ck
forked beard; and those callous seamen who had assembled there to jeer
and mock him were stricken silent by the intrepidity and stoicism of his
bearing in the face of death.

If the delay chafed him, he gave no outward sign of it. If his hard,
light eyes glanced hither and thither it was upon no idle quest. He was
seeking Rosamund, hoping for a last sight of her before they launched
him upon his last dread voyage.

But Rosamund was not to be seen. She was in the cabin at the time. She
had been there for this hour past, and it was to her that the present
delay was due.

CHAPTER XXIV. THE JUDGES

In the absence of any woman into whose care they might entrust her, Lord
Henry, Sir John, and Master Tobias, the ship's surgeon, had amongst them
tended Rosamund as best they could when numbed and half-dazed she was
brought aboard the Silver Heron.

Master Tobias had applied such rude restoratives as he commanded, and
having made her as comfortable as possible upon a couch in the spacious
cabin astern, he had suggested that she should be allowed the rest of
which she appeared so sorely to stand in need. He had ushered out the
commander and the Queen's Lieutenant, and himself had gone below to a
still more urgent case that was demanding his attention--that of Lionel
Tressilian, who had been brought limp and unconscious from the galeasse
together with some four other wounded members of the Silver Heron's
crew.

At dawn Sir John had come below, seeking news of his wounded friend. He
found the surgeon kneeling over Lionel.

As he entered, Master Tobias turned aside, rinsed his hands in a metal
basin placed upon the floor, and rose wiping them on a napkin.

"I can do no more, Sir John," he muttered in a desponding voice. "He is
sped."

"Dead, d'ye mean?" cried Sir John, a catch in his voice.

The surgeon tossed aside the napkin, and slowly drew down the upturned
sleeves of his black doublet. "All but dead," he answered. "The wonder
is that any spark of life should still linger in a body with that hole
in it. He is bleeding inwardly, and his pulse is steadily weakening. It
must continue so until imperceptibly he passes away. You may count
him dead already, Sir John." He paused. "A merciful, painless end," he
added, and sighed perfunctorily, his pale shaven face decently grave,
for all that such scenes as these were commonplaces in his life. "Of the
other four," he continued, "Blair is dead; the other three shoul