Captain Dove looked across at Carthew with a hoarse chuckle, no less malicious. He was evidently in that mordant, capricious humour most common with him at moments when his potations had merely begun their evil work on his wits.

"Light that candle again, Slyne, confound you!" he ordered sharply. "His noble lordship, our American friend, can scarcely see us—to say good-bye."

"Oh, come on," Slyne urged, obviously almost at the end of his patience. "We\'ve no more than time to get safely away before we\'ll have the hue and cry after us in the fishermen\'s boats—and they\'re faster than you imagine."

"You can\'t teach me anything about boats!" Captain Dove retorted with crapulous dignity. "So just light—Or, here—gimme the candle, quick! And don\'t address any more of—of your in—invidious conversation to me."

"I\'ll see Sallie safely afloat, then," suggested Slyne. "We\'ll have to send her down in a whip, I expect. The sea\'s always rising."

"She\'s a better seaman than you are, Slyne," the old man returned with a sneer. "And she\'ll go down hand under hand, same as I will—when I\'m quite ready. Till then, she\'ll stay here with me, so that his loving lordship there can have a last, long look at her." He chuckled again, most discordantly. "But—you can see that fat stiff, Jobling, safely afloat, if you like. It will probably take a whip to tempt him to run the risk of a wetting on his way aboard."

The wretched object of his derision gave vent to a very audible groan, hearing which, Captain Dove laughed aloud, with malevolent relish. And, having at length succeeded in striking a match, he turned again toward Carthew, standing still and silent on the other side of the apparently bottomless chasm which cut the pathway apart.

"Are there only the two of you there?" he asked, darting a contemptuous glance at Lord Ingoldsby.

"That\'s all," Carthew answered tersely. He was absolutely at his wits\' end, but thought he could not do better than detain the old man there as long as he might.

"But you\'ve raised the alarm up above?" Captain Dove suggested, with all the fatuous cunning of one half-fuddled. "And we\'ll have a pack of your cut-throats in petticoats down on us in a minute or two?"

He looked savagely round at Slyne. "I thought I told you to see that bloated Jonah into the boat!" he blurted explosively. And Slyne, with an exasperated shrug of the shoulders, sauntered away, with Mr. Jobling in very uncertain attendance.

"I want to talk to you on my own account for five seconds or so, young-fellow-my-lad," Captain Dove continued, as if in confidence, to Carthew. "But—is it safe, eh? You haven\'t answered my questions yet. And—you\'ve turned the key on us once already!"

"You\'re safe from pursuit in the meantime," Carthew reassured him.

"I\'ll take your word for it, sir," Captain Dove declared, and, bowing very graciously, all but over-balanced himself. "And now let me ask you whether you have been listening to any more lies from Farish M\'Kissock; because, if you have, we must part brass-rags right away."

Carthew was most sorely tempted to spare the truth, and made haste to answer honestly while he might. "I\'ve heard all he had to tell," said he, "and—"

"And you believe it all!" Captain Dove interposed, with maudlin pathos, his evident intention to see whether he could not even yet make terms of some sort for himself with the young American knocked on the head. "Well, well! We must be jogging now, Sallie."

The girl stepped forward beside him at that, and Carthew was thankful to see Ambrizette clinging to her skirts, for she had told him more than once how often the dumb, black dwarf had stood betwixt her and imminent harm.

Her sweet, sensitive features were very pale, but placid, as if, after the sore stress she had suffered, she had found some sort of peace. And all the pride seemed to have died out of her downcast eyes as she faced him across the dark, impassable gulf that stretched between them.

"I don\'t want you to think that I have gone away unwillingly, Mr. Carthew," she said, and his heart almost failed him as he heard that. It had never occurred to him that she might have taken such a sheerly suicidal step of her own free will.

"But why—" he cried, and the hurt in his voice perhaps helped to salve a little the sore wounds in her own heart.

"I couldn\'t possibly have stayed here, you see—after what has happened. And,—I\'m not afraid of the future now. You don\'t understand, perhaps, but—you will remember—I wasn\'t afraid."

"Come away now, Sallie," said Captain Dove. An irascible voice in the distance was calling upon him insistently.

"Good-bye," she said, submissively, to Carthew, and, looking up, her eyes met his for an instant.

"Wait a minute—only a minute more, for God\'s sake!" Carthew implored the old man. "It won\'t do any of you any harm to stand by till I\'ve said my say. It won\'t help you in the least, Captain Dove, to carry Sallie away—and you\'ll be far safer, believe me, if you leave her here. I\'ve only been waiting my chance to ask her to marry me, and—"

"I\'ve asked her already," interrupted Lord Ingoldsby, in a tone no doubt meant to be most impressive but strongly resembling a squeal. No one, however, paid him any more attention than if he had been the shadow he seemed.

"And if you carry her off just now," Carthew continued hurriedly, encouraged by the benevolent smile with which Captain Dove was regarding him, "you\'ll have good cause to regret it. For I\'ll hunt you down till I find you, and then—"

"Now you\'re talking," the old man commented approvingly, quite undismayed by that threat. "And then we\'ll make terms, if you come in time and bring enough money with you.

"I\'d even have waited here and fixed it all up, but—" He wagged his shameless white head sorrowfully. "It wouldn\'t be wise," said he. "You\'ve been prejudiced against me—by Farish M\'Kissock. It\'s too late to think of that now. So I must be off, for my own sake.

"But maybe we\'ll meet again," he concluded with cheerful complacence, "in some safer spot for me. And, if Sallie\'s still on my hands when you show up—"

"So be it, then," Carthew agreed, seeing clearly that further appeal would be futile, all eagerness to get above-grou............