eakness, and
partly in bodily fear, he shoved the headsman forward, substituting the
person of the proscribed man for his own, and, profiting by the occasion,
he stole out of the crowd.

When the Herr Mueller, or as he was now known and called, Balthazar, was
rudely pushed into the hands of these ferocious agents of superstition,
the apparent magnitude of the discovery induced a general and breathless
pause. Like the treacherous calm that had so long reigned upon the lake,
it was a precursor of a fearful and violent explosion. Little was said,
for the occasion was too ominous for a display of vulgar feeling, but
Conrad, Pippo, and one or two more, silently raised the fancied offender
in their arms, and bore him desperately towards the side of the bark.

"Call on Maria, for the good of thy soul!" whispered the Neapolitan, with
a strange mixture of Christian zeal, in the midst of all his ferocity.

The sound of words like these usually conveys the idea of charity and
love, but, notwithstanding this gleam of hope, Balthazar still found
himself borne towards his fate.

On quitting the throng that clustered together in a dense body between the
masts, Baptiste encountered his old antagonist, Nicklaus Wagner. The fury
which had so long been pent in his breast suddenly found vent, and, in the
madness of the moment, he struck him. The stout Bernese grappled his
assailant, and the struggle became fierce as that of brutes. Scandalized
by such a spectacle, offended by the disrespect, and ignorant of what else
was passing near--for the crowd had uttered its resolutions in the
suppressed voices of men determined--the Baron de Willading and the Signor
Grimaldi advanced with dignity and firmness to prevent the shameful
strife. At this critical moment the voice of Balthazar was heard above the
roar of the coming wind, not calling on Maria, as he had been admonished,
but appealing to the two old nobles to save him. Sigismund sprang forward
like a lion, at the cry, but too late to reach those who were about to
cast the headsman from the gangway, he was just in time to catch the body,
by its garments, when actually sailing in the air. By a vast effort of
strength its direction was diverted. Instead of alighting in the water,
Balthazar encountered the angry combatants, who, driven back on the two
nobles, forced the whole four over the side of the bark into the water.

The struggle between the two bodies of air ceased, that on the surface