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-ground again and begin the chase. He could have the whole fishing-fleet of the village armed and afloat within half an hour, and might even yet succeed in boarding the Olive Branch at her anchorage. But, manlike, he had counted without the woman in the case.

"I'm going away of my own free will, Mr. Carthew," said Sallie suddenly, with the same strange expression of face that he had observed when she had looked back at him in the banquet-hall. "And—I don't want you to follow me. You have been far more than generous, but—I couldn't marry you—in any case."

"Don't say that, Sallie," he beseeched, and, "Dove!" cried a very wrathful voice in the distance. "We'll be off without you if you don't come down at once."

The old man's smug, blinking smile instantaneously changed to a furious scowl. He pulled a big, golden-necked bottle from one of his pockets, removed the cork, and, having poured its remaining contents hastily down his throat, tiptoed off down the tunnel with it in one hand, making motions as if to hurl it with accurate aim, leaving Sallie alone there.

Carthew glared across the black gulf at his feet, his free hand clenched, in helpless despair. He would gladly have given his earldom then in exchange for a pair of wings.

"I'll bolt up and get a ladder brought down," groaned Lord Ingoldsby. And he would have made off without more ado but that Carthew had seized him by the sleeve.

"Here! Hold this," commanded Carthew, and thrust the smoking lamp into his hands. Sallie had turned to follow Captain Dove, with dragging steps. He could not believe that she meant what she had said. He would not let her go without making sure. Farish M'Kissock's contemptuous words had recurred to his mind—"if you're man enough to master her!" Instinct told him that she would not turn back now, and—a man's last stake was all he had left to venture.

"Stop, stop! It's sheer suicide," the marquis cried shrilly, as Carthew ran limping up the tunnel as far as the straight extended, and faced about, throwing off his coat, and balanced there for a breathless instant and then came racing down past him to launch himself bodily into space.

No human being could have leaped the distance, and Carthew had been further handicapped by his lameness. He shot, as if from a catapult, nearly as high as the arched rock-roof, his elbows close, chin on chest, head between his shoulders, knees at his temples and heels tucked back, and, on the downward curve, reached the lower lip of the chasm, landing on one shoulder, to hang there for the space of a couple of heart-beats, as if poised for the inevitable rebound.

Lord Ingoldsby heard the dull thud of his fall and Sallie's stifled, heart-broken cry. He opened his eyes and saw the girl desperately striving to pull a hunched-up, relaxing body back from the brink over which, but for her, it would already have toppled. He thought they must both have slipped over before, at the finish, Sallie succeeded in drawing Carthew into safety, and sat down beside him, swaying from side to side, as if her own back were broken.

But, presently, Carthew looked up and then he scrambled on to his knees with a suppressed grunt of agony. For a time the whole world swam redly about him, but he clenched his teeth, not to be overcome. And when Sallie in turn got on to her feet again, white and shaking, he had recovered the use of his voice.

"I won't let you go—dear," he said dazedly, and started, in renewed alarm for her, as they heard Captain Dove calling her harshly from below.

"Coming," she called back, since she could not help herself.

"You must stay here, or—he'll kill you!" she whispered in an agony of entreaty. "I'll go now; it will be best so. And if, by and by, you still care to follow—"

"You go on," he said gently. "I'm going to follow you now."

She had no option but to obey him, since to have remained there would merely have meant that Captain Dove, coming back for her, would have him at a greater disadvantage. And as she led the way in the dark, with slow steps, he followed quietly; while Lord Ingoldsby, left to his own devices as they disappeared, was brilliantly inspired to bolt back for help.

A little further on a thick twilight made progress more easily possible, and they could feel the salt breath of the sea on their fevered faces. Then, at last, they drew near the oblong opening in the cliff-face at which Captain Dove had for several minutes been busy abusing the men in the boat below. But he was in no better temper by then, since the empty bottle he had hurled at Slyne had knocked the steersman insensible.

"Is that you, Sallie?" he snapped, looking round.

"Below there, you lubbers! Stand in again. We're coming down now.

"Hurry up, girl!" he barked, impatiently. "It's high time we were away."

He was leaning out over the ledge, clinging with one hand to a bar of the great water-gate, so thick, that his stubby fingers did not meet round it. Carthew, creeping after Sallie set her suddenly aside, and ran at him.

Captain Dove heard him coming, but too late to save himself. He felt as if a bullock had kicked him in the small of the back, and, as his hold broke, he fell headlong, howling like an evil spirit, into the smothering, yeasty surge through which his boat was already hastily backing to pick him up.

Carthew set his back to the heavy gate, and it swung slowly shut. But Slyne had not left behind the key he had for its modern lock, and its old-fashioned draw-bolts were rusted fast. He could only hope that Lord Ingoldsby would bring back some means of bridging the drowning-hole before Captain Dove and his helpers could storm the position again.

He laughed, a little light-headed by then, as he stumbled up the long, dark slope, with Sallie close at his shoulder.

"I told you I wouldn't let you go,—dear," he declared triumphantly, and his laugh changed to a low, choked groan as she would have taken his arm to help him; for he was walking unsteadily.

"Don't touch that one," he begged. "It's a bit sore; I came down on it when I jumped."

"Do you think it's broken?" she whispered, and her eyes grew dim as she thought of all he had suffered through her. She had stopped. There were lights coming down the tunnel, and hurrying feet, on the further side of the drowning-hole.

He slipped his sound arm about her. "There's nothing broken that can't be mended now," he murmured contentedly. "Unless you're really determined to break my heart."

THE END

A Story of Charm and Cheeriness