upon the white wood just above us. Then the door itself was hurled hastily open, and with fierce exclamation of rage a gray-hooded Capuchin monk bounded forth like a rubber ball, and instantly began kicking vigorously right and left at our struggling figures. It gives me pleasure to record that the Spaniard, being on top, received by far the worst of it, yet I might also bear testimony to the vigor of the priest's legs, while we shared equally in the volubility of his tongue.
"Sacre!" he screamed in French, punctuating each sentence with a fresh blow. "Get away from here, you drunken, quarrelling brutes! Has it come to this, that a respectable priest of Holy Church may not hold private converse with the condemned without a brawl at the very door? Mother of God! what meaneth the fracas? Where is the guard? Why don't some of them jab their steel in the blasphemous ragamuffins who thus make mock of the holy offices of religion? Take that, you black, sprawling beast!"
He aimed a vicious stroke at my head, which I ducked in the nick of time to permit of its landing with full force in my companion's ribs. I heard him grunt in acknowledgment of its receipt.
"Where is the guard, I say! If they come not I will strangle the dogs with my own consecrated hands to the glory of God. By the sainted Benedine! was ever one of our Order so basely treated before? Get away, I tell you! 'Tis a disgrace to the true faith, and just as I was about to bring the Chevalier to his knees in confession of his sins!"
Gonzales was fairly doubled up with laughter at the ludicrous incident, choking so that speech had become an utter impossibility. By this time the aroused guards began hurrying forward on a run down the passageway to rescue their imperilled comrade, yet, before the foremost succeeded in laying hands upon me, a newcomer, resplendent in glittering uniform, with an inflamed, almost purple face, leaped madly forth from the opposite side of the mast and began laying about him vigorously with an iron pin, making use meanwhile of a vocabulary of choice Spanish epithets such as I never heard equalled.
"By the shrine of Saint Gracia!" shouted this new arrival hoarsely, glaring about in the dim light as if half awakened from a bad dream. "What meaneth this aboard my ship? Caramba! is this a travelling show—a place for mountebanks and gypsies? Shut the door, you shrieking gray-back of a monk, or I 'll have you cat-o'-nine-tailed by the guard, in spite of your robe. Get up, you drunken brute!"
The crestfallen soldier to whom these last affectionate words were addressed limped painfully away, and then the justly irate commander of His Christian Majesty's flag-ship "Santa Maria" glowered down on me with an astonishment that for the moment held him dumb.
"Where did this dirty nigger come from?" he roared at last, applying one of his heavy sea-boots to me with vehemence. "Who is the villain who dared bring such cattle on board my ship?"
Gonzales, now thoroughly sobered by the seriousness of the situation, attempted to account for my presence, but before he had fairly begun his story, the Captain, who by this time was beyond all reason, burst roaring forth again:
"Oh, so you brought him! You did, hey? Well, did n't I tell you to let no lazy, loafing bumboat-man set foot on board? Do you laugh at my orders, you good-for-nothing scum of the sea? And above all things why did you ever drag such a creature as this down between decks to disgrace the whole of His Majesty's navy? Get up, you bundle of rags!"
I scrambled to my feet, seeking to shuffle to one side out of his immediate sight, but a heavy hand closed instantly on my ragged collar and held me fronting him. For a moment I thought he meant to strike me, but I appeared such a miserable, dejected specimen of humanity that the fierce anger died slowly out of his eyes.
"Francisco," he called sternly, "heave this thing overboard, and be lively about it! Saints of Mercy! he smells like a butcher-boat in the tropics."
Hustled, dragged, cuffed, mercilessly kicked, the fellows got me out upon the open deck at last; I caught one fleeting glimpse of the great masts, the white, gleaming planks under foot, the horrified, upturned, face of Alphonse in the little boat beneath, and then, with a heave and a curse, over I went, sprawling down from rail to river, as terrified a darky as ever made hasty departure from a man-of-war.
CHAPTER IV
WE HOLD A COUNCIL OF WAR
The last object I remember seeing was the white face of the Capuchin monk peering at me over the rail, and my earliest thought as I arose to the surface, was that as the water had probably cleansed my skin it would be wise to keep well out of sight from the deck. Fortunately the boat floated close at hand. Laying hasty grasp upon it, but remaining well immersed in the river, I bade the thoroughly frightened black paddle with diligence out of that neighborhood. This was a task he was not slow in accomplishing, fear lending strength to trained muscles, and we soon had the good fortune to discover a safe landing-place beneath the lee of a long molasses shed, where our plight was unobserved by any one.
Remaining hidden here myself, feeling reasonably secure from prying eyes, I despatched Alphonse after dry clothing, meanwhile tramping back and forth across the packed earthen floor to keep chilled blood in circulation, seeking eagerly to evolve out of the confused events of the afternoon some programme for future guidance. This task was no light one. The closer I faced the desperate work remaining unaccomplished the less I enjoyed the outlook, the more improbable appeared success. Getting aboard the "Santa Maria" was now, to my mind, the simplest part of the adventure, but beyond the accomplishment of that feat I could perceive little to encourage me. What must necessarily follow my safe gaining of that guarded deck, during the dark hours of the night, depended so largely upon the occurrence of helpful circumstances, any definite plan of action arranged beforehand became simply an impossibility. Still, striving to make allowances for the unexpected, I managed to put together a chain of details, trusting, with the blind faith of a fatalist, that these would somehow fall into line when the hour came. If they failed, as was likely, I determined to shift them about in any way possible as each fresh emergency arose. I realized how small a part any preliminary survey holds in such an enterprise as now fronted me, an enterprise to be worked out amid darkness and grave personal peril, where any bungling act or false move might overturn everything in an instant; yet it is always well—or at least so I have found it—to trace some outline of procedure, rather than trust wholly to the intuitions of the moment. God's aid seems usually granted to those doing most for themselves.
I felt little confidence by the time Alphonse returned, yet my firm determination to make the effort had in no way abated. Indeed, had failure been an absolute certainty I should have gone forward exactly the same, for I was bound to it by my pledge to Eloise de Noyan. I have reason to suppose dogged determination a part of my nature, but then something far more compelling than this inherited tendency drove me irresistibly forward to my fate. This is no story of the rescue of a prisoner of war, but rather of how love impelled an ordinary man to the accomplishment of deeds which seemed impossible.
It was evening, already quite dark, it fortunately proving a night of cloud and threatened storm, when I ventured to steal into the little cottage on the Rue Dumaine, and found there, even as I had left them, Madame de Noyan and the père awaiting me. How anxious a day she had been compelled to pass since the hour of my departure was plainly imprinted upon her beautiful face, gently touched by the softened light from a shaded candle near which she rested; nor was the naturally pale, emaciated countenance of her spiritual adviser entirely free from outward marks of care impressed upon it by his patient vigil.
I
