ark, and they would not use a torch
at first, lest they should be more exposed to fire. But soon Fritz
cried: "The door down there is open! See, there is light!" So they went
on boldly, and found none to oppose them. And when they came to the
outer room and saw the Belgian, Bersonin, lying dead, they thanked God,
Sapt saying: "Ay, he has been here." Then rushing into the King's cell,
they found Detchard lying dead across the dead physician, and the King
on his back with his chair by him. And Fritz cried: "He's dead!" and
Sapt drove all out of the room except Fritz, and knelt down by the King;
and, having learnt more of wounds and the sign of death than I, he soon
knew that the King was not dead, nor, if properly attended, would die.
And they covered his face and carried him to Duke Michael's room, and
laid him there; and Antoinette rose from praying by the body of the duke
and went to bathe the King's head and dress his wounds, till a doctor
came. And Sapt, seeing I had been there, and having heard Antoinette's
story, sent Fritz to search the moat and then the forest. He dared send
no one else. And Fritz found my horse, and feared the worst. Then, as I
have told, he found me, guided by the shout with which I had called on
Rupert to stop and face me. And I think a man has never been more glad
to find his own brother alive than was Fritz to come on me; so that, in
love and anxiety for me, he thought nothing of a thing so great as would
have been the death of Rupert Hentzau. Yet, had Fritz killed him, I
should have grudged it.

The enterprise of the King's rescue being thus prosperously concluded,
it lay on Colonel Sapt to secure secrecy as to the King ever having
been in need of rescue. Antoinette de Mauban and Johann the keeper (who,
indeed, was too much hurt to be wagging his tongue just now) were sworn
to reveal nothing; and Fritz went forth to find--not the King, but the
unnamed friend of the King, who had lain in Zenda and flashed for
a moment before the dazed eyes of Duke Michael's servants on the
drawbridge. The metamorphosis had happened; and the King, wounded almost
to death by the attacks of the gaolers who guarded his friend, had
at last overcome them, and rested now, wounded but alive, in Black
Michael's own room in the Castle. There he had been carried, his face
covered with a cloak, from the cell; and thence orders issued, that if
his friend were found, he should be brought directly and privately to
the King