ocal junk and a stray _papico_ from the
north--the high-nosed Hakka boat, her deck roofed with tawny
basket-work, and at her masthead a wooden rice-measure dangling below a
green rag. Aft, by the great steering-paddle, perched a man, motionless,
yet seeming to watch. Heywood turned, however, and pointed downstream to
where, at the bend of the river, a little spit of mud ran out from the
marsh. On the spit, from among tussocks, a man in a round hat sprang up
like a thin black toadstool. He waved an arm, and gave a shrill cry,
summoning help from further inland. Other hats presently came bobbing
toward him, low down among the marsh. Puffs of white spurted out from
the mud. And as Heywood dodged back through the gate, and Nesbit's rifle
answered from his little fort on the pony-shed, the distant crack of the
muskets joined with a spattering of ooze and a chipping of stone on the
river-stairs.

"Covered, you see," said Heywood, replacing the bar. "Last resort,
perhaps, that way. Still, we may as well keep a bundle of firewood
ready here."

The shots from the marsh, though trivial and scattering, were like a
signal; for all about the nunnery, from a ring of hiding-places, the
noise of last night broke out afresh. The sun lowered through a brown,
burnt haze, the night sped up from the ocean, covering the sky with
sudden darkness, in which stars appeared, many and cool, above the
torrid earth and the insensate turmoil. So, without change but from
pause to outbreak, outbreak to pause, nights and days went by in
the siege.

Nothing happened. One morning, indeed, the fragments of another blunt
arrow came to light, broken underfoot and trampled into the dust. The
paper scroll, in tatters, held only a few marks legible through dirt and
heel-prints: "Listen--work fast--many bags--watch closely." And still
nothing happened to explain the warning.

That night Heywood even made a sortie, and stealing from the main gate
with four coolies, removed to the river certain relics that lay close
under the wall, and would soon become intolerable. He had returned
safely, with an ancient musket, a bag of bullets, a petroleum squirt,
and a small bundle of pole-axes, and was making his tour of the
defenses, when he stumbled over Rudolph, who knelt on the ground under
what in old days had been the chapel, and near what now was
Kempner's grave.

He was not kneeling in devotion, for he took Heywood by the arm, and
made him stoop.

"I was comi