ead!" But the men still cried "Ahoy!" as they rushed their oars
through the water, and were as those mad with fiery drink.

"Easy!" roared Dan. "Easy, for a parcel of stark fools! Would you run
alongside her?"

There they lay, for any nearer approach would have been perilous, and
even in that place where we were, twenty feet on the windward side, the
heat was nigh unbearable. So near were we that I looked close as it
might be into the dead face of Martin Hall, and saw that the fiends who
had lashed him there had done their work too well. But I hoped in my
heart that he had been dead when the end of the ship had begun to come,
and that it were no reproach to me that he had perished: for to save
his body from that holocaust was work no man might do.

So did we watch the mounting fire, and the last tack of the yacht _La
France_. Saucily she raised her head to a new breeze, shook her great
sail of flame in the night, and scattered red light about her. Then she
dipped her burning jib as if in salute, and there was darkness.

"Rest to a good ship," said Dan, in melancholy mood; but I said--

"Rest to a friend." I had known the man whose death had come; and when
his body went below I hungered for the grip of the hand which was then
washed by the Channel waves.

"Give way," I cried to the men, who sat silent in their fear of it, and
when they rowed again they cried as before, "Ahoy": so strong and vivid
was the picture which the sea had then put out.

As we neared our own ship, Roderick endeavoured to speak to me, but his
voice failed, and he took my hand, giving it a great grip. Then we came
on board, where Mary waited for us with a white face, and the others
stood silent; but we said nothing to them, going below. There I locked
myself in my own cabin, and though fatigue lay heavy on me, and my eyes
were clouded with the touch of sleep, I took Martin Hall's papers from
my locker, and lighted the lamp to read them through.

But not without awe, for they were a message from the dead.

CHAPTER V.

THE WRITING OF MARTIN HALL.

The manuscript, which was sealed on its cover in many places, consisted
of several pages of close writing, and of sketches and scraps from
newspapers--Italian, French, and English. The sketches I looked at
first, and was not a little surprised to see that one of them was the
portrait of the man known as "Roaring John," whom I had met at Paris in
the strange company; while there was with t