"Aboard! Quickly!" snapped their leader, from the dusk behind the
lantern.

Obeying by impulse, Rudolph moved nearer the gunwale. The slippery edge,
polished by bare feet through many years, seemed the one bit of reality
in this dream, except the warmth of her hands.

"To the nunnery?" he asked, trying dully to rouse from a fascination.

"No, no," she wailed. "Down--away--safe."

"No, back to them," he answered stupidly. "They are all there. Your--he
is there. We can't leave--"

"You fool!" Chantel swore in one tongue, and in another cried to the
boatman--"Shove off, if they won't come!" He seized the woman roughly
and pulled her on board; but she reached out and caught Rudolph's
hand again.

"Come, hurry," she whispered, tugging at him. "Come, dear boy. I won't
leave you. Quickly. You saw it burning. They're all dead. It's no use.
We must live. We must live, darling."

She was right, somehow; there was no power to confute her. He must come
with her, or run back, useless, into the ring of swords and flames. She
and life were in the boat; ashore, a friend cut off beyond reach, an
impossible duty, and death. His eyes, dull and fixed in the smoky
lantern-light, rested for an age on the knotted sarong. It meant
nothing; then in a flash, as though for him all light of the eyes had
concentrated in a single vision, it meant everything. The colored
cloth--rudely painted in the hut of some forgotten mountaineer--held
all her treasure and her heart, the things of this world. She must go
with those. It was fitting. She was beautiful--in all her fear and
disorder, still more beautiful. She went with life, departing into a
dream. This glossy gunwale, polished by bare feet, was after all the
sole reality, a shining line between life and death.

"Then I must die," he groaned, and wrenched his hands away from that
perilous boundary.

He vaguely heard her cry out, vaguely saw Chantel rise above the lantern
and slash down at him with the lowdah's pole. The bamboo struck him,
heavy but glancing, on the head. He staggered, lost his footing, and
fell into the mud, where, as though his choice had already overtaken
him, he lay without thought or emotion, watching the dim light float off
into the darkness.

By and by it was gone. From somewhere in another direction came a sharp,
continual, crackling fusillade, like the snapping of dry bamboo-joints
in a fire. The unstirring night grew heavier with the smell of burnt
gunpowder. But