f. Also, did he not refuse an
oath? So has he all his life. Now know I: there are certain words he for
his contract may not utter.'

When tall masts rocked above, and voices hailed, and a rope shot across,
again the Adventurer pressed Christian hard with precious human kindness.
Men big and fair-haired were shouting, knocking at his heart strangely.
Most foolish and absurd came a longing just once before he died to be
warm and dry again, just once. He shook his head.

Philip kept off, nor by word or sign offered the forgiveness he ached
after, but hasted to pass first. Then the other followed; he loosed the
rope; it leapt away. The last face he saw gleaming above him was
Philip's, with its enmity and a ghastly drawn smile of relief: never to
be seen of him again.

How long would her vengeance delay? The vast anger of the sea leaped and
roared round him, snatching, striking. An hour passed, and he was still
afloat, though the mast was gone; and near another, and he was still
afloat, but by clinging to an upward keel. In cruel extremity, then, he
cried the name of Diadyomene, with a prayer for merciful despatch, and
again her name, and again.

Diadyomene heard. The waves ran ridged with light that flickered and
leaped like dim white flame. Phosphor fires edged the keel; a trailing
rope was revealed as a luminous streak. He got it round his body, and his
hands were eased.

Up from below surged a dark, snaky coil, streaming with pale flakes of
fire; it looped him horribly; a second length and a third flung over him;
a fourth overhung, feeling in air. A loathsome knot worked upon the
planks, spread, and rooted there. He plucked an arm free, and his neck
was circled instead. His knife he had not: barehanded he fought,
frenzied by loathing of the foul monster, the foulest the sea breeds.

Before his eyes rose the sea's fairest, towered above him on the rush of
a wave, sank to his level. Terrible was her face of anger, and cruel, for
she smiled. She flung out a gesture of condemnation and scorn, that
flashed flakes of light off shoulder and hair. She called him 'traitor,'
and bade him die; and he, frantic, tore away the throttled coil at his
throat, and got out, 'Forgive.'

Like challenge and defiance she hurled then her offer of mercy: 'Stretch,
then, your hand to me--on my lips and my breast swear, give up your soul:
then I forgive.'

She heard the death agony of a man cried then. Ceasing to struggle, his
throat was