ship might win an
empire, and its absence might ruin nations?

So while the fire at the head of the lake blazed high, and band after
band of the "boys" came in, thirsting for fight, and while song and
revelry lorded it in the forecourt and on the strand, and not whisky
only but cognac, taken from Captain Augustin's sloop, flowed freely,
the two men pacing the walk behind the Florence yews gave scarce a
thought to the present moment. They had planned this move in
conjunction with other and more important moves. It was made or in the
making; and forthwith their thoughts and their speech left it, to deal
with the next move and the one beyond, and with the end of all their
moves--St. Germains or St. James's. And one other man, and one only,
because his life had been passed on their wider plane, and he could
judge of the relative value of Connaught and Kent, divined the trend of
their thoughts, and understood the deliberation, almost the sense of
duty with which they prepared to sacrifice their pawns.

Colonel Sullivan sat in the upper room of one of the two towers that
flanked the entrance to the forecourt. Bale was with him, and the two,
with the door doubly locked upon them and guarded by a sentry whose
crooning they could hear, shared such comfort as a pitcher of water and
a gloomy outlook afforded. The darkness hid the medley of odds and
ends, of fishing-nets, broken spinning-wheels and worn-out sails, which
littered their prison; but the inner of the two slit-like windows that
lighted the room admitted a thin shaft of firelight that, dancing among
the uncovered rafters, told of the orgy below. Bale, staring morosely
at the crowd about the fire, crouched in the splay of the window, while
the Colonel, in the same posture at the other window, gazed with
feelings not more cheerful on the dark lake.

He was concerned for himself and his companion; for he knew that
frightened folk are ever the most cruel. But he was more gravely
concerned for those whose advocate he had made himself--for the
ignorant cotters in their lowly hovels, the women, the children, upon
whom the inevitable punishment would fall. He doubted, now that it was
too late, the wisdom of the course he had taken; and, blaming himself
for precipitation, he fancied that if he had acted with a little more
guile, a little more reticence, a little less haste, his remonstrance
might have had greater weight.

There are some whom a life spent in camps and amid blo