as keeping them for him."

CHAPTER XXVII

THE TRIAL OF VON BLITZ

The next morning found the weather unsettled. There had been a fierce
storm during the night and a nasty mist was blowing up from the sea.
Deppingham kept to his room, although his cold was dissipated. For the
first time in all those blistering, trying months, they felt a chill in
the air; raw, wet, unexpected.

Chase had been up nearly all of the night, fearful lest the islanders
should seize the opportunity to scale the walls under cover of the
tempest. All through the night he had been possessed of a spirit of wild
bravado, a glorious exaltation: he was keeping watch over her, standing
between her and peril, guarding her while she slept. He thought of that
mass of Henner hair--he loved to think of her as a creation of the
fanciful Henner--he thought of her asleep and dreaming in blissful
security while he, with all the loyalty of an imaginative boy, was
standing guard just as he had pictured himself in those heroic days when
he substituted himself for the story-book knight who stood beneath the
battlements and defied the covetous ogre. His thoughts, however, did not
contemplate the Princess fair in a state of wretched insomnia, with
himself as the disturbing element.

He looked for her at breakfast time. They usually had their rolls and
coffee together. When she did not appear, he made more than one pretext
to lengthen his own stay in the breakfast-room. "She's trying to forget
yesterday," he reflected. "What was it she said about always regreting?
Oh, well, it's the way of women. I'll wait," he concluded with the
utmost confidence in the powers of patience.

Selim came to him in the midst of his reflections, bearing a thick,
rain-soaked envelope.

"It was found, excellency, inside the southern gate, and it is meant for
you," said Selim. Chase gingerly slashed open the envelope with his
fruit knife. He laughed ruefully as he read the simple but laborious
message from Jacob von Blitz.

"_Where are your warships all this time? They are not coming to you
ever. Good-bye. You got to die yet, too. Your friend, Jacob von Blitz.
And my wives, too._"

Chase stuffed the blurred, sticky letter into his pocket and arose to
stretch himself.

"There's something coming to you, Jacob," he said, much to the wonder of
Selim. "Selim, unless I miss my guess pretty badly, we'll be having a
message--not from Garcia--but from Rasula before long. You've n