oudly upon his head again, and turning on
his heel marched away in a swaggering fashion, while Lancelot slipped
down again into the shelter of the house. In a few minutes Jensen's red
coat had disappeared among the trees, and then we all turned and stared
at each other.

'The devil is not so black as he is painted, after all,' Lancelot said
to me, 'if there is a leaven of good in Cornelys Jensen. But I shall be
heartily glad to have Mr. Ebrow among us, for if the worst come it will
be better to perish with us than to lie at their mercy.'

I did not altogether relish Lancelot's talk about our perishing, for
I had got it into my head that we were more than a match for the
pirates, with all their threats and all their truculence, and my
friend's readiness to face the possibility of being victims instead
of victors dashed my spirits. But I thought of Marjorie, and felt that
we must win or--and then my thoughts grew faint and failed me, but not
my promise and my resolve.

We had not waited very long after Jensen's departure when we saw signs
of the fulfilment of his promise. Three men came out of the wood where
he had entered, two in scarlet and one in black. We could see that the
two men in scarlet were supporting the man in black, who seemed to be
almost unable to move, and as the three drew nearer we could see, at
first with a spy-glass and soon without, that he in the middle had his
face all bound about with bloody cloths. At this sight all our hearts
grew hot with anger and pity, and there was not one of us that did not
long to be the first to reach out a helping hand to the parson. We
could see, as the group came nearer, that Jensen's men were not handling
their captive very tenderly. Though his limbs seemed so weak that his
feet trailed on the ground, they made shift to drag him along at a walk
that was almost a trot, as if their only thought was to be rid as soon
as possible of their burden, whose moanings we could now plainly hear as
he was jerked forward by his escort. It seemed such a shocking thing
that a man so good and of so good a calling should be thus maltreated
that, to speak for myself, it called for all my sense of the obligations
of a white flag to stay me from sending a bullet in the direction of his
cowardly companions. I could see that Lancelot was as much angered as I,
by the pallor of his face and the way in which he clenched his hands.

However, in a few seconds more the pirates had hauled their