m sent those watchers mad. They ceased from
their whisperings, they raved aloud.

"It is Satan!" they shouted, "Satan, who comes to drag the folk of
Venice down to hell. Kill him ere he lands. Kill him!"

Even Grey Dick went mad like a dog when he meets a ghost. His pale hair
rose upon his head, his cold, quiet eyes started. He set an arrow on the
string of the black bow, drew it to his ear and loosed at the figure on
the poop. But that arrow never left the string; it shattered to flinders
where it was and fell tinkling to the marble floor. Only the barb of
it turned and wounded Grey Dick in the chin, yes, and stuck there for a
while, for his right arm was numbed so that he could not lift his hand
to pull it forth.

"Truly, I have shot at the Fiend and hit that at which I did not aim,"
muttered Grey Dick, and sat himself down on a post of the quay to
consider the matter. Only, as it seemed to him, he who stood on the poop
of the ship not ten yards away smiled a little.

Unheeding of the clamour, this man upon the poop suddenly lifted the
coil of rope and threw it shoreward. It was a thick and heavy rope,
with a noose at its end, so heavy that none would have believed that one
mortal could handle it. Yet it shot from him till it stood out stiff as
an iron bar. Yes, and the noose fell over one of the stone posts on the
quay, and caught there. Now the rope grew straighter still, stretching
and groaning like a thing in pain as it took the weight of the great,
drifting ship. She stayed; she swung round slowly and ranged herself
broadside on against the quay as a berthed ship does. Then down the
ladder on her side came the Man. Deliberately he set his white-sandalled
feet upon the quay, advanced a few paces into the full light of the
bright moon and stood still as though to suffer himself to be seen of
every eye.

Truly he was worth the seeing. Hugh noted his garments first, and
particularly the head-dress, which caught his glance and held it, for
never had he known such a one before. It was a cap fitting tight to the
skull, only running across the crown of it was a stiff raised ridge, of
leather perhaps, jagged and pointed something like the comb of a cock.
This comb, of brilliant red, was surmounted at its highest point by a
ball of black of the size of a small apple. The cap itself was yellow,
except its lowest band, which stood out from it and was also black. In
the centre of this band upon the forehead glowed a ston