mong such turbulent spirits as those with
whom he had to deal, unpopularity means loss of power, his own common
sense suggested to him the extreme impolicy of pitting himself against
them while they continued in so antagonistic a mood. But he was quite
resolved that if he could not have in one way what he called his
"revenge," he would have it in another; and from that day forward his
insolence and tyranny of demeanour toward Lance and his friends grew
more and more marked, until at length it became so unbearable that they
were driven to the very verge of desperation.

Meanwhile Lance, sitting there watching his patient, soon saw that he
was about to have his hands full. The hectic flush of fever began to
chase away the deadly pallor from the sufferer's cheek; his eyes
glittered and sparkled like coals of fire; and as feeling began to
return to his hitherto benumbed limbs, and the smart of his recent
operation made itself felt, he tossed restlessly in his hammock,
tormented with an unquenchable thirst.

"Water! water!" he muttered. "For the love of God give me water!"

Lance gave him some in a tin pannikin. In an instant the vessel was
glued to the unfortunate man's lips, and in another instant it was
drained to the last drop.

"More--give me more," he gasped, as soon as he had recovered his breath.

But this Lance declined to do. Bidding the poor fellow be patient for a
few minutes, he went to the medicine-chest and mixed him a cooling
draught. This also was swallowed with avidity; and then the armourer
lay quiet for a few minutes. Not for long, however; he soon began to
toss restlessly about once more; and by the time that the hands returned
from their day's work at the shipyard he was in a raging fever--raving
mad in fact; and Lance was at last compelled to have him laced up in his
hammock to prevent him from doing himself a serious injury.

Lance Evelin will probably remember that night as long as he lives. In
the delirium of the fierce fever which consumed him the unhappy armourer
was visited by visions of all the evil deeds of his past life; and
Lance's blood curdled in his veins as he listened to his patient's
disjointed ravings of murder, rapine, and cold-blooded cruelty of so
revolting a character that he wondered how any human mind could conceive
it in the first instance, and how, after it had been conceived, human
hands could bring themselves to perpetrate it. And then the man's
guilty conscien