d
he would be able to get safely ashore, and could avoid question by
disappearing a moment afterward, or as soon as might be.

And he would be in France--would be so much nearer to the reckoning
with Aurelie de Roquemaure!

He drew on the jacket of the officer as the thoughts of all this
chased one another through his mind, threw his own sword down and took
up that of the dead man, placed on his head the hat he had
worn--bearing in it a gold cockade on which a glittering sun was
stamped--and then, glancing through the square porthole that gave on
the shore, he looked to see if, yet, any of the French were coming out
to save some of their vessels from the conflagration. But the wind was
blowing off the sea to the land and carrying with it the smoke from
the burning ships; between those ships and the shore all was obscured.
And still, as he looked, the explosions--though fainter now--took
place at every moment; he could hear the crackling of the flames in
the vessel in which he was.

He knew that he must go--must not tarry another instant. Those flames
were gaining round him; they would reach the magazine before
long--and--then! He must go at once.

He cast one more hurried glance at De Roquemaure, who seemed quite
dead now. But, dead or alive, what mattered it? If dead, so much the
better; if alive, he would be blown to atoms in a few more moments--as
he would himself if he tarried longer. He must go at once.

"Farewell, dog!" he muttered, with one look downward at his enemy.
"Farewell. Your account is made!" And without wasting another
moment--for his fear of being hurled into eternity himself the next
moment had gained terrible hold on him--he rushed to the main cabin
door and seized the handle.

An awful sweat of fear--a cold, clammy sweat--broke out all over him
as he did so; he knew now how dear life was to him--dearer than he had
ever dreamed before that it would be; or was it rather the fear of an
awful death than death itself? Was it that which caused him to almost
faint with horror as he recognised that the door was either locked or
jammed, so that it would not open?

He was doomed--the fire was spreading--he heard one great gun explode
by itself--a gun on the lower deck near where the powder room must
be--_beneath_ him--he was doomed! In another few moments--perhaps not
more than four or five at most--the bulkheads would fly asunder, the
deck split like matchwood, he and the dead bodies of De Roquemaur