the figure above
me. A momentary glance showed me the face of King Louis. I paid no more
heed, but drew my knife and flung myself on the rope that bound the boat
to the ship.

Then the breeze dropped, and the fog fell thick and enveloping. My knife
was on the rope and I severed the strands with desperate strength. One
by one I felt them go. As the last went I raised my head. From the ship
above me flashed the fire of a pistol, and a ball whistled by my ear.
Wild with excitement, I laughed derisively. The last strand was gone,
slowly the ship forged ahead; but then the man on the gunwale gathered
himself together and sprang across the water between us. He came full on
the top of me, and we fell together on the floor of the boat. By the
narrowest chance we escaped foundering, but the sturdy boat proved true.
I clutched my assailant with all my strength, pinning him arm to arm,
breast to breast, shoulder to shoulder. His breath was hot on my face. I
gasped "Row, row." From the ship came a sudden alarmed cry: "The boat,
the boat!" But already the ship grew dim and indistinct.

"Row, row," I muttered; then I heard the sculls set in their tholes, and
with a slow faltering stroke the boat was guided away from the ship,
moving nearly at a right angle to it. I put out all my strength. I was
by far a bigger man than the King, and I did not spare him. I hugged him
with a bear's hug, and his strength was squeezed out of him. Now I was
on the top and he below. I twisted his pistol from his hand and flung it
overboard. Tumultuous cries came from the blurred mass that was the
ship; but the breeze had fallen, the fog was thick, they had no other
boat. The King lay still. "Give me the sculls," I whispered. Barbara
yielded them; her hands were cold as death when they encountered mine.
She scrambled into the stern. I dragged the King back--he was like a
log now--till he lay with the middle of his body under the seat on which
I sat; his face looked up from between my feet. Then I fell to rowing,
choosing no course except that our way should be from the ship, and
ready, at any movement of the still form below me, to drop my sculls and
set my pistol at his head. Yet till that need came I bent lustily to my
work, and when I looked over the sea the ship was not to be seen, but
all around hung the white vapour, the friendly accomplice of my
enterprise.

That leap of his was a gallant thing. He knew that I was his master in
strength, and that