aps in which rose all the stinks of the
sweating hold.

The boatmen climbed the high slant of the bow, planted their stout
bamboos against their shoulders, and came slowly down, head first, like
straining acrobats. As slowly, the boat began to glide past the stairs.

Thus far, though the fire lay scattered in the mud, the smoke drifted
still before them and obscured their silent, headlong transaction. Now,
thinning as they dropped below the corner of the wall, it left them
naked to their enemies on the knoll. At the same instant, from the marsh
ahead, the sentinel in the round hat sprang up again, like an
instantaneous mushroom. He shouted, and waved to his fellows inland.

They had no time, however, to leave the high ground; for the whole
chance of the adventure took a sudden and amazing turn.

Heywood sprang out of his stupor, and stood pointing.

"Look there!" he snarled. "Those--oh!"

He ended with a groan. The face of his friend, by torchlight above the
wall, had struck him dumb. Now that he spoke, his companions saw,
exposed in the field to the view of the nunnery, a white body lying on a
framework as on a bier. Near the foot stood a rough sort of windlass.
Above, on the crest of the field, where a band of men had begun to
scramble at the sentinel's halloo, there sat on a white pony the
bright-robed figure of the tall fanatic, Fang the Sword-Pen.

"He did it!" Heywood's hands opened and shut rapidly, like things out of
control. "Oh, Wutz, how did they--Saint Somebody--the martyrdom--
Poussin's picture in the Vatican.--I can't stand this, you chaps!"

He snatched blindly at his gun, caught instead one of the compradore's
halberds, and without pause or warning, jumped out into the shallow
water. He ran splashing toward the bank, turned, and seemed to waver,
staring with wild eyes at the strange Tudor weapon in his hand. Then
shaking it savagely,--

"This will do!" he cried. "Good-by, everybody. Good-by!"

He wheeled again, staggered to his feet on dry ground, and ran swiftly
along the eastern wall, up the rising field, straight toward his mark.

Of the men on the knoll, a few fired and missed, the others, neutrals to
their will, stood fixed in wonder. Four or five, as the runner neared,
sprang out to intercept, but flew apart like ninepins. The watchers in
the boat saw the halberd flash high in the late afternoon sun, the
frightened pony swerve, and his rider go down with the one sweep of that
Homeric bl