ved to the
impassioned lover in the novel. Then I added: "Keep it up, Good, I
can't remember any more poetry. Curse away, there's a good fellow."

Good responded nobly to this tax upon his inventive faculties. Never
before had I the faintest conception of the breadth and depth and
height of a naval officer's objurgatory powers. For ten minutes he went
on in several languages without stopping, and he scarcely ever repeated
himself.

Meanwhile the dark ring crept on, while all that great assembly fixed
their eyes upon the sky and stared and stared in fascinated silence.
Strange and unholy shadows encroached upon the moonlight, an ominous
quiet filled the place. Everything grew still as death. Slowly and in
the midst of this most solemn silence the minutes sped away, and while
they sped the full moon passed deeper and deeper into the shadow of the
earth, as the inky segment of its circle slid in awful majesty across
the lunar craters. The great pale orb seemed to draw near and to grow
in size. She turned a coppery hue, then that portion of her surface
which was unobscured as yet grew grey and ashen, and at length, as
totality approached, her mountains and her plains were to be seen
glowing luridly through a crimson gloom.

On, yet on, crept the ring of darkness; it was now more than half
across the blood-red orb. The air grew thick, and still more deeply
tinged with dusky crimson. On, yet on, till we could scarcely see the
fierce faces of the group before us. No sound rose now from the
spectators, and at last Good stopped swearing.

"The moon is dying--the white wizards have killed the moon," yelled the
prince Scragga at last. "We shall all perish in the dark," and animated
by fear or fury, or by both, he lifted his spear and drove it with all
his force at Sir Henry's breast. But he forgot the mail shirts that the
king had given us, and which we wore beneath our clothing. The steel
rebounded harmless, and before he could repeat the blow Curtis had
snatched the spear from his hand and sent it straight through him.

Scragga dropped dead.

At the sight, and driven mad with fear of the gathering darkness, and
of the unholy shadow which, as they believed, was swallowing the moon,
the companies of girls broke up in wild confusion, and ran screeching
for the gateways. Nor did the panic stop there. The king himself,
followed by his guards, some of the chiefs, and Gagool, who hobbled
away after them with marvellous alacrity,