old crooked cutlasses out of the
trophy. But in the blood-red glare, with their black faces and yellow
figures, they looked like devils carrying instruments of torture. In
the dim garden behind them a distant voice was heard calling out brief
directions. When the priest heard the voice, a terrible change came over
his countenance.

But he remained composed; and never took his eye off the patch of flame
which had begun by spreading, but now seemed to shrink a little as it
hissed under the torch of the long silver spear of water. He kept his
finger along the nozzle of the pipe to ensure the aim, and attended to
no other business, knowing only by the noise and that semi-conscious
corner of the eye, the exciting incidents that began to tumble
themselves about the island garden. He gave two brief directions to his
friends. One was: "Knock these fellows down somehow and tie them up,
whoever they are; there's rope down by those faggots. They want to take
away my nice hose." The other was: "As soon as you get a chance, call
out to that canoeing girl; she's over on the bank with the gipsies. Ask
her if they could get some buckets across and fill them from the river."
Then he closed his mouth and continued to water the new red flower as
ruthlessly as he had watered the red tulip.

He never turned his head to look at the strange fight that followed
between the foes and friends of the mysterious fire. He almost felt the
island shake when Flambeau collided with the huge gardener; he merely
imagined how it would whirl round them as they wrestled. He heard the
crashing fall; and his friend's gasp of triumph as he dashed on to the
first negro; and the cries of both the blacks as Flambeau and Fanshaw
bound them. Flambeau's enormous strength more than redressed the odds
in the fight, especially as the fourth man still hovered near the house,
only a shadow and a voice. He heard also the water broken by the paddles
of a canoe; the girl's voice giving orders, the voices of gipsies
answering and coming nearer, the plumping and sucking noise of empty
buckets plunged into a full stream; and finally the sound of many feet
around the fire. But all this was less to him than the fact that the
red rent, which had lately once more increased, had once more slightly
diminished.

Then came a cry that very nearly made him turn his head. Flambeau and
Fanshaw, now reinforced by some of the gipsies, had rushed after the
mysterious man by the house; and