der upon her well-beloved hero. Gloriously heroic
he seemed as he stood towering there, masterful, audacious, beautiful.
He saw her, and with a glad shout sprang towards her. The Dutch master
got in his way with hands upheld to arrest his progress. Levasseur did
not stay to argue with him: he was too impatient to reach his mistress.
He swung the poleaxe that he carried, and the Dutchman went down in
blood with a cloven skull. The eager lover stepped across the body and
came on, his countenance joyously alight.

But mademoiselle was shrinking now, in horror. She was a girl upon the
threshold of glorious womanhood, of a fine height and nobly moulded,
with heavy coils of glossy black hair above and about a face that was of
the colour of old ivory. Her countenance was cast in lines of arrogance,
stressed by the low lids of her full dark eyes.

In a bound her well-beloved was beside her, flinging away his bloody
poleaxe, he opened wide his arms to enfold her. But she still shrank
even within his embrace, which would not be denied; a look of dread had
come to temper the normal arrogance of her almost perfect face.

"Mine, mine at last, and in spite of all!" he cried exultantly,
theatrically, truly heroic.

But she, endeavouring to thrust him back, her hands against his breast,
could only falter: "Why, why did you kill him?"

He laughed, as a hero should; and answered her heroically, with the
tolerance of a god for the mortal to whom he condescends: "He stood
between us. Let his death be a symbol, a warning. Let all who would
stand between us mark it and beware."

It was so splendidly terrific, the gesture of it was so broad and fine
and his magnetism so compelling, that she cast her silly tremors and
yielded herself freely, intoxicated, to his fond embrace. Thereafter he
swung her to his shoulder, and stepping with ease beneath that burden,
bore her in a sort of triumph, lustily cheered by his men, to the
deck of his own ship. Her inconsiderate brother might have ruined that
romantic scene but for the watchful Cahusac, who quietly tripped him up,
and then trussed him like a fowl.

Thereafter, what time the Captain languished in his lady's smile within
the cabin, Cahusac was dealing with the spoils of war. The Dutch crew
was ordered into the longboat, and bidden go to the devil. Fortunately,
as they numbered fewer than thirty, the longboat, though perilously
overcrowded, could yet contain them. Next, Cahusac having insp