ing at the gate again--could hear a shout that followed it--could
recognise the voice. For all his struggling and plashing, he could
understand that they had lost their way, and had wandered back to the
point from which they started; that they were all but looking on, while
he was drowned; that they were close at hand, but could not make an
effort to save him; that he himself had shut and barred them out. He
answered the shout--with a yell, which seemed to make the hundred fires
that danced before his eyes tremble and flicker, as if a gust of wind
had stirred them. It was of no avail. The strong tide filled his
throat, and bore him on, upon its rapid current.

Another mortal struggle, and he was up again, beating the water with
his hands, and looking out, with wild and glaring eyes that showed him
some black object he was drifting close upon. The hull of a ship! He
could touch its smooth and slippery surface with his hand. One loud
cry, now--but the resistless water bore him down before he could give
it utterance, and, driving him under it, carried away a corpse.

It toyed and sported with its ghastly freight, now bruising it against
the slimy piles, now hiding it in mud or long rank grass, now dragging
it heavily over rough stones and gravel, now feigning to yield it to
its own element, and in the same action luring it away, until, tired of
the ugly plaything, it flung it on a swamp--a dismal place where
pirates had swung in chains through many a wintry night--and left it
there to bleach.

And there it lay alone. The sky was red with flame, and the water that
bore it there had been tinged with the sullen light as it flowed along.
The place the deserted carcass had left so recently, a living man, was
now a blazing ruin. There was something of the glare upon its face.
The hair, stirred by the damp breeze, played in a kind of mockery of
death--such a mockery as the dead man himself would have delighted in
when alive--about its head, and its dress fluttered idly in the night
wind.

CHAPTER 68

Lighted rooms, bright fires, cheerful faces, the music of glad voices,
words of love and welcome, warm hearts, and tears of happiness--what a
change is this! But it is to such delights that Kit is hastening.
They are awaiting him, he knows. He fears he will die of joy, before
he gets among them.

They have prepared him for this, all day. He is not to be carried off
to-morrow with the rest, they tell him first