with it had gone the youthful part of his heart.

He wished, idly, that he had not torn her scarf, the night before, to bandage her wound. She had not liked his tearing her scarf.

"Wait," he said, as Sebastian bent to strike the flint on the steel. He looked about desperately--there must be something else--something he could give. His glance fell on a bush of green spikes near the foot of the cliff. The Spanish bayonet was just coming into flower again, as he had seen it in flower, in Judge Willo's garden. He ran ploddingly over to the bush and thrust his hand among the thorns. His arm was bleeding from a dozen scratches when he pulled it out, but he had the flower. It had not yet come to full bloom, but it was enough.

He laid the white stalk on her breast--it rested there like an order bestowed by the Moon. He touched her fingers an instant. Then he crouched down at Sebastian's feet to blow the tinder into sparks.

The sparks hung for a moment and caught, the tinder started to burn. They fed the flame carefully, with small pieces, till it grew strong, then they stood aside. The bottom logs began to crackle, a little at first, then more. The driftwood burned eerily with ghosts of blues and greens, strange as the colors of an enchanter's rose; as it mounted, the flame grew purer.

Soon the whole pyre was well alight. The tiny cracklings blended into a fiercer, deeper utterance, strangely petulant in that quietude where the only other sound was the slow crash of a single, heavy breaker on the sand, repeated at even intervals like the firing of minute-guns for the burial of a mermaid queen in a tomb of coral and weed. Above of the pyre the heat began to tremble in the still air like threads of isinglass. They could not have quenched the fire now if they had wished--it had become a furnace--the petulant mutter settled to a harsh, husky roar. Now the overlapping edge of the sail felt the pure aspiration of the flame-a wisp of smoke blew across Caterina's face--a running creeper of fire sprang up and crouched at her feet.

Andrew turned away. Sebastian was lying face down in the sand, his arms out, his body in the shape of a cross. He was silent, but now and then a convulsive shudder rippled the muscles of his back and broke.

Andrew looked blindly at the palm of his own hand, surprised to find it unscorched, undefaced by fire. He would not look at the pyre again, to see that body altered and the last revenge of flesh on spirit. So he looked once, hastily, but saw nothing but flame and smoke. Through the rest of his life, he thought, in stupor of mind, he would go his ways like a man caught up alive out of hell, with the rustle of fire always in his ears and the thin, acrid reek of it clung to his flesh.

They had to feed the fire once, when it slackened, but by then they were numb and went about the task like sleepers.

It was over at last. The pyre had sunk to a bed of ashes and sparks. There were charred things lying there, but they did not gather them up. What little wind there was had scattered some of the ashes, they could not tell which were hers. They heaped stones in a rough sort of cairn over the place and covered the stones with sand. Soon the mound looked as if it had always been there. At the top of the finished mound, Sebastian put a badly-fashioned cross--two pieces of wood lashed together with rope. Andrew looked at it, thinking the next gale would blow it down.

He had intended to cut a name on the cross, but the only knife they had was dull, and now there was no time.

He tried to recollect what he could of the burial service they read in Trinity Church, in the brown gloom, under the puffy busts of gilded angels. "I am the resurrection and the life," he muttered, but the remembered syrup of the minister's voice spoiled the words. Besides, any words seemed an affront to the bleak impermanence of that heap of sand and stones.

The sun was low in the sky--his shadow on the sand was long and black. They could not have mended the boat without tools and they had no tools but a musket and a dull knife. They would have to go on. They would have to try and find the road.

"We'd better get on," he murmured, lifting from the ground the little pack of bread and dried meat he had tied up in his coat.

3.

They had known before what it was to go on when they stood at the end of resource, now they were to know what it was to go on beyond that end. There were two courses open to them--to plunge into the woods at a venture, hoping to strike the road and the Minorcans--or to attempt to reach St. Augustine by the beaches, alone. They would make better time at first, along the beach, but at the end of the cove a headland jutted out into rocks and they would have to swim for it. They chose the woods, staking what was left them on finding the road in the few hours of daylight that remained.

At first, it was easy. At the top of the gully they climbed was a long open glade, full of lush, deep grass. But at the end of the glade the underbrush began. They tried to keep a straight course by picking one tree out of the many to guide them, but, as they had to fight their way through the underbrush, their guidepost-tree would mix with other trees, and though they would imagine they had found the right one again, they could not be sure. Their tree had had a lightning-blaze on its left side--this one was blazed there too, but the blaze seemed a different shape.

Twilight came and with it the fear of the woods, the fear of going around and around the circle of a tethered horse till at last something cracked in the mind as they stumbled again upon the deep-trodden track they had made before, and they began to strike at the trees with their hands. The light faded inexorably, night crept between the trees, soft-footed, dark-eyed. "Mustn't run," said Andrew to himself, plodding ahead through a confusion of shadows.