Sard Harker: A novel

by John Masefield

PART FOUR

As soon as Sard was free, he went ashore to see Messrs. Wrattson & Willis’s agents. He was puzzled by the Pathfinder’s not being in the port. She could not be overdue, he thought, in just dropping down to leeward. She might have come and gone: in which case he would have missed her by a few hours. “More probably,” he thought, “she has gone down the coast to Otorin to complete her cargo. I’ll find her there.”

At the agents, as he asked for his letters, one of the managers of the firm, a tall, alert inscrutable man of about thirty-five, a Mr. Waycock, heard his name.

“Are you Mr. Harker of the Pathfinder,” he said, “come into my office, will you? I want to speak to you. Sit down here: the cigars are at your elbow. You don’t smoke? You’re the first sailor I’ve ever known who could say that. You know, Mr. Harker,” he said, “I heard that we might expect you apart from the Pathfinder. I had news of you from a man with whom I have business dealings, a man called Douglas Castleton.”

“Has he been here?” Sard asked. “Where is he?”

“Isn’t that a little like asking where is the curlew?” Mr. Waycock said. “It is best, perhaps, not to ask where Mr. Castleton is. I understand that he is not here at the moment, but away again on . . . well . . . on a business journey.”

“What news of the Pathfinder, sir?” Sard asked.

“The Pathfinder!” said Mr. Waycock. “Haven’t you heard? She was wrecked last week on the Snappers. She’s a total loss.”

“On the Snappers!” Sard said. “How on earth did she get there? Are all hands saved? Is Captain Cary safe?”

“You’ve not heard then,” Mr. Waycock said. “Of course you couldn’t have heard. No, all hands are not safe. They had pestilence on board. Captain Cary is dead. He died some days before the ship went ashore.”

“Dead!” Sard said. “But he was well when I saw him. How did you hear this?”

“We had a cable from Port Matoche where the crew were landed,” Mr. Waycock said. “Here it is. It gives just the bare facts, but if you come here to-morrow morning at nine o’clock, the crew will be here with Mr. Dorney. Mr. Hopkins is still in hospital. The rest will be coming in this evening by the mail. You can see them here in the morning. Here’s Dorney’s cable as far as it goes.”

Sard looked at the flimsy.

“I’m glad Captain Cary didn’t lose her,” he said. “But how did they put her on the Snappers?”

“Well, she came down on both knees like a riderless horse,” Mr. Waycock said. “They had a fever on board. I don’t know more than that.”

“Yes,” Sard thought to himself. “I know the kind of fever they’ve had on board, Captain Cary dead and myself not there, Hopkins ill and Dorney who can’t navigate, a man who doesn’t hold with sights but can foodge a day’s work, as he calls it.”

“Are they bringing Captain Cary’s body, sir?” he asked.

“No, he was buried at sea,” Mr. Waycock said. “A fine seaman, Captain Cary—of the old school, that is. Of course his day was over. He couldn’t have held his own much longer. It’s just as well as it is.”

“Yes,” Sard said bitterly. “He didn’t lose her and he hadn’t got the sack. But he wasn’t wanted and they let him know it. You must excuse me, Mr. Waycock. I have been with Captain Cary for ten years. I must go out and think of it. I will come in the morning.”

At the door as he was going out, he said, “One other thing, Mr. Waycock. Douglas Castleton is mixed up with a very queer company of men. I suspect that some of those men were concerned with abducting a woman, a Miss Kingsborough, from a house in Las Palomas. I have reason to believe that the men in that abduction came from Santa Barbara here and were going to bring Miss Kingsborough here to some Mr. B. or Sagrado B. who runs a rum-running business and is plotting revolution against the Dictator here.”

“Oh, but I think you’re quite mistaken about that,” Mr. Waycock said. “Our friend moves in very queer company, but not in company of that sort at all. Besides, Miss Kingsborough has been found. The case was reported in the press a week or ten days ago. She was taken by bandits, not by rum-runners. She was held to ransom. I think I could find you the account in the paper. I have got it somewhere here. She was in a mining town quite close to Las Palomas, a place called Tlotoatin.”

“Tlotoatin!” said Sard.

“Yes, do you know it?” said Mr. Waycock.

“I have been there,” Sard said.

“Oh, here’s the ‘Humanidad,’ ” Mr. Waycock said. “Here’s the account, ‘Miss Kingsborough found.’ Cost her £400.” He pointed the paragraph to Sard, who read:

“Miss Kingsborough Found.

“A cable from Las Palomas confirms the rumour, which we quoted in our columns yesterday, that Miss Kingsborough has been restored to her friends and relatives. Yesterday the agents of the British Consul visited the place appointed by the bandits with the sum demanded for the lady’s ransom: £400. Great reticence veils what took place at the meeting, but the bandits were men of their word and Miss Kingsborough was set free. A press agent who interviewed her late last night declares that she is looking none the worse for her adventure, and that the bandits treated her with courtesy. Thus ends a nine days’ wonder, and thus, as we hope, will end the campaign of calumny which the Occidental press has waged against the police of Santa Barbara ever since Miss Kingsborough’s disappearance. The criminals of this atrocity were not natives of this State, but Occidentales, living on the scene of their crime. Let the doves of Las Palomas change their ways before they accuse others of being wolves.”

“I’m relieved to find that she has been found,” Sard said. “So that ends that.”

“You see,” Mr. Waycock said, “this is five or six days ago.”

“Did you ever hear the nickname B. or Mr. Sagrado B.?” Sard asked, “in connection with rum-running or plotting against the Dictator?”

Mr. Waycock had a broad, smooth, pale face, tranquil like the face of an image of Buddha.

“I know no one with such a nickname,” he said, “and there is no rum-running from Santa Barbara. There may be rum-running from the coast far to the west, six hundred miles from here, where the rum is made, but none from here. This fiction of the rum coming from Santa Barbara is made by the Las Palomas police, Mr. Harker. And as for plotting against the Dictator, you meant, I suppose, the Don José faction. Who would shoot the Dictator to put Don José in his place?”

“Don José would, for one,” Sard said.

Mr. Waycock laughed. “He hasn’t that reputation in Santa Barbara,” he said.

Sard suddenly felt that he was in the presence of one of Don José’s backers.

“One thing, Mr. Waycock,” he said, “if Douglas Castleton isn’t plotting or fetching rum, what brings him to Santa Barbara?”

“He comes for letters, Mr. Harker; twice a year he comes to Santa Barbara for letters.”

“If ever he wants lawyer’s counsel or a gaoler’s bribe,” Sard said, “remember that I will pay for both as long as I’m alive.”

Mr. Waycock considered him with just the flicker of a smile.

“Very good, then, Mr. Waycock,” Sard added, “I’ll come in the morning at nine.” He went out into the street. “Captain Cary dead,” he muttered, “the Pathfinder gone and Miss Kingsborough found. Well, that ends that.”

He found himself at the bronze of the Bajel Verde on the beach. He gripped it with his hand, suddenly overwhelmed with grief. His captain, the old extra-master:

“John Craig Cary, of the ship Petrella,

Thunder-ship and stand-front-under fella,”

was now a new hand, at sea in death, with perhaps no one to teach him the ropes. The Pathfinder, who had found so many paths, where no paths showed, would now find no more. She would be jammed on the reef in the glare, while the rollers would surge over her, climbing her stern, rising, rising, rising, then thundering down, blue, then green, then blinding, all day long, all night long, till she broke.

“I’ve had enough of the sea,” he said. “It takes a man like Cary to master the sea. Then the day after he goes, the sea smashes all that ever he made, as though it had never been.”

Everything there reminded him of Captain Cary. The bronze on which his hand lay marked the very place where the Heroic Six had made their stand at the Green Boat. He had seen them there. He had been with Captain Cary in the cross-trees of the Venturer, watching the Heroic Six hiding, creeping out and firing until their cartridges were all gone. He remembered Captain Cary stamping and cursing when the boat patrols put out.

“There, boy,” he had said, “now they will be destroyed. Their retreat’s cut off. But fly down on deck, boy, and pitch the coils of the buntlines over the sides, so that, if any of them does reach the ship, he’ll be able to get on board.”

He had done this and in the dusk of that bloody day one of those buntline ends had caught a strange fish, Don Manuel himself, now the Dictator.

“Yes,” Sard thought, “it was Captain Cary who saved Don Manuel and by doing that he made this port the Athens of the West.”

Two hundred yards further along the new front towards the city was a strong shelter made of white Otorin marble. Something was displayed within it upon a bronze pedestal. Sard went in to see what it was, because it seemed to be a ship. It proved to be a big model barque flying the house flag of Wrattson & Willis: Sard recognised her instantly as the Venturer. On each side of the supporting bronze was a medallion portrait of Captain Cary, with an inscription in Spanish, which Sard translated thus:

“In eternal gratitude

To Captain John Craig Cary

And the officers and company

of the English Barque Venturer,

For their nobleness to the ruined in the Noche Triste.”

Under the inscription was a list of the Venturer’s company, divided into watches, just as it had been in that long ago time. The list ended with the boys of his own watch: “Adam Bolter, Charles Crayford, Edward Grant, Chisholm Harker.” Under his own name were two lines of verse:

“They gave their safety, shelter, friendship, bread,

To me who had a price upon my head.”

Sard was overwhelmed. “So,” he thought, “here is Captain Cary’s monument. I wonder if he knew of it; he never mentioned it. I hope that he knew of it. He must have known of it.”

The model had been made in England by skilled craftsmen working under someone who had known the Venturer intimately. Little special matters, such as the make of the truss of the fore-yard, the lead of the braces, the design stencilled on the deckhouse, the use of brass pins in the poop fiferails, all showed that one of the old Venturers had been engaged in the work. “Flackwell, the bo’sun, helped in this,” he thought, “there is Flackwell’s gadget of the broom-rack in the bo’sun’s locker.”

By this time the sun was behind the Sierra; the ships were dim against the bay and men were hoisting the riding lights. Sard could hear the blocks creak as they swayed them up. He went along the water-front to the end, and then climbed the great white marble staircase, between the lines of orange trees, to the Plaza of the Martyrdoms. He had never ceased to be amazed and exalted by the beauty of the new work. That stair, ten years before, had been palm-stems pinned into the earth like the rungs of a ladder. Now it was all Otorin stone, white and exquisite, with marvellous busts of the martyrs at intervals along the balustrades: Carlotta, Jane Jennings, Pascual Mestas, Celedonio Vigil, Agapito Chavez, Luciano Sisneros, Inocencio Chacon; then Carlotta and Jane Jennings again, with those five of the Heroic Six who had been killed in the bay. The faces leaned from among the dark green of the orange trees. In the groves behind them there were fountains.

He reached the Plaza at the top of the stairs. There at least the Houses of the Last Sighs were as they had been. They looked dingy and evil in that place of brightness: they looked as if they would not have any life of their own until all the lights were turned out. They were inhabited still, for a little smoke came from one of the chimneys. Sard wondered that anybody should live still in them; but he had heard that they were let at cheap rates, being supposed to be haunted, and that they were to stand thus, unpainted, till the last of the Don Lopez faction, Don José and one Rafael, had been shot there like their victims.

There were three houses together, a big one in the centre, flanked on each side by a smaller. On the wall of each of the smaller houses, at breast-height, were the chippings of bullets, under the legend, painted in white,

Hic ceciderunt.

He did not need to be told that, for he had seen the prisoners dragged thither to be shot after Don Manuel’s defeat. He had seen two or three hundred men shot there by the Lopez faction. He had watched it all from the Venturer’s cross-trees: batch after batch, volley after volley: not men only, but many women, and some children. He had seen the accursed Reds drag their victims out of houses. It had not been the suppression of a rising, but a massacre of all whose virtue shamed them.

Hic ceciderunt.

He could not see the words without a prayer, that those who had fallen there had found peace, and that those who had killed them there might find justice.

There was another white temple-like structure in the Plaza, a round roof upon columns of marble, which sheltered musicians. In a European city it would have been a “kiosk” or a “bandstand”; here it was a lovely work of art, which took away the breath by its grace and fitness. Some musicians were moving away from the shelter, having finished their playing: the crowd which had been loitering or lounging about the music was now breaking up. Most of it was setting towards a theatre which stood under bright lights on the southern side of the Plaza. Sard went with the crowd, with a feeling which he had never known before, that to be with many people, in bright light, is a satisfaction, an excitement, a consolation.

Outside the theatre doors were the bills of the play, which gave yet another shock to Sard.

“Theatre Jane Jennings.

Numancia,

by Cervantes.

Tafoya. Archuleta. Vizcarra.”

Theatre of Jane Jennings, playing a poetical tragedy by Cervantes. Why, when he had come there in the Venturer Jane Jennings was alive there, a byword, a most notorious bawd, the talk of all the fo’c’sles in port, infamous herself and the cause of infamy in others. Adam Bolter had been to her house and had talked and drunk with her. “A big, fat, black-haired woman, with a hooky nose: she was always either swearing or singing lullabies.” Now for her heroic defiance a simple people had made her a heroine, a national heroine. All that was evil in her had dropped from her, like rags or lice, leaving only something noble. He felt the nobleness. She had had her throat cut there in front of those dingy houses rather than do a dirty thing. Now her memory was kept alive in that place, as one whose fineness alone counted; the rest was rightly forgotten. She had come from Bermondsey and had been a bawd; now there were marble busts of her and a theatre named after her in a capital city.

He paid tribute to her memory by entering her theatre. He heard Tafoya, Archuleta, Vizcarra and their companions speak the verse of that great soldier-of-fortune. But he could not heed the tragedy.

His mind was full of what he had heard in Mr. Waycock’s office.

“What does it all amount to?” he kept asking himself. “I met a girl, many years ago, who altered my life for me: all my time has been a dream of her. Then in my dream, hearing those men at the fight, I went to warn some strangers; for they were strangers, name and nation different from hers. I warned them. I might just as well have held my tongue and gone on board; they did not profit by my warning. Now the girl who did not take my warning is safe and sound with her friends, while my friend is dead, my ship is on the Snappers a total loss, and I myself am alive only by miracle.

“What does it all mean? Some power, with foreknowledge and other knowledge, wanted me out of the Pathfinder and got me and kept me out of her by the only means which could have done it. With me away, the Captain dies and the ship is lost; then I am allowed to rejoin the ship’s company. Why should I have been wanted away, save for evil, since nothing but evil came of my going? The Pathfinder was doomed, so the man who could have saved her was taken out of her. That ass Pompey and the foodger Dorney were left to play hell with her and well they seem to have played it.

“I was lured out of the ship by the appeal to the softest thing in me. By stooping to the lure, I have made a pretty mess of things: the ship lost . . .

“It all comes from my love for that girl. Even if it be madness, or folly, or delusion, all that love has been very real, it is my intensest thing: and the intense things cannot lie: they are the only true things. Jane Jennings’ intense defiance was the true woman speaking: all the rest was only mistake.”

The tragedy came to an end with the blowing of a trumpet for the great who had died. Sard moved out with the company into the Plaza, which was now lively with the city’s amusement. He went to a little table in front of a café, and dined there, listening to selections from Gluck’s “Iphigenia.” He faced the music; the Houses of the Last Sighs lay to his left.

When he sat down at his table, before the waiter took his order, a man in uniform appeared with a pencil and a printed form. Sard’s name, nationality, ship, duty, station, lodging and other particulars were asked and noted. “Such is the law,” the man said. “In every eating-house and hotel in Santa Barbara. It prevents unpleasantness.”

Sitting there in the light, among the crowd, listening to the music, was a pure pleasure to one who so few days before had been starving in the Sierra. Sard could not feel that “unpleasantness” was near that happy place: all seemed so happy. Long after his dinner was at an end he sat there sipping coffee. His waiter, a big brawny Spaniard with a good-humoured cynical face, pointed out the Houses of the Last Sighs.

“It was there, Señor, that they shot the martyrs on the Day of the Troubles. See, Señor, the bullet-marks. Never will those houses be cleaned, or painted, or rebuilt, till the vengeance has been paid; thus has our Dictator vowed. When the debt is paid, they shall go; until then . . . thus.”

Sard knew more about the martyrdoms than the waiter, but in politeness he edged his chair aside, so that he could see the houses. The two outer houses were closed, with dark green jalousied shutters over every window. The central house, the largest of the three, had no shutters, but the windows were blinded and blank. The big windows of the ground floor were also shaded by the green, iron turtle-back of a verandah.

“The houses are dead,” he said.

“No, Señor,” the waiter said, “they are inhabited. A poor sort of people live in them. See, there, a padre enters.”

The houses were about forty yards away, under brilliant electric light. Sard saw a big, muscular priest walk with the air of a king up the steps of the central house. He turned at the door to survey the Plaza below him. Even at that distance his attitude and gesture gave the idea of domination. He seemed to dilate there. He looked like a lion conscious of supremacy. His pose seemed to say, “You canaille exist and die and rot, but I am above these things.”

There was something familiar in the man’s presence, strange as it was. That pride and power of bearing seemed familiar to Sard: he felt that he had seen it before. As the priest entered the house, Sard thought that he reminded him of Father Garsinton, who had begged a passage in the Pathfinder.

“He was like that Father Garsinton,” he thought. “And it is strange. . . . Sailors would say that it was the sky-pilot who brought her on the Snappers. I did not hear about Garsinton at the office. Waycock never mentioned him, though of course he would not concern Waycock in any way.”

“Tiene,” he said to the waiter, “that priest who entered, do you know his name?”

“No, Señor; nor himself. A poor sort of people live in those houses. Without the priest they would be poor indeed. ‘They have but birth and death,’ as we say; with a priest, these will suffice a man.”

“Do you know of any people called Garsinton in that house?”

“I know no one there, Señor.”

“After all,” Sard thought to himself, “it can hardly be Garsinton. He will be coming here in the Recalde with the rest on a Consul’s order. He can hardly be here yet. Even if it were Garsinton, his story of the wreck would probably be worthless. I suppose Pompey or Dorney will lose his ticket over this wreck, but the fault will be with myself and my dreams.”

He ordered more coffee. He talked to the waiter about events in Santa Barbara. The man said, as Waycock had said, that there was a little rum-smuggling from the western coast, in that immensely remote part known as “beyond Caliente.” He said that “things” were settled now in Santa Barbara. “Revolution, Señor,” he said, “what is it? A grand name for bad manners. What overcomes all revolution? Art. And art Don Manuel brings here. Regard the cathedral . . . the western front not faultless, but what spirit . . . . Then, too, the opera. I, a poor man, have my fill of opera, I sing in opera . . . in certain choruses. . . . All this Don Manuel makes possible. Great things are shared by all here; this gives security.”

Sard presently rose, thinking that he would take a turn about the Plaza and then to bed. It seemed to him that to work in a city like that, where great things were shared by all, would be happier than working against the sea, which shares nothing, permits little and surely takes all in the end. “I must make a new start somewhere,” he said, “on a new foundation since the old has come to grief. Since the old ends here, the new had better begin here.”

Though it was easy to say that the old had ended, his mind was full of Juanita de la Torre, as he crossed the Plaza to the jut of land called Cachopos. On this jut, completely covering it, was the nunnery of Santa Alba, whose votaries kept the Cachopos Lighthouse. Sard had heard of these nuns. He walked to the end of the Plaza to see where they lived. He could see little more than the body of their church, the walls of the conventual buildings and the pharos with its slowly revolving beam of light. Twice in each minute, the beam as it came round fell for five seconds upon the unfinished spire, tower and pinnacles of the cathedral, making them glow as though they were living creatures.

Sard watched its coming and going for some minutes. He had grateful thoughts of the women who kept that light. He turned slowly back into the Plaza, feeling utterly alone. He found that the café where he had dined was closed. The tables and chairs had been stacked away together at the edge of the pavement; his waiter had gone. Sard took a seat at another café nearer to the Houses of the Last Sighs; he ordered coffee and sat there watching the people. All were going home now, for the amusements were done: it was almost midnight. Among the last to pass across the Plaza near Sard was a little old figure of a woman, who carried a mandoline case and music. Something about her seemed familiar to Sard. Her name and state came back to him in a flash: he rose and bowed, saying:

“Señorita Suarez.”

She came nearer to him, looked at him hard, but could not recognise him. She was sixty-five. She wore black and yellow lace upon her head; her face was yellow as gold, wrinkled as shrunk cloth; her hair was iron grey, done in ringlets, her nose was like a hawk’s beak and her eyes like coals.

“Señorita Suarez,” Sard went on, “I was in the Venturer, years ago, in the Days of the Troubles. You were on board for some days, with other ladies of The Blancos.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, “sad, sad days in the Venturer. You have seen that we remember?”

“Yes, indeed.”

“And you remember me? I cannot remember you.”

“How should you?” Sard said. “I was but a boy then, and, unlike you, did not make lovely music.”

“Ah, yes,” she said, smiling, “always I make music.”

“Señorita,” he said, “for the sake of old times, will you let me offer you refreshment?”

“That, no,” she said: then, in English, “No thanky.”

The talk did not seem successful, so Sard said:

“We were lucky in the Venturer. We saved Don Manuel for a great future.” The old woman drew back as though he had insulted her or wounded her to the quick.

“For a great future?” she said, swelling like a cat about to spring. “For a great future? I trust, yes, for a very great future; for an execution so great that all this city, this bay, the mountains and the islands of the sea shall be black with people come to watch it. Let him live, Lord, to taste the greatness of that future, the Lord-with-us, the padre Pipi. You, sailor, dog of the tides, who caused us the contamination of his presence, and cursed this city with his life, speak not to Jenny Suarez of dons and futures, he, the accursed, the accursed, whose footsteps press blood out of the stones.” She spat towards Sard in the vehemence of her hate (she did not do it well) and went shaking, muttering and clicking past him, and so away down the great marble stairs.

“I suppose she was a Red,” Sard thought, “become a Red since Don Manuel became Dictator. I thought that perhaps Waycock lied about the Dictator’s popularity.”

When the waiter brought him his coffee, he asked whether Don Manuel were much loved.

“Very much, Señor.”

“Since when, and why have they named him padre Pipi?”

The waiter looked round in alarm.

“This Plaza is Blanco, Señor,” he said.

“What of it?”

“Perhaps, Señor, you know little of affairs here. Let me then warn you, as a native, never to make use of that name. It is a Red name, Red as the grid of hell, where I yet shall see those Red accursed roasting. We of the Whites call him the Grande. And truly he is Grande. He is the Lion of the Faith, Grandissimo. Yet even that name, in certain parts, among certain people, it is not prudent to speak aloud.”

“It is very true,” Sard answered. “Truly a man digs his grave with his teeth, but assuredly he cuts his throat with his tongue.”

“Assuredly.”

“Viva Don Manuel,” Sard said, “to the great race the great ruler.”

“Amen, indeed, Señor.”

“When will you close?” Sard asked.

“At one in the morning, Señor; lo, now the day passes.”

One of the bells of Santa Barbara very sweetly chimed for the hour. Instantly, from all over the city, other bells began either to strike or to chime till the air was trembling with sweetness of sound which melted into the midnight and made it deeper. Some of the ships in the bay made eight bells: a clock in the House of the Dying Sighs struck: it was midnight. Now while the deepness of a tenor bell was toning, there came, from Cachopos, perhaps a quarter of a mile away, the exquisite song of the nuns of Santa Alba at their midnight office. Sard was spellbound. All the night had ceased to be of men and folly: it had become suddenly a thing of stars and flowers and of the joy of the soul in her God.

The coming of the midnight seemed to be a signal that the life of the town should stop. It seemed to bring everybody home, so that in a few minutes the Plaza was almost empty and so quiet that one could tell the passing feet: the small, belated woman hurrying: the guardians in couples slowly patrolling, pausing to try if doors were locked.

Then, from one of the streets leading to the Plaza from the northward, there came the singing of drunkards. Sard hoped at first, from the noise that was made, that the drunkards were foreigners; but they were two English reefers, both sillily drunk, followed by a third, who, being sober and much younger than the others, was trying to pilot the drunkards down to the landing-stage. They were trying to sing some fragment of grand opera which they had heard that night: they made a bestial row, “between the bull and the cat.”

Sard eyed them to see who and what they were: the two drunkards were from a small barque in the bay: the sober boy, to his amazement, was Huskisson, a first-voyager from the Pathfinder. Huskisson, a Pathfinder, running the midnight with these two night-owls, within an hour or two of landing, and not ten days from Captain Cary’s death. Sard stiffened and waited.

The drunkards bowed low to Sard, laughed, lurched across to the door of the centre house of the Last Sighs, and banged upon it with their fists. They shouted a song as they banged.

“Beautiful Rosey-posey,

Ever I think of thee,

I love sweet Rosey-posey

And sweet Rosey-posey loves me.”

One of them called to the waiter to bring them some vinos; the other, a short, squat, sub-nosed lad, whose name was Crockums, did not like the waiter.

Crockums: You darned mañana Dago, fetch the vinos, intende, or I’ll smash your papish chops. You want to forget, you ain’t in no Vatican, now, nor yet in any rancheria. Come on, Paggy, and pitch this feller over the bubb-banisters.

Paggy: No; he’s not a genelum; never fight with a feller’s not a genelum; never fight with a genelum’s not (singing) “A captain in the how-d’ye-do brigade. How de do? How de do? I’m a captain in the how-d’ye-do brigade.”

Here Huskisson, who had not yet recognised Sard, but was terrified of arrest for disorder, interrupted:

“Look here, you fellows, don’t make this row; we’ll have the civil guards on us in a minute.”

Crockums: Make this row?

Paggy: Who’s making any row?

Crockums: We’re not making any row, you young pup; go and lap milk in a tea-joint.

Paggy: He talks like my female aunt.

Crockums: I’ve torn a man’s trousers off for less; dammy, the sea’s that refined nowadays it’s chronic.

Here the waiter appeared with the three little tin cups of Santa Barbara claret.

Crockums: He shan’t have any vinos now, because he told us not to make this row.

Paggy: All the more for us.

Crockums: Drink hearty, Paggy.

Paggy: Salue.

The two of them drank each one vino; then shared the third.

Paggy: Hold your tumbler, Crockums.

Crockums: Go easy.

Paggy: It’s only this red vino.

Crockums: You’re giving me more than my share.

Paggy: They give one the purser’s gill here: two thimbles and a thumb.

Crockums: Here’s how.

Paggy: Here’s health, wealth and unity.

As soon as they had swallowed the wine they put down the cups, breathed deeply, turned, rushed at the central door, beat upon it with all their strength singing “O come let’s kick the door in,” to the tune of Adeste, Fideles. At the second stanza they changed the words to “Let’s fling the table through the doorway,” seized one of the tables and prepared to do as the song bade. The waiter interfered with “Ho, Señores, that, no. The tables, no. The song, yes, but not to break the tables.”

Crockums: What do you want, steward?

Paggy: He wants to be paid for his vinos.

Crockums: How much for your vinos? Combien de money?

The waiter: Tres pesetas.

Crockums: Tres pese . . . ? tres pesetas?

The waiter: Si quiere usted.

Crockums: Who the hell are you calling a keeairy usted? Hold my coat, Paggy. I’ll have this blighter’s blood.

Here Huskisson interfered again, saying that the waiter had only said, “If you please.”

Crockums: I’ll please him. My mother isn’t going to be called a keeairy usted by any dam Dago on this coast. There’s your keeairy usted in your teeth.

He seized the tin cups one after the other and hurled them in the waiter’s face; then he and his Paggy upset a table apiece, screamed aloud, and ran yelling down the marble steps towards the port. Sard turned to the sober reefer.

“Huskisson.”

“Sir.”

“What were you doing with those two?”

“Helping them to their ship, sir.”

“Don’t you know that you belong to a crack ship?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Why disgrace her, then, by going about with a pair like that?”

“I was trying to save them from arrest, sir.”

“Where are you sleeping to-night?”

“At the Sailors’ Home, sir.”

“Very good, Huskisson, now sit down and eat an ice with me and tell me of Captain Cary’s death.”

Huskisson sat down and began to cry.

“Avast heaving, with the tears, Huskisson,” Sard said kindly. “Tears won’t help anybody. Just take your time. Eat your ice and then we will walk to your Sailors’ Home and you shall tell me everything as we go.”

This is Huskisson’s story:

“After Captain Cary left you ashore in Las Palomas, sir, he waited for you a long time. He wanted to be sailing, for it was looking very black and he was anxious for the ship. After an hour or so, he sent Mr. Dorney ashore to look for you. Mr. Dorney didn’t come back till after eight. He said he’d been out to a house for you and that you’d started back by another way before he got there. Captain Cary was upset by that. He said he hoped you hadn’t got into any trouble. He said to Mr. Hopkins, ‘I don’t like staying any longer. The ship’s not safe here in a norther and the glass is dropping like a stone. Still I must leave word about Mr. Harker.’ So he sent the boat in again to leave word at the police about you, sir. The swell was setting in very heavy indeed when we went ashore, but coming back we were very nearly swamped. When we got back, Captain Cary said that there was nothing for it but to leave you ashore. He was very much upset about it, sir. He said, ‘I wish I had not let him go, but I felt it my duty at the time.’ And that padre fellow, Father Garsinton, the passenger, said, ‘Whatever one feels to be one’s duty, is right, depend upon that, Captain Cary.’ Captain Cary said, ‘I’m not so sure, sir,’ and told Mr. Hopkins to man the windlass.

“We were well out of Las Palomas, sir. We were the last to run for it, all except the Mondovo, and we heard since that she drove ashore.

“It was after the sea had gone down, when we were well clear of the Serranas, that the trouble began.

“It began the third day out, just when everything seemed settled in for a quick run. It began with quite a little thing, sir. The geraniums in the cabin were all found withering. They all died within a few hours: Captain Cary thought that the steward had given them salt water by mistake. Well, that passed over, sir, and we thought no more of it. But then, the next day, there was something wrong with one of his canaries; something the matter with its throat. The steward said he thought it must have the pip. It kept straining with its head as though trying to clear its throat. And in the course of the day the others fell ill with the same complaint. Captain Cary supposed that some poisonous seeds had somehow been packed in their bird-seed: anyhow they all died. Mr. Dorney told us that Captain Cary was very much upset at the canaries dying. He had always counted on his geraniums and canaries for a bright cabin, and you know, sir, they had been lovely little singers.

“Captain Cary seemed out of sorts that night during the first watch. He said something to the helmsman, who couldn’t understand what he said. I was near at the time, time-keeping, and I couldn’t understand either; he spoke so thickly. Then the next day he fell really ill. He came down to breakfast dragging one leg and making a noise in his throat as though he was trying to swallow or trying to speak. He couldn’t do either; he couldn’t eat nor drink nor say what was the matter. At first they thought that something was stuck in his throat, but it wasn’t that. Mr. Dorney said he thought it was hydrophobia, and Mr. Hopkins thought it was more like lockjaw. There didn’t seem to be much pain, but he was frightfully distressed. He kept trying to explain what was the matter or what should be done, but nobody could understand what he said, and it weighed upon him frightfully that people couldn’t understand him. Mr. Dorney said he cried.

“They tried to get him to lie down, but he seemed worse, lying down. He was very much worse next day. You see, sir, he was an old man. He’d never been ill before and the worry of not being able to speak or swallow or sleep broke him up.

“Old Jellybags went aft to be near him in case of a call that night; so as to give the steward a rest. Old Jellybags was in a blue funk about it, because we all thought that it was hydrophobia and that he’d be bitten. Still, he said he wasn’t going to let any da . . . I mean any O.S., sir, look after Captain Cary, while there was anyone in the half deck to do it.

“We helped him shift his bed aft. We envied him having all night in. Wolfram saw him at the beginning of the first watch; he said that Captain Cary seemed quieter. I suppose that that was about a quarter past eight.

“The steward peeped in on them at coffee-time next morning. He didn’t like their looks, so he called Mr. Hopkins. Captain Cary was unconscious, but still fighting this thing in his throat; and poor old Jellybags had caught it: he couldn’t speak nor swallow, but seemed trying to clear his throat. I can’t explain it, sir, but it was horrid to see: they felt it so.”

“What was the passenger, this Father Garsinton, doing,” Sard asked. “Most priests in the tropics have some knowledge of medicine; couldn’t he help or suggest something?”

“Yes, sir. He said that he had seen nothing like it. He examined the patients and said that their hearts were very fluttery. He said that the poison must have come on board in the air, from the norther, the day we sailed. He said that it must have come from some very poisonous place away up north, where there is no sun to kill germs, and that it came in at the skylight.

“He said that it must have come in at the skylight because the first things it attacked were the geraniums just under the skylight, that then it attacked the canaries, close to, and then spread to Captain Cary, who was so often there, and from him to poor old Jellybags.

“Mr. Hopkins said, ‘We’re certainly carrying some tropical disease, it’s in the cabin where the Captain and Old Jellybags have been sleeping. We’ll sulphur out all the cabins.’

“So we sealed all the cabins, both fo’c’sles and both deckhouses and sulphured them out. Then when we unsealed them, we mopped them all over with carbolic solution. We reckoned that that must have disinfected the ship.

“Next morning Mr. Hopkins was down with the disease, just the same symptoms and this fluttery heart.

“We could find nothing like it in our medical book, but Mr. Dorney worked out a dose for a weak heart; but you see, sir, they couldn’t swallow. When we tried to dose them they seemed to choke. Mr. Dorney said all along it was hydrophobia they’d got. You can understand how we felt about it, sir.

“The next day the steward went down with it just the same as the others. That was one of the worst of all the things, sir, because with all these people falling sick, one of the chronometers ran down and something went wrong with the other. You see, sir, it had been in the infected cabin.”

“Rot, boy,” Sard said, “a chronometer couldn’t pick up infection.”

“Well, sir, perhaps it can’t, but that was how we felt about it when everything in the cabin got poisoned.

“And then that morning, sir, poor Captain Cary died in the room where he was with Jellybags. He hadn’t said anything that we could understand since he had fallen ill. You can imagine what we all thought, sir; we all knew what Captain Cary was. We buried him that afternoon, sir. It was dead calm and hazy and blazing hot. Mr. Dorney read the service and just as we put poor Captain Cary into the sea, that little black cat came out of the cabin, and it had the disease. It dragged one of its legs and was fighting in its throat and its coat was all staring. It came to the grating where Captain Cary had lain and mewed. Mr. Dorney said, ‘My God, the cat’s got it.’ I don’t think anything scared the men so much as that cat coming out; there was a regular growl; and they growled a good deal too, because Mr. Dorney took the service instead of the padre. Mr. Dorney said that he was acting captain and it was the captain’s place to read the service; marriage, christening or burial. The crowd didn’t like that at all, nor did the padre; but Mr. Dorney said that they’d ‘joost have to loomp it.’

“Poor old Jellybags died the next day.

“Then we got a slant of wind which lasted for three days: the disease never seemed to do much when the wind was stronger than light airs. Then the wind died out and it came on thick, just as we were expecting to pick up Cape Caliente. It was blazing hot, with mist, just when we didn’t know where we were. Then the disease came on again: the poor steward died and the poor little cat died, and the padre seemed very queer.

“Then Sainte Marie, the French A.B., who had helped to bring out the steward’s body, went down with it. He was the first man forward to get it, and, of course, he got it by coming aft. And now everybody was terrified, not only at the disease but at being shut up in the mist and lost. We hadn’t picked up Cape Caliente and we were all afraid we’d been caught in the southerly set and put to the south of it on one side or other. We couldn’t tell where we’d got to. We tested the water alongside to see if we were near the mouth of the Santa Maria, but the water wasn’t brackish. We’d hands aloft looking for high land. From time to time we hove the lead, but it’s all volcanic water there, sir, just like the bottomless pit. It was like being under a curse. One of the worst things was that when the padre went queer he kept intoning the burial service. It was dead calm and very hot, with the sail slatting and all the gear jangling and the ship’s bells tolling as she rolled.

“Then about dark that night the wind freshened a little. We got her to lay a course about west-north-west. She made as much as two knots for the first couple of hours, though it was still thick. We had the fog-horn blowing because we hoped to get an echo if we were anywhere near the high land. Just before midnight we heard breakers on the lee bow. Mr. Dorney put her about and kept her on the other tack for a couple of hours. Then we heard breakers again on the lee bow. Mr. Dorney put her about again and took a cast of the lead and got volcanic rock at 125 fathoms. Then the wind dropped and it came on very thick. We had all hands on deck waiting for a call and from time to time we heard the padre, sometimes fighting with this thing in his throat, sometimes calling out the burial service. It went on like that, sir, for some hours. Sometimes we had a few stray slants of air and then they would die away again. At about 3.30 we heard breakers on the port bow and then breakers on the starboard beam. Mr. Dorney said we must be among the Chamuceras. Anyway, we were embayed. I don’t think Mr. Dorney had been off his feet for two days and two nights, sir. We drew clear of these breakers, and it was just beginning to grow light when we heard breakers again on our starboard bow and then breakers on the port bow and then the wind died on us, sir, and there wasn’t a breath. Suddenly the padre appeared on deck in red socks and with a red tamash for a loin-cloth. He stood at the poop rail, laughing and cussing, and then the fog cleared away, and old Holdfast, the Vancouver man, who was in the cross-trees, sang out, ‘Land, ho,’ and the look-out man shouted, ‘Breakers dead ahead, sir.’

“Mr. Dorney sang out to let go both anchors, and one of them, at least, was let go. Somebody sang out, ‘Weather main brace,’ I suppose, to lay the main yards aback. Most of us ran to the weather main braces, and I was on the rope and we were just beginning to haul, when I saw something white rise up on our own weather bow, and then she went crash on to something and knocked us all off our feet. She got up just as we did and seemed to look around and wonder what was happening, and she lifted clear of whatever it was and seemed to jump out of it, but perhaps it was only the broken water that gave me the idea that she did, for then she ran fairly on to it with a crash which tore the boat’s skids clean off and pitched her fore and main top-gallant masts right out of her like bitten-off carrots.”

“Were the men aloft killed,” Sard asked.

“No, sir, they were warned by her hitting the first time. After that second crash she didn’t strike again, she only worked down into where there were great breakers all round us. Then the fog went as though by magic and it was daylight. We could see everything when it was too late, Cape Caliente, Port Matoche, and all the coast as far as the Cow and Calves. We were on the Snappers, seven miles west of Caliente. Mr. Dorney had been thinking that we were among the Chamuceras, thirteen miles east of her.

“Well, sir, we could take stock of how we were. She was lying over on her starboard side a little and about a foot or two by the stern. We judged that she was ripped pretty well open, for the water was over her ’tween decks. And now that it was too late the wind began to freshen and she began to grind where she lay. Mr. Dorney furled the sails to ease her and got the boats ready for hoisting out, and by the time the boats were ready she was grinding down at each swell with a noise like ice cracking on a lake, and the sea all round her began to come up in a kind of syrup from our sugar.

“By eight o’clock it was no joke to be on deck. She was pounding and breaking the sea. Mr. Dorney decided to abandon ship. He hoisted all her colours first, house flag, ensign and number, and then he got off three of the boats. I went in the bo’sun’s boat. Just before Mr. Dorney’s boat was put over the side, while we were lying off watching, there came a great big swell, which passed underneath us, of course, but it caught the old Pathfinder fair and gave her a great yank over and everything in her seemed to fetch away over to starboard with a bang, and the next swell went right over her all along. It was just all they could do to get that last boat over.

“Well, that was the end of it, sir, we’d a bit of a job to make Port Matoche, for the wind freshened into one of those local northerly gales which they call Arnottos. But we landed everybody and we took the sick up to the hospital. Mr. Hopkins and the A.B. were both much better when we left Port Matoche. The padre, Father Garsinton, was quite recovered. He came on here in a coaster so as to save a day while we were waiting for the mail. The doctor said that we had got some tropical infection on board, he didn’t know quite what; he said it was like medellin throat, but he had never known cases fatal before. We were all fumigated and had our clothes baked, which spoiled all our boots.”

“Did the Pathfinder break up?” Sard asked.

“Yes, sir,” the boy said. “Mr. Dorney, Wolfram, the Bos’un, and Sails went out in a shore boat after the Arnotto died down, to see if they could salve anything from her, but they found only her fo’c’sle and forepeak wedged on the rocks and the fore-mast still hanging by its gear. She had broken short off, they said, just abaft her fore-hatch and the rest of her was gone down into over 100 fathoms. They said that the worst of it was that she was within a ship’s length of clearing the Snappers altogether. Another hundred yards would have fetched her clear.”

“You aren’t allowed a hundred yards, nor a hundred inches, in our profession,” Sard said. “A ship is either afloat or ashore, and that’s all there is to it.”

By this time they had reached the door of the Sailors’ Home.

“Here you are at your inn,” Sard said. “Now go up to your berth and turn in, and don’t run the town with flash reefers again. You can’t do them any good, and they may do you great harm. Cut away to bed, and tell Mr. Dorney at breakfast that I hope to see him at nine in the morning at the agent’s office.”

After he had dismissed the boy, Sard walked back to the Plaza, to think. He sat again at his table, sipping coffee, while the waiters about him prepared for closing time. “Medellin throat,” he kept thinking, “dead of medellin throat; Captain Cary dead and the ship thrown away on the Snappers.”

There came the tramp of feet upon the stairway: men were marching to the Plaza crying strange cries like cheers. The waiter at his elbow touched him and muttered under his breath “Cuidado.”

Sard looked up suddenly. Men in the green and silver uniforms of the Guards came up the staircase into the Plaza: they drew up in three little squads of four men each. They carried rifles with which they stood on the alert. After them marched two officers, who came to Sard, jingled the spurs on their heels, clicked and saluted. Sard rose, returned the salute and waited.

“Captain Chisholm Harker?” one of the men said.

“I am Harker, not Captain,” Sard answered.

“His Excellency, Don Manuel, the Dictator, desires to speak with you.” They jingled, clicked, saluted and went. A great man stepped from the stairs into the Plaza. Sard knew him at once; indeed no one could fail to know him; there being only one such man alive. He was a grand man, with beauty and power in every line and gesture. He was dressed in spotless white and girt with a green sash. He wore the great white Santa Barbara hat of white macilento straw. He stood still, surveying Sard, for half a minute; Sard stood bareheaded surveying him. Very slowly and reverently the Dictator removed his hat, bowed to Sard and stood bareheaded before him. He said no word, but stood there bowed. Sard wished that it might end.

The Dictator advanced suddenly and spoke in English with fierce interjections of Spanish.

“Por Dios, Captain Harker,” he said, “I have waited all these years, knowing that you would come. When I heard that you were ashore and at the Plaza I could hardly endure to wait. So, give me your hands: no: both hands: so: how are you?”

Sard mumbled that he was well and glad to see the Dictator well.

“Yes,” the Dictator said, “I am better than when last we met. You remember the time we met, on board the Venturer?”

“Yes, Your Excellency.”

“I, too, I do not forget. Listen, all of you; this man is one of those who saved me in the Noche Triste. I was ruined: I was a beggar, what? Love killed, ay de mi; friends killed, hope killed. Myself wounded, exhausted. Those swinery had a price upon my head: two thousand English pounds. These men in the Venturer they took me in; they defended me. Those swinery were rowing harbour-guard for me. These men in the Venturer drew me half drowned from the sea and stood between me and death.”

He paused for a moment muttering words which were customary with him when moved: some were prayers for Carlotta, the rest curses on her killers.

“Yes,” he muttered, “the swinery; but they paid with their life’s blood, all but that dog, Don José, and that dog, Rafael. They wetted those stones of horror with their tears, those swinery.”

“There was a boy in the Venturer,” he continued, “what you call reefer, in what you call the half deck. He brought me in the dusk a suit of serges and a shirt and said, ‘Better luck next time, Señor.’ What was that reefer’s name? Hey?”

Sard growled that reefers generally answer to the name of Smith.

“Not this one,” Don Manuel said. “Por Dios, Captain Harker, it was you did that charity, you, then a boy. In the dusk, you remember, by the deckhouse, under the chocks of the boats, I know not the right name of it: you remember? Por Dios, I remember.

“Yes, yes, yes, por Dios; never will I forget. £2,000 to give me up, and I all in rags and bloody and shaking, with nothing but my personal charm, what?

“Ay de mi, one is slow in being grateful, too slow; but always in life the present is so full, the past drops, fades. I have watched for all old Venturers. I read all ships’ papers for names. I have watched and waited for you. ‘Everything comes to him who waits,’ you say. Many things come; not everything; some things come not again. Ah, Harker, youth comes not again; thank God, what? Dead love comes not again.”

He was silent for a full half minute, thinking of the dead love. When he spoke again it was very gently.

“No, dead love comes not again, Harker mio. You never saw her, Carlotta mia. That was where they killed her, so some say: others say there: I shall never know. She was not like me, one of power, but one of exquisite life.

“Lopez, Jorge, Zarzas and Don Livio. Jorge, whom they called Pluma Verde, and that other dog, El Cuchillo. Ha, those woman-killers, they repented. Listen. Lopez cut his veins in prison, but not enough: no, he was alive. He and El Cuchillo and Pluma Verde and Zarzas and Don Livio they all came up those stairs on their knees and kissed where she died before they were shot. Ay de mi, Carlotta mia, pobrecita. It was sweet, but it did not bring her back.

“It is with me now as with the slave: I work that I may not think. God prisons us all in sorrow of some sort, so that we may seek our escapes. I seek, now, only one escape. Don José’s throat in my hands, and Rafael’s throat in my teeth; then, then, then will she be paid.

“But, Harker mio, old Venturer, my great kind benefactor, I want such men as you. This Santa Barbara is great, great; there is no place like it on earth: only I want men: I have brains, plenty, but only two hands. I want hands like yours. Will you join me? Choose your work, what say you, and be with me. What would you like?”

“I’d like to congratulate you, sir.”

“What for? My fortune?”

“No, sir, your gratitude.”

He was pleased with the answer. “Ha, yes,” he said, “the ingratitude of a king. But it is often hard to be grateful to individuals: it is easier to be grateful to the world.

“I see you are not married, Harker. You, too, have sorrowed.

“But it is now early. I have to rise early to a special Mass at our friends of Santa Alba yonder. I shall have but a short watch below. Come, then, Harker mio, to coffee with me at seven, at the palacio; you will have thought, then, what we may do together. So, then, I shall expect you.”

He took Sard’s hands and shook them; then he stood back, as though stepping away from the life that he enjoyed into the loneliness of monarchy. Majesty seemed to come upon him like a garment; for the purple, like other habits, may be assumed. His guards clicked, saluted, and fell in. They were all men from Encarnacion, from the old Encinitas estate, where they showed as relics a hoof of Alvarado’s horse, set in silver, the sword of Vasco Nuñez, and a piece of the script of the Gospel of St. John.

They passed down the marble stairs, uttering the cries which Sard had heard as they came up.

“They cheer the dead, Señor,” the waiter explained, “they cheer the Heroic Five and Señora Jennings and the Pobrecita, whose images they pass.”

The bells chimed for one in the morning: all shops and cafés in the Plaza closed. The waiters came from within, dressed in their old coats, with turned-up collars; their feet passed away, some to the old town, some to the north, till the town was almost silent. A cat or two went stealthily or swiftly across the Plaza. A little brown owl flew across crying a note that was querulous and sad. Out in the harbour, some watchman whose clock was slow made two bells.

Sard stayed in his chair, wondering.

He had no wish to sleep: he only wanted a new direction for his life. He was going to strike at life until he found one. “I will stay here,” he thought, “till I can see what I can do.”

He had thought of many ways of life as desirable, after he had once held command at sea. Now his old desire of command was gone. He wanted no more of the sea, but to come ashore and begin anew, without any dreams to mislead him, nothing but the work to do and the honour to earn from it. Why should he not come ashore, to bear a hand under Don Manuel? Great things were being done there: a great state was rising.

Thinking over all this, he had the fancy that someone, or rather not someone, something, was watching him from the central House of Sorrow. It became more than fancy with him that something evil, like a vast black cat, was watching him there. He turned to the house, to face it, whatever it was, but could see nothing there, save the green verandah, the windows blank and sightless, the walls morphewed with scaling. Then the central door opened, a man came out, locked the door behind him and then stood surveying the Plaza. As Sard was the only person there, he stared at Sard, who stared back. He was a shortish, very strongly made man, with the rangey boss movement of a young bull on pasture.

There was something dangerous about him. He tossed his head back, which flashed his earrings and emphasised the raffish sideways cock of his hat. There was something familiar about him: he reminded Sard of that “flash townee,” Sumecta, who had sat with Mr. Wiskey at the boxing-match.

The man strode off the doorstep on to the pavement. He gave his hat a further cock, still staring at Sard, almost with challenge, then he pulled a coloured handkerchief from a side pocket and blew his nose at Sard. As he drew the handkerchief something glimmered out with it and fell into the dust of the gutter. The man was plainly Sumecta, and the blowing of the nose was as the range-bull’s bellow at a rival. Sard tilted back his chair to watch him. Sumecta advanced to Sard, who waited for him, humming.

“You’re out here kind of late,” Sumecta said.

“Am I?”

Sumecta sharpened his tone. “Have you got a match?”

“Yes.” There was a pause: the two men watched each other. Presently Sumecta said: “Can I have the match? I’d like it.”

“Would you?”

“Yes.”

Sard went on with his humming but kept an eye lifting lest some other waif of the night should come. Sumecta took a half-step nearer.

“For two pins,” he said, “I’d bash your face in.”

Sard went on humming, but drew two pins from the lapel of his coat and offered them.

“What d’you mean?” Sumecta said.

“Two pins. There was going to be bashing.”

“You’re a funny dog, aren’t you?” Sumecta said. He edged away from Sard but kept his eyes upon him. He had the flash cock to his hat, a mouth with a tooth gone and a swollen nose. He edged away with his eyes on Sard till he was off the Plaza and going down the stair. Sard edged his chair a little round so that he might follow Sumecta as he went. When Sumecta was out of sight Sard swiftly and silently stepped aside in case Sumecta should rush back for a sudden shot. But no shot came, Sumecta was gone: his steps were dying away. Sard was alone again.

Being alone, he stepped swiftly to where the glimmering thing had dropped into the gutter. As he had expected, it was a door key: he picked it up. “If he had been reasonably polite,” he said to himself, “he should have had it. As it is, he shall do without it. And now, if I’m to be at the palace at seven I had better be off to turn in.”

He had pocketed the key and turned to the head of the stair on his way to bed, when he heard someone hurrying to the stair-foot. For the moment, he judged that it was Sumecta come back to shoot him, but a glance showed that it was a much younger, slighter man. He came running up the stairs, looked about the Plaza for someone, and hailed Sard with: “Oh, your Excellency?” It was Hilary Kingsborough.

“His Excellency has gone, Mr. Kingsborough,” Sard said. “He has been gone about half an hour.”

“Curse,” the young man said. “But who are you who know my name? O, you are the Mr. What’s-his-name, who warned me that night. Where has His Excellency gone, do you know?”

“Back to the palace to bed.”

“Curse. They told me there that I should find him here. I’ve been hunting for him and just missing him ever since I landed at ten o’clock. I must find him.”

Sard was struck by the high, shrill, feverish excitement of the young man’s speech; his face was gaunt and burning: his body wasted.

“Let me come with you,” Sard said, “I’ll find you a cab, I’m afraid you’re ill.”

“Ill?” he said. “This thing is tearing me to pieces. Those devils shot me and took my sister. And I can’t find her, Mr., sir, no one can find her.”

“But she was found,” Sard said. “She was found at Tlotoatin. I read it in the paper here, only a few hours ago.”

“The paper was a damned lie,” the young man cried. “She isn’t found. We’ve no trace nor track of her. Good God, they are all in it, police, press, politicians, and I can’t get a word of truth, nor any clue of where she is. You said that they talked of Santa Barbara? For the love of God, now Mr. What’s-your-name (I can’t remember names), those devils whom you overheard, tell me the truth now, they said they were coming here.”

“Mr. Kingsborough,” Sard said, “they did. What is more, one of the men, whom I overheard, came out of that door not ten minutes ago.”

“What? You’ll swear that?”

“I don’t swear. He did. He went down those stairs, you must almost have met him.”

“Then Margarita may be in that house?”

“I don’t think that that can be,” Sard said. “It’s not very likely, is it?”

“Likely?” Hilary cried. “What is likely? She has disappeared and every power, here and in the Occidental, is behind the swine who took her. I’ve come here to see the Dictator, and I want you to see him, too, Mr., sir. Tell him that you know that they are a Santa Barbara gang and that he must find her.”

“All right I will,” Sard said. “I was to see him in a few hours’ time, but I will go to him at once instead. Only look here, Mr. Kingsborough, I have seen this Dictator. Since I have landed I have seen both himself and his police service. It is hardly credible or possible that Miss Kingsborough could have been brought here without the fact coming to his knowledge.”

“That is what I am saying,” Hilary said, “he is in it, with the gang, and so I’ll tell him to his face.”

“Mr. Kingsborough, he is not that kind of man. Be assured, he is one who will help you in every way.”

“He will,” Hilary said. “Why did his filthy press print that lie, that she is found? He is in this rum-smuggling business, as everybody knows. He is in the smugglers’ power; he has to let them do what they please. My sister may be in that house: very likely is! Well, I am going in, to see.”

“Wait just for one minute, Mr. Kingsborough,” Sard said. “You’ve been shot, you say; you are still ill. We have a Minister here who will have that house laid bare for us almost within the hour. We will find a cab and drive to the Embassy and have the house searched in the proper manner.”

“The proper manner,” Hilary said. “I don’t know of any proper manner with blackguards of this sort. Why should you try to keep me from saving my sister, you might be one of the gang yourself.”

Sard was about to answer soothingly, seeing the young man’s distress and nervous exhaustion, but as he opened his lips there came the cry of a woman from within the central house. It was the cry of one in despair. It rang out clearly and fully for an instant, then was stopped suddenly as by a blow or a gag.

“You heard that?” Hilary said. “That was my sister’s voice. She is inside there.”

“Listen a moment,” Sard said, “wait.”

“I’m not going to wait,” Hilary answered. “Wait for what? Till they’ve killed her?” He was half-way to the door, when Sard stopped him.

“Look here,” Sard said, “this may be the key of this door; the man dropped it. We’ll go in, if it is. Are you armed?”

“No; are you?”

“No,” Sard said, “but I’m used to rough houses. Are you?”

“No.”

“Well,” Sard said, “there’s only one rule in rough house fighting, and that is, be first. Come on.”

* * * * *

They crept to the door of the house. It looked more solid, close at hand. It had knopped iron plates across it: the fanlight was barred: the windows to each side were covered with old iron rejas. The house behind it was as silent as the grave. For a moment Sard thought of calling a civil guard, but put the thought from him, “I’m my own civil guard in a seaport town; besides, this gang is certain to have squared the police.” Both men listened: Sard tried the key.

The key fitted and turned. Very gently, lest the door should be upon a chain, Sard moved it ajar. He peered in. There was a smell of some gum or incense, like the smell of sweet leather. There was an ample hall, dark as old leather, with patches of light from the windows. He saw then what he had not suspected from without, that the windows were of an opaque glass. He edged into the hall, followed by Hilary. They stood together, inside the door, listening intently. Sard felt along the door to make sure how to open it. “It’s a latch door,” he whispered. “We’d better close it.”

“No, keep it open for our retreat,” Hilary whispered.

“Too risky,” he answered. “It might slam to, or be noticed from outside, or make a draught that would be noticed inside.”

“Better have a line of escape,” Hilary said.

“We’ll prop it, then,” Sard said. “Or will you stand guard while I explore?”

“No fear,” Hilary answered, “I’m going to find my sister.”

“Come on, then,” Sard said. “We’ll prop it.”

There was a mat just within the door. He lifted an edge of this so that it kept the door pressed to, but not shut. Hilary took a step into the room and stumbled on the well of the mat. He gasped out “God!” and then shook with a laugh which was noiseless but hysterical. His stumble crashed in that stillness like a shot. Sard squeezed his arm to steady him: then they both listened: then Hilary whispered:

“I hear a sort of scratching noise.”

Sard heard it too, and thought, at first, that it was the fidgeting of feet, then made sure that it was not that, nor yet the brushing of leaves upon a window, but some noise which he could not yet explain: it might be nothing but the breeze upon a ventilator. It was a constant flutter somewhere to their left; it came no nearer.

“It’s all right,” Hilary muttered.

“Seconds out of the ring,” Sard answered. “Come on, now. Time.” He could see almost nothing. He groped about the hall. It was soft to the feet with a closely-woven grass matting. He moved eight paces to his right and touched a wall or screen of wood: “wood panelling,” he decided. It ran from the front of the house into the house: it seemed to be the boundary wall of the hall on that side. He groped along it to the end, but found no door, nor any break in the panelling. A table stood near this wall; it bore a metal tray containing a visiting card nearly as big as a postcard.

Sard took the card and listened. He heard Hilary at a little distance breathing like a roaring horse. Sard wished that he would make less noise with his breathing. He crept across to him and told him so.

“You’re snorting like a horse yourself,” Hilary said.

“Have you found any door?”

“No. There’s no door on this side. Only a row of pegs for hats and a rack for whips, but the whips are gone.”

“Is it all panelling?”

“Yes, panelling; with two chairs.”

“The door will be at the back then,” Sard said. “Come to this wall at the back. What is that thing on the wall?”

“It looks like a painting,” Hilary said.

“It is a painting,” Sard said, “but the paint is running on it. And it doesn’t smell like paint.”

“Is there no door?”

“None. None that I can see,” Sard whispered.

“Let me see,” Hilary answered.

He peered close to the wall and groped along it with his fingers. There seemed to be no door there. It was panelling, as at the sides. High up in the centre of it was a trophy of a horned beast’s head: it looked like a giant goat’s head; something odd had been done to it. The smell of sweet leather was much stronger at that end of the hall. There were figures painted on the panels, at both sides of the trophy. The paint was trickling down the wall.

“Someone has been burning carib leaf,” Hilary whispered.

“There must be a door,” Sard whispered back. “Only it is let in flush with the panels. We must strike a light.”

“Go ahead then,” Hilary muttered.

At that instant there came a little suck of air, Sard’s propping gave way before it, the hall door shut to with a crash.

“I say, you are a pearl of a door-fastener,” Hilary said.

“Hush! Watch for a light.”

They watched; but no light showed and no sound came.

“Nobody stirring,” Sard said; “the breeze is rising. We must leave the door. Look there.”

“What?”

“A man looking in at the window at us.”

“Can he see us?”

“Not possibly.”

“Who is he?”

“I can’t see.”

“Is he a civil guard?”

“He’s not wearing a helmet.”

“Do you think he can be coming in here?”

“No. He would come in if he belonged here. There, he has gone. He was only some passer-by.”

“It’s an odd time of morning for a passer-by,” Hilary said. “There. It is striking two.”

“Look here,” Sard said, stooping down; “I’ve guessed the secret of this wall. It has no door; but it slides in grooves to and fro. They seem to have oiled the runners. I’m going to strike a light to see which way the thing runs. Hold this twine: it is tarry. I’ll light it. It will make a candle.”

He took a small hank of roping twine, lit it and held it to the wall. “Look here,” he said, “at what is on my hands: blood. This which I thought was oil is blood. There can be no doubt of that. They have spattered blood all over this wall here.”

“They have killed her, then!”

“Not they. This is not the blood of a murder,” Sard said. “Look, it is splashed high up on the wall. It has been flung from a cup at those images.”

It was undoubtedly so.

“This seems to be a pretty devilish place,” Hilary said.

“We will shame the devil before we leave it. Now come here, behind me, Mr. Kingsborough; dig your fingers into this panel; that’s you. Now, heave; heave and start her; oh, heave! handsomely, handsomely; she is moving.”

The heavy panel of the wall slowly slid away to their right. A waft of the smoke of burning carib leaf came into their faces, so that they tasted rather than smelled it. It was sickly to taste and dizzying to breathe. Sard stopped heaving at the panel and peered into the opening which they had made.

They were looking into a large room, which ran further back (that is, away from the Plaza front) than they had expected. There were some upright things, they could not see what, in the middle of the room; all very dim. To the right of these there was a brazier glowing faintly with charcoal on which carib leaf had been crumbled. Sard, who was nearest to the opening, felt at once that there was somebody there. His dream of the mountains came back to him with a shock. He called in a low voice:

“Miss Kingsborough!”

Her voice from the middle of the room answered faintly:

“Yes.”

“Margarita!” Hilary cried.

“She is tied to these uprights,” Sard said, as he pushed into the room. He could dimly see that she was there.

“All right, Miss Kingsborough,” he said, “we will soon have you out of here.”

“I’m here, Margarita,” Hilary said.

Sard reached back for his knife, which he had replaced at San Agostino. It was a small but very strong sheath-knife without a guard. Margarita spoke from her stake.

“Oh, be careful, Hilary! There are Indians here.”

“All right, dear,” Hilary said. “We’ve found you now. We won’t let the Indians hurt you.”

“Good Lord,” Sard said, “she is chained and padlocked as well as tied. Never mind, Miss Kingsborough, we will set you free.”

He took the chain, so as to bend the hasp of the padlock, but it was beyond his strength.

“Have you a hairpin, Miss Kingsborough; perhaps I can pick this lock.”

“No,” she said. As he felt along the stake, he found her hair all loose about her. He felt the foot of the stake. It was an unbarked bole of a tree dug deep into the earth and tamped well home. She was chained to it at waist and ankles.

“Catch hold of the stake, Mr. Kingsborough,” Sard said. “We may be able to heave it right out. Sway with us, Miss Kingsborough. We will give the word.”

He and Hilary got their arms about the stake and hove and hove again, with no more result than to make the stake tremble: it was like trying to pull down a growing tree.

“We’ll save you, Margarita,” Hilary kept saying. Sard could not clearly see how they could save her without a cold chisel and a mallet. He struck a match and lit another twist of twine, which burned for nearly forty seconds. He saw Margarita’s white face and great eyes, a strange room of a triangular shape, with a throne at the apex, another bole or tree, a few feet from them, but nothing which could serve as a weapon or a tool.

“Look here,” he said, “I must fetch in the police. Here’s my knife, Mr. Kingsborough. You stay here on guard while I run out and fetch some guardias.”

“They’ll all be bribed,” Hilary said.

“No police can be bribed to this point,” Sard answered. “I’ll have them here in three minutes. Cheer up, Miss Kingsborough.”

He listened: all was still in the house.

“It’s all right,” he said, “I’ll be back in five minutes.”

He hated leaving them, but there was nothing for it. A piece of carib leaf settled in the brazier with a little sigh.

“I’ll go then,” he said. “Look out.”

He crept out of the room and across the hall. When he was near the door, he stumbled on something which had not been there on his first journey.

As he stumbled forward over it, he heard Margarita call, “Look out, Hilary; the Indians!” He heard Hilary gasp, as though struck, and cry out, “Ah! would you?” At the same instant, as he himself rose from the floor of the hall, someone most active tackled him from behind, with a strangle-hold round the throat. He swung himself forward and hove the strangler off his feet, but did not make him loose his hold. He stumbled again on the thing on the floor and someone came at him from in front. He hit out and landed on a body, but somebody new caught him by the right arm and gave it a twist which nearly broke it. He hit one or two bodies and faces, but they were all Indians; it was like punching india-rubber; they hissed their breath in through their teeth and came on again. He reached the door; he got hold of the latch, but the door would not open. He got hold of the strangler’s arm and wrenched it against the iron of the door. Then somebody thrust him sideways; he stumbled on to somebody who was crouching; then, immediately, he was down, with three or four of these wild cats on top of him. In his rage at being brought down, he hit hard, but they were too many and seemed to see in the dark. He was mastered, bound, blindfolded and gagged. Then a couple of them picked him up like a sack and ran him along into the inner room. A man asked in good Spanish, “If the lad were dead?” An Indian replied, “That he still breathed.” They hove Sard against the upright bole. Though he writhed, he was helpless: he felt like a storm staysail made up for bending; they chained him there. He heard Margarita wail. Then an Indian—perhaps the man whom he had wrenched against the iron—hit him hard in body and face again and again and again.

Presently he stopped, and there was silence, save for a rustling, as though snakes were gliding away. Then a light appeared, someone laughed with satisfaction and twitched the bandage from Sard’s eyes.

Sard saw before him the Father Garsinton who had asked for a passage in the Pathfinder. It was he, unmistakably, but changed indeed. He now wore a scarlet robe wrought with symbols, which gave him the appearance of a cardinal of the Middle Ages. He gave to Sard the impression of an overwhelming power devoted resolutely to the practice of evil. There was cruelty in every line, with enormous strength (and grace) to give the cruelty its part in the world.

The man snickered as he looked at his victims chained to the trees before him. He walked a few yards to and fro with his head up, smiling; he stretched his hands and a light came into his eyes. It was exactly as though he realised those gestures of freedom which would most hurt his prisoners. The face had been made hard and evil by the devil, but it had also been made tired. The flesh was puckered at the eyes; there was some loose flesh forming under the chin; the mouth was a shade out of condition. The scarlet skull-cap no doubt hid hair beginning to be grey or thin. The great want in the face was the want of horns sprouting from the brow; with those he would have been a complete devil.

“Well,” Sard said, “our friends know that we are here. You had better let us go before they come to fetch us.”

“You lie,” the man said. “Your friends do not know that you are here.”

“The Dictator of this Republic knows that we are here,” Sard ventured.

“The Dictator of this Republic is my good friend,” the man replied.

“My Consul is not; neither is my Minister,” Sard said. “You will find this kidnapping trade a poor one.”

“How?”

“By our friends.”

“You will find night burglary and knight-errantry poor trades, before your friends find you, young man. Who are you?”

“Undo these chains and I will show you.”

“You are a sailor; an English sailor, who missed his ship at Las Palomas,” the padre answered. “You are one of these ship’s dogs who run loose in foreign ports. A slave by day, a drunken criminal by night.”

“Less of a criminal than a dirty, foreign, woman-torturer.”

“I take you burgling; in the fact, sailor. What is your name?”

“A better name than yours.”

“Your name is Harker. My name is the Holy One.”

“I thought you looked lousy enough for a saint.”

“Do you know the laws about burgling in this land? We may kill burglars. We do kill them. Every day a corpse of a burglar is flung out. You have seen such. They are often sailors, unclaimed three days, then buried. I just tell you now, that your corpse will be flung out of here, in a little while, when I have finished with you. I shall not keep you long, but it will be before your friends come here, never fear.”

“You had better hurry up then,” Sard said, “for they will be here in ten minutes. And you had better not boast too much before witnesses of the crimes you plan.”

The man stepped swiftly up to Sard and slapped his cheek. When he tried to slap the other cheek, Sard, as a boxer, was too quick; he snapped at the hand and bit it; the man wrenched himself free.

“The trapped rat bites,” he said. “Very well.”

He did not seem to mind the bite, though it bled. He seemed to pass into a state of contemplation in which the body did not matter.

“Do you know what I am?” he asked. “I am the priest of evil. This triangle in which you stand is the temple of evil. These gallows posts to which you stand are the altars of evil. I am going to offer mass to evil, of bread and wine. Do you know what bread and what wine?”

“You drunken, dirty ass!” Sard said. “Mr. Kingsborough, who was here with me, has raised the town by this. You will be taken out, scrubbed with sand and canvas, and then jailed; so hold on all with your folly and let us go.”

“Mr. Kingsborough did not escape quite so easily, honest sailor,” the Holy One replied. “We are Dagoes, as you call them, here, not Englishmen; not Gringos; we are not sentimental in our earnest. Mr. Kingsborough paid the penalty of burglary. You, Madonna, lovely Margarita Kingsborough, will tell you. You saw what happened to your brother. Tell him.”

“I heard him groan from a blow, Mr. Harker,” Margarita said. “Then, when the lights went on, I saw him lying dead on the floor; the Indians dragged him out.”

“Correct,” the Holy One said. “He is dead. And you are helpless. Your fleet can’t help you, nor your Minister, nor your Consul, nor your State, nor any other of those things you believe in. You are in the hands of power. You are elements for power to sacrifice. You, man, are bread; you, woman, are wine; and I shall sacrifice your bread and wine, your blood and honour, your life and your chastity.”

“I knew a dirty talker like you once before,” Sard said. “He was a Portuguese babu on the mother’s side; his father was the port of Goa. He fell into the slime once at low tide; but even without that you could not tell him from filth.”

“I leave you to prepare yourselves,” the Holy One said. “I go to prepare myself for communion with my god, the god of evil, who will come down here, to eat of the bread and drink of the wine.” His head went back as he spoke, and his eyes lit up (they were light-brown rolling eyes) till they were like the eyes of a beast that sees in the dark. He began to pray as he stood; his head went even further back, till they could hardly see his lips moving; then he began to chant:

“I am a body and a hand that wait

Thy power, O Evil; use and make me great

With lust and thirst for blood until I shine

Like goat for rut, like wolf for murder, thine.”

He moved off, swaying to the rhythm of his song, and possessed by his thought: he turned to look at his captives as he passed, but there seemed to be no speculation in his eyes, only a glare, such as the petroleuses have, in their eyes, in revolutions, in the days of frenzy. He passed out of that door through which the body of Hilary had been dragged. Sard reckoned that doors led out of the central house into the houses on each side. He made the note in his mind, “the man controls two houses; perhaps three; there may be twenty or thirty of them, living here.” The door clicked to behind the Holy One; Sard was alone with Margarita.

“Mr. Harker,” she said, “does anybody know that you are here?”

“No,” he answered. “It was false.”

“Or that my brother was here?”

“Nobody knows. And it is my fault. I ought not to have let your brother into this house without the police.”

“Why did you?”

“We heard you cry out.”

“I cried because I saw that I was near the street,” she said. “They were bringing me in here from inside there. I hoped that someone might hear.”

“We did hear. If we shout now, someone may hear.”

“At this time in the morning?”

“It is worth trying. Help! help! help!” he shouted. “Police! Murder! Help us here! Help! help! help!”

“It is useless,” she said. “When I cried, they drew the doors across; these doors are sound-proof.”

“Let us save our breath for the present,” he said. “The streets are deserted now. We will shout later, when there are more people stirring.”

She did not answer immediately; she thought and he knew that she thought, that there might not be a “later” for him. He put a strain upon his bonds to test them. His legs were tightly lashed, his arms were secure; his body was chained to the stake and that chain was racked.

“Mr. Harker,” Margarita said, “is there any chance of the men of your ship coming to look for you?”

“No,” he said, “next to none. My ship is lost. People may enquire for me presently.”

After a silence Margarita asked:

“Did my brother say if the police were searching for me?”

“Yes, indeed, Miss Kingsborough, you are being sought for everywhere, and the police have been warned.”

“Have you any faith in the police?”

“Yes,” he said, “indeed, yes.”

“But if the police are competent,” she said, “then how do you account for our being as we are?”

“The wicked have their day,” he said.

He was fearful lest this should be disheartening to her. He hastened to add: “They will get you out of this, Miss Kingsborough. I shall be asked and searched for at seven o’clock, only five hours from now, by the Dictator himself.”

“What Dictator is that?” she asked. “Where is this place?”

“In Santa Barbara,” he said. “The Dictator is Don Manuel. Did you not even know where you are?”

“I have known nothing of where I have been since they dragged me out of the house after you had warned us. They put me into a boat and then into a ship, where I was a prisoner for a fortnight. Sometimes we were at sea and sometimes in anchorages. I knew from the sun that we went south and west; nothing more than that. Then three nights ago they landed me and wheeled me here, bound, blindfolded and gagged, upon a stretcher in a sort of ambulance. I knew from the noises and smells that we were in a city. Someone stopped the people who were bringing me and asked what was the matter. The woman said, ‘She has had an accident, poor thing.’ ”

“You had women guards, then?”

“Oh, yes, two.”

“Surely there were some decent men among the smugglers who were willing to help you: for instance, a man called Douglas?”

“The only men whom I have met have been those who carried me away out of the house, and those who are here, the Indians and a terrible negro.”

“But about this man in red,” Sard said, “I know him only as Father Garsinton; he seems to be the head of the business; but what is his aim?”

“He worships evil,” she said.

“Yes, but what does he hope to gain by all this?”

“To increase the power of evil in the world.”

“But he is not young,” Sard objected. “He is grown up; he is even elderly.”

“He is a devil,” she said.

“I have heard of boys in cities thinking these thoughts,” Sard said, “but never grown men. And why does he single out you?”

“He has always wanted me,” she said. “He always said that he would have me. He told me years ago that to-night should be the night: now it is. And now he has killed my brother.”

He heard her weeping and saw tears running down her steady face.

“Oh, no, no,” he said, “do not weep; do not cry like that.”

“I cannot help it,” she said. “I loved my brother.”

“He loved you too, dearly.”

They were silent for some minutes, while Sard tried again to shift his bonds. When he spoke again he had good news.

“Miss Kingsborough,” he said, “I have to break this news to you. Your brother is not dead. He is alive. He has just crept into the room behind you.”

“Don’t make any noise,” Hilary said. “For heaven’s sake don’t make any noise. I’ve been knocked out. I’m dizzy and sick.”

He came up between them and sat down upon the floor.

“Oh, Hilary,” she said, “you are covered with blood.”

“Yes, I know, dear. O Lord, I do feel queer! They have all gone upstairs, the people here. Cheer up, Pearl, my darling, we’ll soon have you out of this. The only question is, how to open the padlocks.”

“Have you any keys?” Sard asked, “or anything like wire for a pick-lock?”

“No,” he said, “I’m afraid I have nothing; nothing at all.” He bowed himself forward where he sat and propped his head in his hands; a few drops of blood trickled over his fingers. Sard saw that he was on the brink of swooning.

“Mr. Kingsborough,” he said, “will you look about the room for a wire or a tool or something?”

“Wait a moment, will you,” Hilary answered. “It’s silly of me. I’m afraid I’m going to faint.” He fainted, then came to himself, then saw the blood on his hands and fainted again. Presently he hove himself up into a sitting posture and said that he had never felt so sick in his life.

“Shut your eyes,” Sard said.

“Yes, you say ‘shut your eyes,’ but my head’s all gone. I’m as sick as a cat. I say, would you mind bringing me some water?”

“I’ll bring you water,” Sard said. Margarita was crying. “I’ll bring you lovely water. Only, you see, your sister and I are locked up here, chained. We want you to unchain us.”

“So I would,” he said. “But I cannot stand this smell of incense. It takes all the strength clean out of me.”

“Hilary,” Margarita said sharply, “Hilary, turn round. Look at that shelf on the side of the wall there. Is not that water in a glass jug there?”

“It is water,” Sard said. “Look, Mr. Kingsborough. It is water. Get to the shelf and splash yourself.”

“It is water,” Hilary said. “I don’t know about getting to it.”

“You can get to it, Hilary dear,” Margarita said. “Crawl to it and then you will reach it. Oh, well done, Hilary; how splendid of you!”

The sick man crawled on hand and knees to the wall. He leaned for a moment there and said, “I can’t reach it.”

“Rest and gather strength,” Sard said.

“Hilary,” his sister said, “crawl to that little table in the middle of the room. You will be able to push that to the wall and then climb to the water.”

“Yes, I will,” Hilary said: “only I must wait for a moment, for this sickness to pass.”

He stayed there huddled against the wall, with his eyes shut, for two or three minutes. He looked liker a dead man than a living. At last he moved forward from the wall and slowly crawled to the table. The table was liker a large old English stool than a table. When he reached it, he drooped forward over it as though he would never have the strength to rise.

“Take your time,” Sard said. “Do not try to lift that stool, but push it before you while you lean on it. So. That is you. Not too big a push at a time: take it quietly.”

“Oh, I do feel so sick!” Hilary said.

“No wonder. You’ve had a bat on the head,” Sard said. “You are a marvel to be moving at all, but go handsomely; there’s always time; always lots of time; no rushing. Now wait; rest; gather your strength again.”

He waited, leaning on the stool, while the others watched him.

“You are nearly there,” Sard said. “One more little effort and you will be there. I think your brother’s a hero, Miss Kingsborough, to be doing this, in his state.”

“You are wonderful, Hilary,” she said. “Now forward again.”

The sick man thrust the stool before him almost to the wall.

“Stop there,” Sard said. “Do not push it further under the shelf. Now you are almost there: all that you have to do now is to heave yourself up and reach the jug. Steady yourself against the wall.”

Hilary with an effort hove himself to a kneeling posture on the stool. When there, he found that he had pushed it too far underneath the shelf. He could not see the jug, but saw instead that he would have to lean somewhat backward, clutching to the shelf with one hand while he groped for the jug with the other. The thought of doing this unnerved him, he made no attempt for a minute.

“It is just directly over your head,” Margarita told him.

“Yes, I know where it is,” he answered, “only getting it is the problem. However, it is water.”

“It is lovely water, which will take away all your faintness.”

“Yes, by George, it will! I can tell you I want it. I’m going to get it.”

“Good. Well done.”

He steadied himself as cautiously as a tightrope-walker. He placed one foot upon the stool, swayed, steadied, made an effort, caught the rim of the shelf and stood there.

“Splendid, Hilary! You’ve done it.”

“Good man.”

“It’s on a tray,” Hilary said. “I can’t reach the jug, it’s too far in. But I’ve got hold of the tray.”

“Pull the tray towards you. There; it is coming.”

“Now catch hold of the jug.”

“Oh, take care, take care; mind, Hilary!”

“You’ll have the whole thing down.”

“Oh, Lord!” Hilary said.

In his weakness, as the tray reached the edge of the shelf, Hilary slipped, failed or fell. He tipped the tray over as he dropped; there was a crash and a breaking of glass and a gurgling of liquid.

“I’m sorry, you people,” Hilary said; “I was afraid that that would happen. I’m too weak to do this kind of thing: now it is gone.”

“No, no, it is not,” Margarita said. “Wet your handkerchief in it, then drink that, or mop your forehead with it.”

“Well thought of,” Sard said.

“I say,” Hilary said, “this is not water: it is that what’s-its-name, the white brandy these fellows drink.”

“Drink some, drink some, then.”

“I’m drinking. I say. You may say what you like. It makes me feel a different being.”

“Splash your brows with it.”

“I will. And I will save this. There’s about a tumblerful. And, good Lord, I say, I say!”

“What? What have you found in the tray?”

“Bunches of keys. Look here. Two bunches of keys. I may be able to unlock your padlocks.”

“Try your sister’s padlocks first.”

“No, no,” Margarita said, “try Mr. Harker’s padlocks first. He is a man. He can help.”

“Your sister first,” Sard said. “I’ll not be set free first. And as for helping, I have not helped anyone, so far as I can see.”

Hilary tried the keys in the padlocks of his sister’s chains. He tried eleven without success; then, at the twelfth, the locks clicked back and the chains could be cast aside. She was still bound to the pillar by a thong of hide. “I cannot undo this knot,” Hilary said, “my fingers are too weak.”

“Gnaw it open with your teeth,” Sard said.

Hilary sat down and sipped some brandy.

“I wish you would not upset me,” he said. “I feel as sick as a dog, and the very thought of taking this stuff in my teeth is more than I can stand.”

“Sorry,” Sard said. “What you must do is, pick up a piece of broken glass with a sharp edge and saw it through with that.”

“Good,” Hilary said. “I can do that.”

As he bent to pick up the glass, it seemed to all three there that men were muttering just beyond the doors. They heard no words distinctly, but voices spoke, feet shuffled: the noise, whatever it was, died away almost at once: all was still again. Hilary sawed through the hide, so that Margarita was free. She took the keys and began to try them on the padlocks of Sard’s chains. She unlocked his hand-chains with the third key, but could not fit the leg-iron padlock until the last key of all. They cast loose the last of the chains, Sard was free. He picked up the chain, which was of a one-inch link, stopped a bight in it for a handfast, made an overhand knot in each end, and then swayed it to and fro. “Now we have some sort of a weapon,” he said. “Now we will see whether we cannot get out of here.”

“Pearl,” Hilary asked, “do you know whether we can get out from here into any yard at the back of the house?”

“There is a yard at the back of the house; I have seen it. There is a shed in it, with a great dog,” she said. “But even if we reached the yard, it would not help. There are houses beyond.”

“Let us keep to what we know,” Sard said. “We know the way to the Plaza, and in the Plaza we may meet people who will help us. We must slide these doors apart and make for the front door.”

“I agree,” Margarita said.

“Each have a sip of brandy,” Sard said.

They each took a sip, then took their bearings and moved to the sliding door.

“The light is going out,” Hilary said. The light suddenly dimmed to half its strength.

“All right,” Sard said. “That means that it is half an hour from dawn. They cut off the light at the power-house.”

“I was afraid that it meant that we were discovered,” Margarita said.

“Not a bit of it,” Sard said. “It’s the custom in the port. Now, Mr. Kingsborough, we’ll soon have you and your sister out into safety. Catch hold of the door here. Dig your nails into it. Quietly, now. Are you all ready?”

“Yes. Yes.”

“Then, when I give the word, heave back. All together, now. Heave!”

They hove: it trembled a little, but did not give.

They hove again and again, but there was nothing for them to catch hold of: they could only hold by the tips of their fingers: the door trembled, but did not give. While Sard searched for something that would give them a purchase, the light went out.

“We can’t shift this panel,” Sard said; “we must try this door at the side.”

He opened it and peered beyond it into a dimness in which there was a flight of stairs.

“Come on,” he whispered. “There’s no one here.”

They crept into the dimness. There was another door beyond the staircase. They went through it into a darkness in which they groped.

Suddenly Sard trod upon somebody, who caught him by the leg. “Look out! Get back,” he cried. Somebody grappled him as he spoke, so that he could not get back with the others. A light suddenly shone out to show him a big buck negro coming at him. An Indian, who had him round the hips, brought him to the ground.

Sard shook himself free, rose to his feet, hit somebody hard, and at once was clinched by the big negro. “You’ve not got me yet,” he said. He hit him on the ribs and kicked his shins; the negro got him by the throat.

“I got yuh, honey,” he said.

The Indian whom he had kicked aside, caught him by the leg again. By a violent effort he flung himself free, and hit the negro on the jaw. The negro grunted, ducked and came on: two or three Indians leaped in, like cats. Sard hit one over the heart, so that he fell, then the others got him down, and snarled and spat over him, and called him evil names. They trussed him up as before with strips of hide. The negro held him by the throat while they did it.

“I got yuh, honey,” he kept saying. “I sure got yuh.”

When he was lashed up like a hammock, the negro slung him over his shoulder. An Indian, the man whom he had knocked down, followed just behind, digging Sard in the legs at each step with the point of a knife. The negro carried Sard back to the temple and chained him to the pillar from which he had escaped. Two Indians came up to Sard and pricked him with their knives.

“Gringucho!”

“Hay que matarle.”

“Si, hay que.”

“Hijo de puta.”

Presently the negro carried Margarita into the room and chained her to her pillar. When he had done this, he lit a cigar and puffed the smoke into her face; then thrust his face into hers, and said, “Ah love de white woman,” and kissed her. Then he looked at Sard, blew some cigar-smoke into his face, and said, “Yuh hit me on de jaw. Bimeby I come back and buhn yo eyes out with my segah.”

After this he and the Indians disappeared, closing a door behind them. Father Garsinton entered from the angle of the room.

He was dressed in his scarlet robes and carried a lamp, which he placed upon the low stool from which Hilary had reached the jug. He then went to a small aumbry, drew out some dried carib leaves and flung a few upon the brazier. The stuff sputtered and threw out profuse smoke, the smell of which was both sickly and stupefying. He seemed to breathe it with pleasure. At last he turned to his victims, looked from one to the other, and spoke.

“So,” he said. “My mice. The cat has played with you. And did you taste the pleasures of hope? Did you feel safe at last? Know, my little mice, that I watched, while you hoped. So you would not try the back yard, because of the dog? Why, the dog is stuffed. And so the Dictator will search for Mr. Harker? That is to be expected, but he will not search here, where so much of his wealth is planned for. Still, you enjoyed your little hopes.”

He drew nearer and seemed in some strange way to grow bigger. It was as though the evil which he served had entered into him and taken possession.

“And now,” he said, “put by hope. Evil is stronger than hope; or faith; or charity; or strength, you; or honour, madam. What do you say, sailor?”

“I wish I had you with my hands free.”

“Oh! What would happen then?”

“A cleaner world.”

“Cleaner?” Sagrado said. “A cleaner world? My friend, I serve the purpose of this world, which is not cleanliness, but triumph. You, with your cleanliness, wasting the energy of men in being clean. Pah, you two sickening things; one clean, the other chaste. Which of you does the more harm, with your beastly ideals?”

“We had a man in the fo’c’sle once,” Sard said, “who spoke just the same kind of thing; only there was some excuse for him; he’d been brought up in a brothel. The men took him on deck and scrubbed his mouth out with sand and canvas.”

“I do not use those methods,” Sagrado said. “But I have my own methods of correcting false philosophers, as you shall see.”

He returned, almost immediately, with something tied in a native frail. He laid it upon the floor, then brought the small table or stool and placed it facing the two victims, between them and about one yard from each of them. They could see the carib leaves in the brazier glowing and unglowing and writhing like live things on the charcoal. Then Sagrado unlaced the native frail and drew from it a shell-shaped bomb, which he placed upon the table. He adjusted the fuse with great care and then turned to his victims.

“A fifth part of an hour,” he said, “is twelve minutes. In twelve minutes, precisely, this bomb will explode. It contains a quarter charge, which will suffice. What the bomb leaves, I and my ministrants will then take, to the utmost.”

He lit a twist of bijuco bast in the brazier, and then with the flame set fire to the fuse. It burned for one second, then changed to a glow, as Sagrado softly blew upon it. It glowed rather redly and the glow showed a black mark which at once began to creep, though very, very slowly, along the unburned fuse. Sagrado blew out his lamp and disappeared out of the room. The two victims saw nothing but the veins in the leaves in the brazier and the black mark charring along the fuse in front of the fire which charred it. Already a small piece of white ash, like a cigar-ash, fell from the burnt end of the fuse.

“Do not look at that fuse,” Sard said.

“I cannot help it,” she said.

“Yes, you can help it. Look at me. Can you move at all?”

“Hardly at all. Can you?”

“No.”

“Tell me the truth,” she said. “Do you think they killed my brother?”

“I could not see,” he said.

“I suppose they will kill him. And I suppose this bomb will kill us.”

“It must injure us,” he said.

“How long have we, before it bursts?”

“Ten and a half minutes.”

“Supposing one of us should escape?”

“We had better have no false hopes,” he said. “We’re not likely to leave this house alive.”

“I meant only this,” she said: “the survivor might take a message. Is there any message that you would care to trust me with?”

“You might explain to my aunt, old Lady Crowthorne, in England. Would you care to trust any message to me?”

“To my brother, if he be alive,” she said; “and to my father—he is really my stepfather—Hardy Kingsborough, of Passion Courtenay, in Berkshire. Can you remember that?”

“Passion Courtenay?”

“Yes. Why? Do you know it?” she asked.

“I should think I do,” he said. “I’ve gone there every year, when I have been in England, for the last fifteen years.”

“With whom do you stay, then? Oh, this is happy, to hear of home now, here.”

“I do not stay,” he answered. “As a rule I go over for the day, and then away in the evening. You see, I know nobody there, now: in a way I never did. I go to the inn near the river, the Hunt and Hounds; then I go on the river, and away by the evening train, the 7.13.”

“I expect we have passed each other,” she said.

“Very likely,” he said. “Whereabouts do you live there, Miss Kingsborough? Could you describe it?”

“Yes. For the last ten years we have lived at The Murreys, which you may not know, but must have seen, if you have been to the Hunt.”

“I know the outside of your home very well, then,” he said. “It’s called The Murreys from the mulberry trees. Whenever I go on the river there, I land in one of the fields below your house and walk from the river to your garden wall. The field is called Bridger’s Peace; do you know why?”

“It means the piece of ground where the bridgers camped when they built the bridge in the fourteenth century.”

“I thought it was the other kind of peace,” he said, “the ‘Peace which passeth all understanding’; which it has always been to me.”

“It is a beautiful place,” she said; “and the thought of it is peace now.”

“Yes,” he said.

“It is going on, now,” she said, “under this same night; the water is going on under the bridge.”

“Ah, to be tied,” he cried, “lashed foot and hand!”

“Why did you land in our field?” she asked.

“The field is mixed up with my life; I have to go there. In a way, that field and house have been all my life. The sea has only been something to wrestle with: that is not enough.”

“What have the house and field been to you, then?” she asked.

“It would be mean not to share with my companion,” Sard said; “you are linked with the place too. It is all strange, and your being here at the end is almost the strangest: you, the owner of that place, and I, just the trespasser and worshipper. Fifteen years ago I was taken to a picnic there. I don’t believe in chance. But it seemed just chance that I went there. We didn’t know the people, but they wanted a boy to fill up a side at cricket. Anyhow, I went. Some people called Penga took me.

“But I was quite out of it. I was the youngest there. They had two elevens without me, and I didn’t know a soul there, except Dick Penga, and he had had the swot of bringing me and thought me a child, besides.

“There was a Spanish lady, a widow, there with her daughter, who was of my own age. She was out of it too.

“I could always talk Spanish, so I talked to the girl. In a way, we were children; but it was not any childishness to me. That girl altered my life. She has been my life ever since, all the life that mattered: the rest was only ropes and weights.”

“You saw her again, then?” Margarita said.

“No,” he said. “I’ve never seen her since, nor heard from her. You see, she was only there by as strange a chance, almost, as I. She came from Santo Espirito, in Andaluz, in Spain. I wrote to her there, but I never had an answer: of course, she would never have written to me.

“I went to Santo Espirito as soon as I could; but that was eight years later. Nobody knew of them there. The place had all changed in the interval, for they had begun to work copper there: it was a mining town.”

“What was the girl’s name?”

“Juanita de la Torre.”

“Would you know her again, do you think?”

“I thought that you were she when I saw you at that window at Los Xicales.”

“I am she,” she said simply. “I am Juanita de la Torre. My mother married my stepfather the year of the picnic. He met her at the picnic for the first time. Four years later we went to live at The Murreys. We took the name Kingsborough when mother married: we’ve been brought up as English ever since. Margarita is my second name; I took to that, because the English cannot pronounce the other.”

“I can, Juanita. Ah! no, no! do not look at that fuse. I will tell you when to prepare. We still have four minutes.”

“How can you tell?”

“I’ve kept watches nearly every day and night for ten years. I can tell time within a minute or two. And to think that we met at Los Xicales and never knew! I was misled by your name. Why did you not speak? You heard my name.”

“Remember I did not know your name,” she said. “I have always thought that your name was Chisholm. I never once heard you called Harker. You were Chisholm to me.”

“Ah! I was afraid of that,” he said. “You never got my letter?”

“Never.”

They were silent for a few seconds; in the stillness some ash dropped from the fuse with a feathery fall: down in the town a cock crowed.

“Strange,” he said. “There is a cock crowing. I cannot hear a cock without knowing that I have an immortal soul.”

“It is a live cry,” she said.

“It is like a trumpeter trumpeting the graves open. It’s the cry the dead will rise with.

“Ah!” he cried, bitterly. “And the living are rising with it, and going out to their work, while we are lashed here like staysails. Oh, if I could only heave this pillar down!” He swayed from side to side, but was too tightly lashed: there was no stirring that tree bole tamped in four feet below the floor.

“It’s no good,” he said. “I am caught. And if I had not been a hasty fool, I could have come here with guardias and set you free.”

“Don’t think that for an instant,” she said. “They were going to cut my throat if there were any rescue. ‘We shall all die together,’ he told me. It’s death to him to be caught here, but he was determined that I should die first. Guardias would not have saved me.”

“I haven’t done much,” he said.

“You have done everything,” she said.

The red glow on the fuse suddenly changed to yellowish; a little flame sprang up out of the glow: it wavered like a candle-flame.

“The thing is going to explode,” she said.

“I think so, it is bad fuse: it is burning.”

“How long have we?”

“Perhaps less than a minute.”

“Could you sing something?”

The flame in the fuse suddenly brightened and lit up the room. He turned to Margarita and saw her great eyes fixed upon his.

“Here comes the burst,” he said. “Stand by.”

The flame steadied, then began to shoot higher with a steady sputtering hiss till it was a foot high and scattering sparks.

“Keep your eyes tight shut,” he said. “And remember it may just as easily cut our chains as us. Here she comes.”

The flame changed its colour to a dull red, which smoked; it sputtered more loudly, then lessened, sank down and went out.

“Wait,” Sard said, “wait: it may be a delayed fuse.” He counted up to seventy-three, slowly. “No,” he said. “The fuse has failed: it is not going to explode.”

The light appeared at the door at the apex of the room: Sagrado came in and looked at them.

“First the pleasures, then the miseries of hope,” he said, “to make the victims despair.”

“We do not despair,” Sard said.

“Do you not?” Sagrado answered. “No; perhaps not yet. But you will.”

“A butcher’s sponge, like you, won’t make me.”

“We shall see.”

“A man would be unclean,” Sard said, “even for spitting at you.”

“Unclean?” Sagrado answered. “There are various conceptions of cleanliness, but all have to do with consecrations and devotions. I am called unclean by you, who serve men, who are a servant in a ship. Other flunkeys serve the state. I am myself, unspotted from these flunkeydoms and slaveries. If I serve, I serve evil, the master of this world.”

“It is something,” Sard said, “to have a master as dirty as the servant.”

“It is much,” Sagrado answered, “to have a power commensurate with your philosophy.”

“I have not seen any power in you yet,” Sard said.

“No?” Sagrado said. “Yet I stand free, while you are bound, you and your romantic one. Which of us has the power, Margarita?”

“He has,” she answered. “And you know it.”

“I do not know it,” he said, “nor do events show it. I wanted you in my hands by a certain day: there was nothing that you wanted less. Yet you came to my hands, to the very moment planned. This sailor, or second mate, if I understand him, has wanted you for fifteen years: there was nothing that you wanted more, if I overheard correctly. Are you in his hands, or arms, or in mine? Which of us has the power over you?”

“He has,” she said. “And you know it.”

“If you will not see truth, you must learn truth; and you too, my sailor. . . .

“You, as I understand it,” he said, turning to Sard, “were for saving her from danger in Las Palomas. Did you save her? . . .

“Did you save your ship from danger? Why, do you suppose, did I go in your ship amid all that I most despise? Your ship, I say, but I mean your owner’s ship, which you were bought to keep afloat: you, a man, being slave to a thing.”

“The thing obeyed its slaves,” Sard said.

“For a while,” the Holy One said. “For a while it gave satisfaction; the slaves earned a dividend for their employers. But then I came, I, the Holy One, who am appointed by my Master to bring down all this order which he most loathes. I came to that ship to lay her low, as an offence, and to smite her brains with numbness. They were slave-brains, thinking of nothing but of keeping their prisons clean. Their one joy was the pothouse, their sole art the music-hall; their religion, what was that, you, who reckon yourself their leader?”

“Their religion is to risk their lives and mortify their flesh in order to bring bread to their fellows,” Sard said. “In doing that, they make iron swim and dead-weight skim and the dead thing to be beautiful. Show me a finer religion, you who are already carrion for the want of one.”

“They had no religion,” Sagrado answered. “They were slaves who made pennies for pot-houses while their work made pounds for peers. I, the Holy One, came among them, and scattered among them the seeds of terror. Would that you had been there, my second mate, to watch that terror growing; the geraniums, the birds, then one by one the brains; I, with a little drug, putting my hand on the heart of your so boasted machine. It was a work of art, my second mate, a symphony of horror. I drew out what notes I wished, I struck what chords I loved, and the instruments which I disliked, I destroyed. Your Cary, I destroyed. I numbed him and killed him. With my own dose, in his own stronghold, I gave him Death.”

“You weren’t allowed to bury him,” Sard said.

It was a shot which went home. Plainly, the burial of Captain Cary by the murderer in the priest’s clothes would have given a relish to the crime.

“No matter,” the Holy One answered, controlling his face, “I shall bury you, when I have done with you.”

“You haven’t done with me yet,” Sard said. “And I owe you for Captain Cary.”

“Your owners owe me for the ship.”

“Perhaps I may pay that too.”

Sagrado walked to the throne in the apex of the room; he seated himself and appeared to consider. Sard knew that he had touched the beast to the quick by his remark about the burial. He followed it up with:

“Mr. Dorney read the service very well, I understand. You did not numb his brains, I gather.”

“He has few to numb,” Sagrado answered. “But I am thinking of what you said about payment, and of you paying me. You think yourself capable, do you, of standing in a contest with me?”

“I would do my best, the city scavenger being absent.”

Sagrado laughed, yet seemed still to be considering: he swayed a little to and fro.

“Yet it is absurd,” he said. “It would be no fair match.”

“You are older,” Sard said, “that is true, but you are fresh. I have already fought twice this night.”

“I had not heard that,” Sagrado answered. “I heard that you had been beaten: did you refer to that?”

“Yes,” Sard said.

“That was not in my mind,” Sagrado said, “when I wondered at the fitness of the match. The issue is not between Master and servant, but between the civilised world and its Destroyer. You are disgusting to me, but not important enough. You are not master of your destiny. You are a part of the scum of life, which is active for another (though without religion) and worried for another, though without purpose. And your talk is such as one would expect: it is prejudice based on ignorance, just like your press. Your sports, your muscle, your fair play, all these catchwords which you repeat when people ask you for intelligence, degrade men. Shall we say that they are the barrel-organs played loudly that men may not know of the degradations done to manhood?”

“You may say what you like,” Sard said, “the sewer of your mind is probably better fluent than stagnant.”

“I see what you are,” Sagrado answered, “the prop of it all, the sergeant, the second mate, the curé, the school-master, the petty officer.” He strode up to Sard and boxed his ears. “Pah!” he said, “you have no foundations, you paltry thing. You talk about manhood, probably, and reckon yourself a man; not a gentleman, of course, for that not even you would pretend, even at sea, but a man, no doubt. You, a preacher and a slave; who cannot know what manhood is. I will tell you what it is: it is the attainment of power and the use of power. Old as I am, I will show you. You shall stand in the wrestle with me. Esclavos!”

At his call the group of seven Indians entered. Sard saw them in the light now; seven wild animals, with a light in their eyes from the desire of blood: they had faces without mark of mirth or pity. At a sign from Sagrado they cast loose Sard’s chains. Sagrado cast off his scarlet robe and stretched his arms.

“You are free,” Sagrado said. “Come, then, to the test. Why do you not come?”

Sard hesitated for a second, thinking that one of the Indians would surely knife him when he moved. He felt that he had reached his end, and that this was how he was to die, shut up here with wild beasts in the presence of his love. He glanced at Margarita, and stood with dropped hands, letting the blood run into his numbed arms again. He meant to hit Sagrado before he died.

“The preacher hesitates,” Sagrado said.

Sard glanced again at Margarita; her look made it all worth while.

“I don’t hesitate,” Sard said. “But keep your slaves from me.”

“You are meat for the sacrifice,” Sagrado answered, “they will not touch you.”

“Time, then,” Sard said.

He rushed at Sagrado and landed with both hands upon a guard which he could not break. Stepping back, he trod into an Indian, while another Indian lurched into his side. There were Indians all round him; a sort of net of Indians. Sagrado came at him and gripped him; he clinched and drove in short-arm blows at Sagrado’s ribs; an Indian tripped him, and Sagrado got a better hold as he staggered. Sagrado was as strong as an ox and quick as a wild beast. Sard was a strong man, but this was a bull-bison of a man. He wrenched an arm free and struck with it; an Indian parried the blow; Sagrado changed his hold and pinned the arm: it was like fighting with an octopus. Indians, stooping down, snatched at Sard’s ankles. Presently Sard tripped and fell: Sagrado brought his shoulders to the mat.

“You see,” he said, “you are down. Give in.”

“I won’t,” Sard said. He struck Sagrado’s mouth and flung him aside. He rose to his feet, as Sagrado rose swearing and savage. He had cut Sagrado’s lip on a tooth, and Sagrado’s mouth bled.

“You shall pay for that,” Sagrado said.

Sard struck him again on the mouth and saw the blood quicken in the cut; he struck again; the Indians caught his arm, Sagrado pinned it and closed with him. They swayed to and fro, while the Indians struck him in the lower ribs, trying for the death-touch. Sard felt Sagrado’s fingers squirming free for a death-touch, which he did not know and could not guard. The death-touch came. A deadly weakness turned all Sard’s strength to water. He went down and felt his life die away, and then ebb partly back. He knew that he must rise, and tried hard to rise, but he was down, he could not rise.

In a few seconds he tried again, but now Sagrado had him by the throat. “Not so,” Sagrado said. “You are beaten. Try that again and I will break something.”

“I’m not finished yet,” Sard said.

“Yes, you are,” Sagrado answered. “But since you doubt it, there goes your arm.”

With a swift jerk he snapped Sard’s arm against a fulcrum, and then twisted the broken bone so that Sard cried and swooned. Sagrado waited till he had recovered and then bound him to his pillar.

“You see,” he said; “you thought yourself a man. You make a poor show in the hands of a man. Do you admit that you are beaten?”

“No.”

“You are beaten, by one twenty years older than yourself, and in the presence of your lady-love, who is now my lady-love. Those friends of yours, who were coming, are somewhat overdue. I’ve beaten you and chained you to your pillar with my own hands. Do you admit that I am your master? Answer, dog; reply, my second mate. For I am your master. The lion has caught his meat; the bull has won his heifer. And now the rites shall begin.”

He said something in Indian to the slaves, who brought forth properties from an inner room. They brought robes, rings, a crown, a sword. Then the negro appeared bearing an altar of an evil design, which he set to Sagrado’s hand. The Indians brought forward the throne.

The negro held the robe for Sagrado.

“I put on the garments of a king,” Sagrado said. “It is the colour of power. It was woven by a woman who killed her son and lived in infamy till she was hanged.”

“Your sister, I presume,” Sard said.

The negro held the rings to Sagrado, who put them on his fingers and on his thumbs.

“These rings,” he said, “are beaten from your Christian chalices, and reconsecrated to your Master’s master.”

The negro held the sword to Sagrado, who took it, kissed it and held it to his heart.

“This sword,” he said, “is the steel of the guillotine of revolution which slays, unjustly, the shrieking innocent.”

The negro laid hands upon the crown.

“See the crown,” Sagrado said. “The gold that men betrayed for, the diamond that women whored for, the ruby that men murdered for, the lead that took life, and the poisonous metals which destroy life.”

The negro, advancing, crowned Sagrado.

Sagrado sat still for a moment upon this throne. Once again Sard had the impression that something evil flowed into the man to make him bigger: he seemed to dilate and glow with an increase of personality.

“Take now the oil and the wine of evil,” Sagrado said, “and anoint me to the worship of evil.”

The negro anointed and asperged Sagrado, with some intoned words of ritual which were in no tongue known to Sard. The Indians had heaped carib leaf upon the brazier, which poured forth stupefying smoke. The negro began to chant a hymn with a rhythm which seemed to go between the marrow and the bone. Whatever it was, it stirred the Indians. They were standing three and three on each side of the throne: the seventh fed the brazier. They sometimes marked a rhythm with a stamp and a catching of the breath: their eyes became brighter and brighter, and turned upwards till they were absorbed within themselves. Their tongues licked to and fro as though they were lapping blood. Sagrado rose to his feet and drew his sword.

“Now,” he said, “I draw the sword of evil for the deed that crowns evil.” He advanced to Sard and pressed the point of the sword upon his throat.

“Do obeisance to evil,” he said, “and you shall live.”

“Apply to the marines,” Sard answered, “not to the deck department.”

“Do obeisance to evil,” Sagrado said, “and your lady-love shall be spared.”

“I will not be spared,” Margarita cried; “I defy you!”

“You dirty lunatic,” Sard said, “do your damnedest.”

“You have not said one thing yet,” Sagrado said; “that you would rather die a thousand deaths, etc. . . . Do you say that?”

“Yes,” Sard said.

“You shall, then, die a thousand deaths. And you shall beg life from me before you die the third.” He turned to the negro.

“Anoint this beast for the sacrifice,” he said.

A tremor of excitement passed through the Indians. The negro cut away Sard’s shirt so as to bare the throat and heart. Then he poured the stolen wine over Sard’s head. Sard shook the drops from him and glanced at Margarita, who was thinking of him, not of herself. She gave him her love in a look. An Indian came to each side of Sard: each held a pointed knife to his cheek, so that he could no longer see Margarita, only know that she was there, and gazing at him.

“Crown the beast for sacrifice,” Sagrado said.

The Indian came forward with a wreath of white flowers which had been drenched in patchouli; he crowned Sard with it and the Indians laughed and clapped their hands. The negro thrust it down upon Sard’s brow, so that the thorns in it drew blood, which slowly trickled into his eyes and dripped on to his chest. Sagrado laughed. He paused for an instant as though gathering evil: again he seemed to swell. He held the sword in both hands, with his thumbs uppermost, pointing straight at Sard. For a moment he stared at Sard along the line of the blade; then his head went back and his eyes turned upward in invocation.

He cried aloud upon the evil of the ages and of the day and of the hour to descend upon him. It seemed to Sard that the house filled with a murmur as though the evil obeyed his call. He heard, as it were, wings, and, as it were, voices, and knew that death came with them.

“I feel you,” Sagrado cried, “I know you, I obey you. I offer you this beast in . . .”

The murmur of wings and voices grew louder. In their greed for blood the devils beat upon the door: their teeth snapped like shaking chains. The Indians laughed, clapped their hands and moaned: “Ahi! ahi! ahi-a-hé!”

Then from the hall somewhere behind Sard came a woman’s scream of “Danger! Look out!” which was stifled in the throat as by a blow or a gag. Someone seemed to be heaving on the sliding panels and banging on the door behind the throne.

Sagrado laughed with a high, clear, inhuman cry:

“With all my strength and will and spirit,” he cried, “I offer you the life of this beast in . . .”

There came a crash both behind and in front of Sard: there was a deafening bang: someone fell over the brazier, which upset. All the stinking and smouldering carib leaf rolled from its metal pot. The room at the instant filled with men: they were all in green and silver. Sagrado whirled about to face them: one of them with a rifle beat the sword out of his hand: it broke below the hilt and fell in two pieces. After the crash, there came a silence so great that the double tinkle and clatter of the broken sword was memorable. The ball of carib leaf broke open, smoking violently: wisps of gunpowder-smoke drifted past. Sard could not imagine what had happened: all that he saw was so tight and red: but one of the Indians was lying on the floor, hardly moving. The men in green and silver were covering the rest with rifles. Behind the riflemen Sard saw the white but interested faces of Paggy and Crockums.

There was deep silence for nearly half a minute. Then somebody flung open a door which brought a gush of pure air into the foulness. An officer who had Sagrado covered with a revolver trod out the carib leaf under his feet. Two guards advanced, struck Sagrado suddenly on the wrists, knocking them together, then instantly twisted the twitch or cuero about them and wrenched it taut. Sard thought, “I have often heard that they put the twitch on criminals. They can break a man’s wrists with it, so they say. Now there it is, actually done, before my eyes. They have him at their mercy.”

Sagrado neither spoke nor struggled. He was like one drugged and unable to speak through the drug. He thought no more of Sard, but plainly did not yet know what had happened. The negro had turned whitish under his colour: the Indians moved no muscle.

The Dictator strode through the guards and spoke.

“So,” he said, “a nice, pretty Christian scene of play! And Harker mio, my benefactor. One turn deserves another.”

Guardias kept flooding into the room. They sorted themselves into couples, who advanced, each couple, to an Indian, put the cuero on him and dragged him aside. The Dictator with his own hands beat and tore at Margarita’s chains. A chief of guardias, who had keys about him, unlocked the padlocks; the chains clanked to the floor, Sard and Margarita were free. The two reefers were white and subdued, but both were kind and helpful. They brought chairs for the two victims, and then, after a little search, brought water in some bronze bowls and mopped their brows. “You’re among friends, Miss,” they said. “No one shall hurt you.” “You’re all right, sir,” they said to Sard; “you’ll soon feel better. It’s all right now, sir; those devils are all cueroed up.”

When the Dictator had helped to restore the two victims, he turned to the guards. “Take those Indios and this negro out into the Plaza for the present,” he said. “Leave this leader of theirs. I wish a little to examine him.”

When the last of the eight had been removed, the Dictator turned to Margarita.

“Miss Kingsborough,” he said, “I’m glad to be able to say that your brother is safe. He will do well enough; but I have thought it better to have him to my palace for my doctor to overhaul. Presently, when my carriages come, you shall join him.

“And now I will a little question this atavist, this throwback, who has so nearly destroyed my Harker. Bring this creature to the light.”

The man who held the twitch brought Sagrado forward. Sagrado seemed dazed still, but in his dream he was unwilling to be seen; he shrank from the Dictator and bowed his head into his robes.

“Let me see him,” the Dictator said. “Hold up his head to the light. So, tear away that crown.”

A man flung the crown to the ground: Sagrado was displayed: he turned whiter, but became more himself. The Dictator looked hard at him.

“We have met before,” he said.

“We have had dealings,” Sagrado said.

“So, it is Rafael Hirsch returned; one more who has not yet paid me for Carlotta. Are you not Rafael Hirsch?”

“If I were fifty Rafael Hirsches,” Sagrado answered, “you would not be paid for Carlotta. You will carry that wound to your death, and no son of yours will carry on your work here. Killing her has kept you sterile at least.”

“Good work is fruitful of itself,” the Dictator answered. “My work is my son and my daughter. My people will inherit from me. So, Rafael Hirsch, we who once talked of magic together, see where our magics have led us.”

“The game is not yet over, Manuel.”

“The game is never over, Rafael Hirsch, never, never, never, whether in its mercy or in its fire. Have you anything to say?”

“Not with words,” Sagrado said.

“Not with deeds,” the Dictator said. “And yet, one thing you can say, one thing you know which you can tell me. Upon what spot of these accursed stones was she of whom we spoke bestially murdered?”

“Shall I have life, if I say?”

“You are not judged to death yet.”

Sagrado seemed to consider this in all its bearings, while the others watched him. A kind of hope kindled on his face for a moment; he even smiled: then he studied the Dictator’s face and smiled again, more bitterly.

“I think you would like to know that, Manuel,” he said, “ ‘pretty damned bad,’ as they say. You will not know it from me. But I do know it. What is more, Manuel; I heard what she said, before the knife-point touched her throat. Shall I tell you what she said?”

The Dictator made a sign with one hand: Sagrado was removed. A guardia’s hand upon his throat made his telling of what she said unintelligible, furious as it was.

The Dictator crossed himself and remained in prayer until the noise of feet and of raving were shut away by the door.

“So,” he said. “So passes the pride of power, into madness which brings a judgment. I knew that man as a scholar of strange things . . .” He paused and then continued in English:

“But you would like to know what brings me here, so like the Deus in the play. You must thank these two reefers here: Mr. Paggy and Mr. Crockums.

“Your brother, Miss Kingsborough, was left for dead in this house. He was not dead, however. He managed to crawl to the wall and there broke a window. Mr. Paggy and Mr. Crockums happened to be in the Plaza when the glass broke. They were in a state familiar to young men: a romantic state, of pining for romance. They thought that some woman was imprisoned here against her will. Hearing Mr. Kingsborough’s tale, they ran for help.

“Now at that very time I was coming to the Plaza, on my way to Santa Alba, where I wished to meditate before Mass; for often in meditation light comes. These reefers ran into my party only a hundred yards from here. I, hearing their story, sent at once for the guardias of the ward, while I surrounded the house with my guard. At the back of the house I found a man whose ways I did not like, one Sumecta, whom I detained.

“I thought at that time that I was dealing with things commonplace, but directly I had made an entrance into the back of the house, I smelt the carib leaf. When I smelt the carib leaf, I smelt devilry. For remember, Harker mio, I am a son of this land, where the devils are strong, and come much into human affairs. In my youth, for which God has punished me, I sought their help, so I know who uses carib leaf and when and why. So I come in, I and my guards.

“Truly, if the reefers had not been prompt and I not where I was with my party, we should have been too late. However, we were in time. Now, Harker mio, taste here this brandy. You are very white.”

“My arm is broken, sir,” Sard said.

“Facundo,” the Dictator said to an equerry, “see that the carriages, when they come, stay in the street at the back, not in the Plaza. See also that a doctor be there.”

When the equerry had gone, the Dictator turned to Margarita.

“Lady,” he said, “what shall be done to these devil-worshippers? Doom or mercy?”

“I should have been glad of mercy a few minutes ago,” Margarita said.

“And you, Harker mio, would you kill them or not kill?”

“Twenty minutes ago I would have killed them,” Sard said. “Then I fought with that man and did not win. I would not have others do what I could not do myself.”

“And you, the reefers?” the Dictator asked.

“They ought to be hanged, sir,” Paggy said.

“I don’t know, sir,” Crockums said, “I don’t know about their being hanged. I don’t know what laws you may have, nor what they deserve, according to your laws.”

At that instant, from without, there came a shattering volley of rifles, which made all present leap. While they stared at each other, plaster and glass pattered and tinkled down somewhere outside.

“That,” the Dictator said, “is what they deserve according to my laws. Nor are my laws savage, seeing that I live in the South, where things bite worse and poison is more fell than in the North, where even the Devil is cold-blooded. So, they are gone where justice is less fallible than here; there they will receive, no doubt, the surplus which we, in our human weakness have failed to give.

“But come, enough of them: they are dead. I hear my carriages. We will leave this place of devilry, for breakfast at the palace. You reefers, too; you have deserved it: I will explain to your captain. Come, then.”

An equerry entered and saluted:

“Your Excellency’s carriages are now in the street without,” he said.

“Good,” the Dictator answered. “Santiago, y cierra España. Miss Kingsborough, I give you one arm; but the other I give to Harker mio.”

“Your Excellency,” Margarita said, “Mr. Harker only has one arm, and that is mine.”

“Better still,” the Dictator said. “Now I may have your persuasion to offer him a crutch; or shall we say a rest?”

Both Sard and Margarita had been dazed by the doings of the morning. Sard, who had been cut, battered and bruised, was weary from fighting and in pain from his arm. He was not able to speak. He felt like one who had had an immense day’s work, which was now done and well done. Margarita was at his side; that was a happiness; his dream had come true; that was a marvel.

The carriages moved out into the light of the dawn through the white-blossomed thorn-tree avenue which led to Cachopos. The sun was just clear of the sea: the birds were going out and the flower-sellers coming in. Sard had Margarita at his side and the Dictator and a doctor opposite. The little white pennons of the lances of the escort fluttered like butterflies. Off Cachopos, a lofty English barque was coming in on the last of the breeze. She stole along like a ghost, white to the trucks, with a roll of brighter white at her lips which she seemed to stoop to drink. From the church of Santa Alba there came the exquisite pure sound of singing.

The carriages swung away from all this towards the palace, which shone above them among the forest. Behind it, far away, were the mountains, peak upon peak, some of them forested, some snowy; one, with a brow of crag, streaked with cataracts.

The Dictator pointed towards the sea, now shut from sight by many snowy branches. “That is shut from you now, Harker mio,” he said; “but when one door shuts another opens. Here is all this land waiting for you. To me, this land has only given work; to you, I see, it has already given all things; let me then add work to those.”

“When my arm is mended,” Sard said. “But your Excellency will have to ask my wife.”

THE END

THE LONDON AND NORWICH PRESS, LIMITED, ST. GILES WORKS, NORWICH

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TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.