a distinction between killing and murder. But
suddenly I felt, without her cloaked figure having stirred, her small
hand slip into mine. Its soft warmth seemed to go straight to my heart
soothing, invigorating--as it she had slipped into my palm a weapon of
extraordinary and inspiring potency.

"Ah, you are generous," I whispered close to the edge of the cloak
overshadowing her face.

"You must now think of yourself, Juan," she said.

"Of myself," I echoed sadly. "I have only you to think of, and you
are so far away--out of my reach. There are your dead--all your loss,
between you and me."

She touched my arm.

"It is I who must think of my dead," she whispered. "But you, you must
think of yourself, because I have nothing of mine in this world now."

Her words affected me like the whisper of remorse. It was true. There
were her wealth, her lands, her palaces; but her only refuge was that
little boat. Her father's long aloofness from life had created such an
isolation round his closing years that his daughter had no one but me to
turn to for protection against the plots of her own Intendente. And,
at the thought of our desperate plight, of the suffering awaiting us in
that small boat, with the possibility of a lingering death for an end,
I wavered for a moment. Was it not my duty to return to the bay and give
myself up? In that case, as Castro expressed it, our throats would be
cut for love of the _Juez_.

But Seraphina, the rabble would carry to the Casa on the palms of their
hands--out of veneration for the family, and for fear of O'Brien.

"So, Senor," he mumbled, "if to you to-morrow's sun is as little as to
me let us pull the boat's head, round."

"Let us set our hands to the side and overturn it, rather," Seraphina
said, with an indignation of high command.

I said no more. If I could have taken O'Brien with me into the other
world, I would have died to save her the pain of so much as a pinprick.
But because I could not, she must even go with me; must suffer because I
clung to her as men cling to their hope of highest good--with an exalted
and selfish devotion.

Castro had moved forward, as if to show his readiness to pull round.
Meantime I heard a click. A feeble gleam fell on his misty hands under
the black halo of the hat rim. Again the flint and blade clicked, and a
large red spark winked rapidly in the bows. He had lighted a cigarette.

CHAPTER TWO

Silence, stillness, breathless caution