ring at his side and the bayonets of the guard shining martially
file and file: with some of the chiefest of these judges to receive him
and some hundreds of us convicts drawn up below to do him honor.

Such was the method of his elevation, you will perceive: such the means
by which he attained his ambitions, his uplifted position in the
world--when he climbed the scaffold in the courtyard of the central
prison on Ile de Nou and took his final look on life.

I was there. For my complicity at Mother Carron's that night and my
refusal to testify at the trial they had shipped me back to the
Collective. I stood in the front row. I was among those felons whose
special privilege is their compulsory attendance at executions. I could
miss nothing. Not a word nor a movement. Not the hurried mumbling of the
death sentence. Not the ruffling of the drums that covered the fatal
preparations.... Not even the icy chill to the marrow when we sank there
in our ranks on the damp flagstones.

"Convicts: on your knees! Hats off!"

Just as well for me I was allowed to kneel, perhaps.... Never mind....
It does not bear talking of. Except one thing. One thing I recall to
comfort me, as I saw it through a mist of tears, wrung with pity and
with awe. And that was Bibi-Ri's last salute to my address before they
lashed him on the bascule, under the knife.... He smiled at me, the
little fellow. Even gayly. Bidding me note as plain as words how he held
fast his good courage, how he had kept his counsel and his great secret
in prison and would keep them to the end. How he apprehended and viewed
clear-eyed the inconceivable grim jest of the family party there on the
scaffold: himself and the executioner!

Then he looked away across the harbor, toward the anchorage, and he did
not shift his gaze again from that goal of Noumea. Taking his farewell,
Monsieur. Taking his farewell in spirit and quite content, as he had
said, I do believe. For this was the day, this the very morning, when
the steamer left Noumea bearing his beloved Zelie for home....

And one other thing I can tell you, crisp and clear. Do you remember
when I began I said I had evened the score against M. de Nou? Evened it
for always until that fiend shall be dragged to the nethermost level of
hell and earn his reward? Evened it the only way it could be evened on
this side of the grave?... And so I did. Never was such an evening!
Listen:

Ask me not how it was done, by aid of what o