nd
looked at him no more.

"There's a parlous lump upon his forehead where it struck the thwart,"
said the minister, "but the life's yet in him. He'll shame honest men
for many a day to come. Your Platonists, who from a goodly outside argue
as fair a soul, could never have been acquainted with this gentleman."

The subject of his discourse moaned and stirred. The minister raised one
of the hanging hands and felt for the pulse. "Faint enough," he went on.
"A little more and the King might have waited for his minion forever
and a day. It would have been the better for us, who have now, indeed, a
strange fish upon our hands, but I am glad I killed him not."

I tossed him a flask. "It's good aqua vitae, and the flask is honest.
Give him to drink of it."

He forced the liquor between my lord's teeth, then dashed water in his
face. Another minute and the King's favorite sat up and looked around
him. Dazed as yet, he stared, with no comprehension in his eyes, at
the clouds, the sail, the rushing water, the dark figures about him.
"Nicolo!" he cried sharply.

"He's not here, my lord," I said.

At the sound of my voice he sprang to his feet.

"I should advise your lordship to sit still," I said. "The wind is very
boisterous, and we are not under bare poles. If you exert yourself, you
may capsize the boat."

He sat down mechanically, and put his hand to his forehead. I watched
him curiously. It was the strangest trick that fortune had played him.

His hand dropped at last, and he straightened himself, with a long
breath. "Who threw me into the boat?" he demanded.

"The honor was mine," declared the minister.

The King's minion lacked not the courage of the body, nor, when
passionate action had brought him naught, a certain reserve force of
philosophy. He now did the best thing he could have done,--burst into
a roar of laughter. "Zooks!" he cried. "It's as good a comedy as ever
I saw! How's the play to end, captain? Are we to go off laughing, or
is the end to be bloody after all? For instance, is there murder to be
done?" He looked at me boldly, one hand on his hip, the other twirling
his mustaches.

"We are not all murderers, my lord," I told him. "For the present you
are in no danger other than that which is common to us all."

He looked at the clouds piling behind us, thicker and thicker, higher
and higher, at the bending mast, at the black water swirling now and
again over the gunwales. "It's enough," he mutter