Benavides was trying to tell her that Hozier and
the rest had been overwhelmed by fate at the very instant escape seemed
to be within reach. The Brazilian, probably because of difficulties
that beset him in using a foreign language, did not make it clear that
he had flung himself flat in the dust when he heard the order to fire
given by someone on board the launch. He said nothing of a tragic
incident wherein Marcel, shot through the lungs, fell over him, and he,
San Benavides, mistaking the convict for an assailant, wrestled
furiously with a dying man. He even forgot to state that had he
charged home with the others, he would either have met a bullet or
gained the deck of the launch, and that his failure to reach the vessel
was due to his own careful self-respect. For San Benavides was not a
coward. He could be brave spectacularly, but he had no stomach for a
fight in the dark, when stark hazard chooses some to triumph and some
to die. That sort of devilish courage might be well enough for those
crude sailors; a Portuguese gentleman of high lineage and proved mettle
demanded a worthier field for his deeds of derring-do. Saperlotte! If
one had a cigarette one could talk more fluently!

"Believe me, mademoiselle," he went on, speaking with a proud humility
that was creditable to his powers as an actor, "the tears came to my
eyes when I understood what had happened. For myself, what do I care?
I would gladly have given my life to save my brave companions. But I
thought of you, solitary, waiting here in distress, so I hurried into
the village, and my uniform secured me from interruption until I was
able to leave the road and cross the hills."

Then the lightning of a woman's intuition pierced the abyss of despair.
Surely there were curious blanks in this thrilling narrative. As was
her way when thoroughly aroused, Iris stood up and seized San Benavides
almost roughly by the arm. Her distraught eyes searched his face with
a pathetic earnestness.

"Why do you think that the launch did not get away?" she cried. "It
was dark. The moon might have been in shadow. If the launch met the
warship and was seen, there must have been firing----"

"Chere mademoiselle, there was much firing," he protested.

"At sea?"

The words came dully. She was stricken again, even more shrewdly. The
gloom was closing in on her, yet she forced herself to drag the truth
from his unwilling lips.

"Yes. Of course, I could not w