face with his hands and began to cough incessantly, like a man dying of
consumption. The glowing top of the lanthorn hissed and sputtered out in
little sharp blows, like hammer strokes... Carlos had coughed like that.
Carlos was dead. Now O'Brien! He was going. I should escape. It was all
over. Was it all over? He bowed stiffly forward, placing his hands on
the stones, then lay over on his side with his face to the light, his
eyes glaring at it. I sat motionless, watching him. The lanthorn lit
the carved leg of the black table and a dusty circle of the flags.
The spurts of blood from his shoulder grew less long in answer to the
pulsing of his heart; his fists unclenched, he drew his legs up to
his body, then sank down. His eyes looked suddenly at mine and, as the
features slowly relaxed, the smile seemed to come back, enigmatic, round
his mouth.

He was dead; he was gone; I was free! He would never know where she was;
never! He had gone, with the question on his lips; with the agony of
uncertainty in his eyes. From the door came an immense, grotesque, and
horrible chuckle.

"Aha!-Aha! I have saved you, Senor, I have protected you. We are as
brothers."

Against the tenuous blue light of the dawn Salazar was gesticulating in
the doorway. I felt a sudden repulsion; a feeling of intense disgust.
O'Brien lying there, I almost wished alive again--I wanted to have
him again, rather than that I should have been relieved of him by that
atrocious murder. I sat looking at both of them.

Saved! By that lunatic? I suddenly appreciated the agony of mind that
alone could have brought O'Brien, the cautious, the all-seeing, into
this place--. to ask me a question that for him was answered now.
Answered for him more than for me.

Where was Seraphina? Where? How should I come to her? O'Brien was dead.
And I.... Could I walk out of this place and go to her? O'Brien was
dead. But I...

I suddenly realized that now I was the pirate Nikola el Escoces--that
now he was no more there, nothing could save me from being handed over
to the admiral. Nothing.

Salazar outside the door began to call boastfully towards the sound of
approaching footsteps.'

"Aha! Aha! Come all of you! See what I have done! Come, Senor Alcayde!
Come, brave soldiers..."

In that way died this man whose passion had for so long hung over my
life like a shadow. Looking at the matter now, I am, perhaps, glad that
he fell neither by my hand nor in my quarrel. I as