“That crack on the head keeps him quiet enough,” he said in explanation, “but he might come to and give trouble, or try to swim for it, since such cats have many lives. Ah! Señor Ramiro, I told you I would have my sword back before I was half an hour older, or go where I shouldn’t want one.” Then he touched the spring in the hilt and examined the cavity. “Why,” he said, “here’s my legacy left in it safe and sound. No wonder my good angel made me mad to get that sword again.”
“No wonder,” echoed Foy, “especially as you got Ramiro with it,” and he glanced at Adrian, who was labouring at the bow oar, looking, now that the excitement of the fight had gone by, most downcast and wretched. Well he might, seeing the welcome that, as he feared, awaited him in Leyden.
For a while they rowed on in silence. All that they had gone through during the last four and twenty hours and the seven preceding months of war and privation, had broken their nerve. Even now, although they had escaped the danger and won back the buried gold, capturing the arch-villain who had brought them so much death and misery, and their home, which, for the present moment at any rate, was a strong place of refuge, lay before them, still they could not be at ease. Where so many had died, where the risks had been so fearful, it seemed almost incredible that they four should be living and hale, though weary, with a prospect of continuing to live for many years.
That the girl whom he loved so dearly, and whom he had so nearly lost, should be sitting before him safe and sound, ready to become his wife whensoever he might wish it, seemed to Foy also a thing too good to be true. Too good to be true was it, moreover, that his brother, the wayward, passionate, weak, poetical-minded Adrian, made by nature to be the tool of others, and bear the burden of their evil doing, should have been dragged before it was over late, out of the net of the fowler, have repented of his sins and follies, and, at the risk of his own life, shown that he was still a man, no longer the base slave of passion and self-love. For Foy always loved his brother, and knowing him better than any others knew him, had found it hard to believe that however black things might look against him, he was at heart a villain.
Thus he thought, and Elsa too had her thoughts, which may be guessed. They were silent all of them, till of a sudden, Elsa seated in the stern-sheets, saw Adrian suddenly let fall his oar, throw his arms wide, and pitch forward against the back of Martin. Yes, and in place of where he had sat appeared the dreadful countenance of Ramiro, stamped with a grin of hideous hate such as Satan might wear when souls escape him at the last. Ramiro recovered and sitting up, for to his feet he could not rise because of the sword strap, in his hand a thin, deadly-looking knife.
“Habet!” he said with a short laugh, “habes, Weather-cock!” and he turned the knife against himself.
But Martin was on him, and in five more seconds he lay trussed like a fowl in the bottom of the boat.
“Shall I kill him?” said Martin to Foy, who with Elsa was bending over Adrian.
“No,” answered Foy grimly, “let him take his trial in Leyden. Oh! what accursed fools were we not to search him!”
Ramiro’s face turned a shade more ghastly.