第51章

Byrne stood up, gasped for breath, and let out a cry of rage and dismay, the first sound which he is perfectly certain did make its way past his lips on this night of terrors.This then was the death he had escaped! This was the devilish artifice of murder poor Tom's soul had perhaps tried from beyond the border to warn him of.For this was how he had died.Byrne was certain he had heard the voice of the seaman, faintly distinct in his familiar phrase, "Mr.Byrne! Look out, sir!" and again uttering words he could not make out.But then the distance separating the living from the dead is so great! Poor Tom had tried.Byrne ran to the bed and attempted to lift up, to push off the horrible lid smothering the body.It resisted his efforts, heavy as lead, immovable like a tombstone.The rage of vengeance made him desist;his head buzzed with chaotic thoughts of extermination, he turned round the room as if he could find neither his weapons nor the way out; and all the time he stammered awful menaces...

A violent battering at the door of the inn recalled him to his soberer senses.He flew to the window pulled the shutters open, and looked out.In the faint dawn he saw below him a mob of men.

Ha! He would go and face at once this murderous lot collected no doubt for his undoing.After his struggle with nameless terrors he yearned for an open fray with armed enemies.But he must have remained yet bereft of his reason, because forgetting his weapons he rushed downstairs with a wild cry, unbarred the door while blows were raining on it outside, and flinging it open flew with his bare hands at the throat of the first man he saw before him.They rolled over together.Byrne's hazy intention was to break through, to fly up the mountain path, and come back presently with Gonzales'

men to exact an exemplary vengeance.He fought furiously till a tree, a house, a mountain, seemed to crash down upon his head - and he knew no more.

* * * * *

Here Mr.Byrne describes in detail the skilful manner in which he found his broken head bandaged, informs us that he had lost a great deal of blood, and ascribes the preservation of his sanity to that circumstance.He sets down Gonzales' profuse apologies in full too.For it was Gonzales who, tired of waiting for news from the English, had come down to the inn with half his band, on his way to the sea."His excellency," he explained, "rushed out with fierce impetuosity, and, moreover, was not known to us for a friend, and so we...etc., etc.When asked what had become of the witches, he only pointed his finger silently to the ground, then voiced calmly a moral reflection: "The passion for gold is pitiless in the very old, senor," he said."No doubt in former days they have put many a solitary traveller to sleep in the archbishop's bed.""There was also a gipsy girl there," said Byrne feebly from the improvised litter on which he was being carried to the coast by a squad of guerilleros.

"It was she who winched up that infernal machine, and it was she too who lowered it that night," was the answer.

"But why? Why?" exclaimed Byrne."Why should she wish for my death?""No doubt for the sake of your excellency's coat buttons," said politely the saturnine Gonzales."We found those of the dead mariner concealed on her person.But your excellency may rest assured that everything that is fitting has been done on this occasion."Byrne asked no more questions.There was still another death which was considered by Gonzales as "fitting to the occasion." The one-eyed Bernardino stuck against the wall of his wine-shop received the charge of six escopettas into his breast.As the shots rang out the rough bier with Tom's body on it went past carried by a bandit-like gang of Spanish patriots down the ravine to the shore, where two boats from the ship were waiting for what was left on earth of her best seaman.

Mr.Byrne, very pale and weak, stepped into the boat which carried the body of his humble friend.For it was decided that Tom Corbin should rest far out in the bay of Biscay.The officer took the tiller and, turning his head for the last look at the shore, saw on the grey hillside something moving, which he made out to be a little man in a yellow hat mounted on a mule - that mule without which the fate of Tom Corbin would have remained mysterious for ever.

June, 1913.