g track as she gathered way. We were off. I was on
my way to Holland. I was a conspirator, travelling with a King. There
ahead of me was the fine hull of the schooner La Reina, waiting to carry
us to all sorts of adventure, none of them (as I planned them then) so
strange, or so terrible, as those which happened to me. As we drew up
alongside her, I heard the clack-clack of the sailors heaving at the
windlass. They were getting up the anchor, so that we might sail from
this horrible city to all the wonderful romance which awaited me, as I
thought, beyond, in the great world. Five minutes after I had stepped
upon her deck we were gliding down on the ebb, bound for Holland.

"Hyde," said Mr. Jermyn, as we drew past the battery on the Tower
platform, "do you see the high ground, beyond the towers there?"

"Yes, sir," I said.

"Do you know what that is?"

"No, sir."

"That's Tower Hill," he answered, "where traitors, I mean conspirators
like you or me, are beheaded. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes, sir," I replied. "To have your head cut off."

"Yes," he said. "With all that hill black with people. The scaffold hung
with black making a sort of platform in the middle. Then soldiers, with
drums, all round. You put your head over a block, so that your neck
rests on the wood. Then the executioner comes at you with an axe. Then
your head is shown to the people. 'This is the head of a traitor.' We
may all end in that way, on that little hill there. You must be very
careful how you carry the letters, Hyde."

After this hint, he showed me a hammock in the schooner's 'tweendecks,
telling me that I should soon be accustomed to that kind of bed. "It is
a little awkward at first," he said, "especially the getting in part;
but, when once snugly in, it is the most comfortable kind of bed in the
world." After undressing by the light of a huge ship's lantern, which
Mr. Jermyn called a battle-lantern, I turned into my hammock, rather
glad to be alone. Now that I was pledged to this conspiracy business,
with some knowledge of what it might lead to, I half wished myself well
out of it. The 'tweendecks was much less comfortable than the bedroom
which I had left so gaily such a very little time before. I had
exchanged a good prison for a bad one. The smell of oranges, so near to
the hold in which they were stored, was overpowering, mixed, as it was,
with the horrible ship-smell of decaying water (known as bilge-water)
which flopped