The Siege Of Malta

PART II - ST. ANGELO
by S. Fowler Wright

Frederick Muller
1942
See prequel Part 1 - ST. ELMO
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Based on an unfinished romance by Sir Walter Scott.

THE SIEGE OF MALTA - ST. ANGELO

CHAPTER I

        "You are one," Captain Antonio said, "for whom I would do much. If it would not ruffle your pride, I would call you friend. But there is a length to which you cannot ask me to go. I will not be hanged for that slut."

        Francisco controlled his anger in a way which, had he considered it, might have been surprise to himself. It was an evidence of the strait in which he stood, which he was coming to see, and which a quarrel with the Genoese sailor would not relieve. But it was the most he could do to reply in temperate words.

        "I must ask you to take that back, after which we can talk of that which is on your mind."

        "Why, so I do, if you wish," Antonio replied, in a ready way. "I will call her La Cerda's mistress, or what you will, but you must allow for this, that I have known her before."

        "I should say that you do not know her at all."

        "Well, so you may. It is a thing I have never sought. So of what she is, or is not, I will say no more, except that she is one for whom I am loth to hang."

        "So you have said once before. But you are not asked. Do you know where she is now?"

        "I could make a most excellent guess."

        "So might the Provost-Marshal himself and guess wrong. They cannot hang you for that."

        "Yet if there be signs littered before my eyes - "

        "Which you have no occasion to see."

        "Which it might be said that I have. . . . And it is not for myself that I fear alone. For who does that which I must say that I do not know that you do - he is in a most perilous pass, for the Grand Master is one that not only the Turks may dread."

        "Yet he may threaten that which he would not dare, or for which his strength would be too weak at a test. I am more in my own land than was he in his, and there are Spanish knights who would be my friends, should he seek to abuse his power."

        "Do you think that? It is a test that you should not try. You would go down like a straw. . . . Even La Cerda is more than most in his own land."

        "He was not long held. He was soon free."

        "So he was. But it was said that the Grand Master did it himself, both to bind and loose, his friends looking another way. . . . They say that there is none but one to whom the Grand Master will give more than a moment's heed when his mind is set; and your friend that was has his ear, as the talk goes. It is Sir Oliver that I mean, as it may be needless to say. But you have quarrelled now with your friend, so that there would be little comfort in that, even were there more at the most."

        "I know little of what you mean. I have quarrelled with none."

        "Well, you should know of that better than I. . . . But I had observed that you do not meet since you took - I will say since you took what was there from his own room, and came away with a shortened sword."

        "It was not broken as you suppose: the point caught by chance in a chair's arm."

        "I have never doubted your word. But I may conclude that the point was bare."

        "You must conclude as you will, but it was not pointed at him; nor did he draw upon me, as he never would."

        "You may be right there, for I should say that he is not one whose sword would be quickly out. Yet I have a doubt when I say that for I should not think him one who is poorly dowered either with courage or pride. . . . There have been times when I have thought that he would make a better maid than some are. But when I have seen how Sir Oliver sends him forth in most perilous ways I have put it by. I suppose that there are so few here wearing shift or gown that our eyes can no longer compare in a true way. . . . But I have vexed you again, and I know not why? I will be resolved to say naught, and to see no more. I will not even know that your sword snapped. For I am resolved of two things beyond that. I will neither hang for her nor will I quarrel with you."

        Francisco felt that their words could not end in that way. He had found Captain Antonio, though not of his rank or race, and though they were of many alien habits and thoughts, yet to be a man of some good parts, and with the will of a loyal friend, and he had became aware that his friends were few. He was young, and of a reserve which was partly shyness and partly pride. The Knights of Malta, for the most, were much older men. He had been brought up to regard the Order as the first cause for which men must live and be very willing to die. To that extent he was one with the spirit that drew them there from ease and honour in many lands, to be at the Grand Master's command and to die for Malta's defence. But, beyond that, he had little in common with most of those among whom he moved, and though he might have made some friends of the right kind had he been placed on the wall amid the knights of his own land, yet, being in command of a battery that stood somewhat apart, and having to keep station there for long hours of each day, he knew little more of the knights of Castile who were lined on the eastern wall than when he had landed two months before.

        He felt, rather than thought, that it would be a fool's part to let Antonio sulk, and the little Captain's face showed more offence than his words held. Yet he did not ask for a full confidence which, indeed, he might have good cause not to desire. Francisco answered with such measure of frankness as Antonio might be likely to take in the right way.

        "If you had asked, I would not have held it from you, though it is not to be widely told. It was La Cerda drew upon me, Don Garcio not being there. When he came he made peace, being my friend in that, for I was reduced to two feet of blade and such aid as a dagger gives. . . . But it was true that the sword had snapped as I told you before. It was a mischance of the narrow room."

        "Well," Antonio replied, "I did not doubt what you said. Nor do I ask what she did in the bedchamber of the one, nor why the other should have drawn upon you. But I may conclude that he is less than your friend; and it is a fact I cannot fail to observe that since the day you have walked aside of where Don Garcio goes, while I had thought before that you used some contrivance to meet. . . . I have no concern with the cause of this, but I must suppose that, if you were in the Grand Master's peril for aught you do, the Knights of Sicily would be dumb, and there might be those of your own land who would say no more, and I would rather see you with more friends and to need them less."

        "So would I," Francisco replied, "and it is a friend's thought, and I must thank you for that. Yet I do not feel in more peril than I may lightly endure, for even if that should be laid bare of which it is agreed that we shall not speak, you must not disregard that I have not taken the Order's vows, to which it cannot be held that I should therefore conform in their monkish way, nor am I in the Grand Master's danger to that degree."

        "That is true; and it is what, at such a pass, you would be certain to say. But I should be loth that my own life should hang on so thin a thread. For it is time of war, and you are under his rule, and I should say that the Grand Master's regard for any logic of speech would be of less than a groat's worth when his wrath is high."

        "He has such repute," Francisco agreed; "but my uncle called him a friend, and I would not think him to be without some recollection of that. And it might be thought that there are foes enough over the wall, even for him, that he need not be stubborn to vex his friends."

        This conversation took place three weeks from John Baptist's day, when St. Elmo fell. Francisco had become slow to leave the battery now and quick to return, even though Antonio might be in charge, for none knew when or where the Turks might attack next, either by water or land. Now their fleet was anchored in the harbour waters over Scebarras ridge, and the whole army was camped round the land-ward walls. St. Angelo could no longer hear the sound of guns which were pointed another way, and look across at an agony which it did not feel. The shots shook their own walls and battered the houses within the town.

        The hardest part must now be sustained by those who manned the fort of St. Michael which stood on the Sanglea spur, and the outer walls of the Sanglea, for the inlet which was its southern side was neither deep nor of great breadth, and the Turkish batteries rose on the height of the opposite shore and Turkish troops swarmed at its land-ward end. But the Turks were now on all sides, and so closely drawn both by land and sea that there was no point at which instant watch must not be kept; none from which peril might not suddenly rise to a deadly height; none which was safe from the risk of a flying death.

        Compassed thus, there was a show of reason in Francisco's complaint that even La Valette might be content with the count of his outer foes, and shun the making of more from those who would be his friends.

        The Turks blew what boast they could of St. Elmo's fall. They loaded the wreckage of thirty guns into a galley which would bear them as trophies to Byzantium's quay. If Dragut were dead (which could not be denied), De Broglio was dead too, having spoken no further word since he made the Grand Master his parting jape. The Turks made a list of the great knights who had died in defence of St. Elmo's wall, and it was better reading to them than it would be in the Christian lands.

        Had the Viceroy yet sent the relief which should have come on John Baptist's day? He would have said yes, which the Grand Master would have denied. He should have sent a great fleet, and an army which would have enabled Couppier to draw the Turks from St. Angelo's walls to guard their own heads on an open field. He read orders from his master, the Spanish king, which were not meant to be clear to any except himself and, if he read them aright, they were such as he did not like.

        He had pledged his word to Valette, and he knew where his honour lay. It was Spain's honour alike. Yet could he go against the King's will?

        He ordered that the two galleys which had belonged to the Maltese knights should put to sea, and he added two which flew the ensign of Spain. He filled them with volunteers, who crowded Sicily at this time, seeking to aid Malta's defence from love of race, or love of God, or of what we will.

        He put the four galleys under command of Don Juan de Cardona, a good knight, with written orders that he should approach the island in such a way as would be most likely to avoid the Turkish fleet, and to learn whether St. Elmo yet stood.

        If it had fallen, he was to bring back the troops, for what use would there be in so small a force, if the strife went ill, and the Turks were already crowding round St. Angelo's walls? But if St. Elmo stood, and the Turks had the worse loss, he was to land them during the night, and leave promise of more to come.

        Cardona read this order and may have thought it good, or may have cursed those whom he would not name. There is no record of that. But he sailed his galleys under cloak of night, to cast anchor outside Pietro Negri, and there he landed a knight who learnt that St. Elmo had fallen some days before.

        There is some doubt of his name, by which we lack that of a valiant man, but he was one who had come to Sicily with the purpose of aiding the Christian cause, and having now landed in Malta, he had no mind to go back. He returned to Cardona's ship, where he lied in God's name, and we may suppose that the saints were glad. He said that St. Elmo stood and the Cross prevailed. Cardona did not question that which he may have been hoping to hear. He landed forty knights and seven hundred other soldiers of sundry sorts. He sailed back to Palermo with empty decks, having avoided the Turks again, and bringing a tale which he held for true, though it was soon changed by other reports.

        The men who had landed thus in the night did that which made sport of the rules of war, as courage so often will. They marched where they wished to go, and so passed through the Turkish lines in a silent file, entering St. Angelo's gate without sound of a hostile shot, the Turks not having kept a good watch against that which was unlikely to be.

        The Grand Master was glad of the aid that came and saw that its meaning was clear. For the time he had got all that he would from the crown of Spain. He did not despond for that, but he observed that he must prepare for a lengthened siege. He went over his stores. When he had done that, he made an order that Turkish prisoners were not to be taken, as food would be needed for better mouths. There had been little of quarter or mercy on either side before now, but there was none from this day. To each side their foes came to be held as no more than pestilent rats, till the last should be slain or gone, and Cross or Crescent should float in the only peace that either side could conceive in a single land. . . .

        The news of St. Elmo's fall spread through the lands of Christ, and there were many of every faith whose hearts were heavy thereat. Even the English Queen, though it was by her will that those of the Order of St. John had been chased away, forgot the bitter Protestant feud, and ordered that there should be prayer for the Maltese knights in all the churches of which she was called the head.

        Caring nothing for Christian prayers, Mustapha Pasha tightened his lines of siege and made his batteries strong.

CHAPTER II

        THERE was no station in St. Angelo's girth, either by water or land, that was not fronted by active foes. The weakest point, as Mustapha saw, and Valette would have agreed, was the Sanglea, with St. Michael's fort at its highest point both because it was separated by the inner harbour from St. Angelo and the Bourg, and because of the shallowness of the inlet which protected its southern side.

        It was against the Sanglea that Mustapha now directed his heaviest guns, and planned that which he expected to be decisive attack; while the Grand Master, warned both by his own military knowledge and by the report of a Greek-born engineer, Lascaris, who had deserted to the Christian ranks from a high post in the infidel army, that it was there that the first fury of storm would beat, laboured with an energy that seemed to increase with the passing days to strengthen barricades and make bastions firm; so that, while they were battered by Turkish shot, the defence, now here, now there, grew more formidable with every hour.

        So that he should attack St. Michael both by land and water, and yet not risk his boats beneath St. Angelo's guns, Mustapha had a number of these, of the largest size, dragged on rollers over Scebarras ridge; and against this threat (which Lascaris may have betrayed) the Grand Master barricaded the mouth of the shallow inlet with piles; to which Mustapha replied by searching out men who could swim well, that they might ply axes at the right moment to break them down. . . .

        Hearing its need, La Cerda came to the Sanglea, where his station was. He might have been excused for a further time, having an arm that he would not use for a long space, if it should heal at all, which was leis than sure. But he would not be held slack in the cause for which he had come, so long as he were not driven too hard on what he thought to be the wrong road.

        Admiral Sir Peter del Monte was in chief command at Sanglea, having the Italian knights under his rule. La Cerda reported to him that he was fit and willing to take his place on the wall.

        Sir Peter, a discreet man, of that type of valour which makes no foes, and who was to be Grand Master himself at a later day, looked at a swathed arm, and said: "It is not what I had guessed, had I not heard it from you."

        "But my sword arm," La Cerda said, "is still good."

        Sir Peter thought of several things he might say, of which he said none. What he did say was: "If you are so resolved, I must not deny, having too urgent a need: and you are one I am glad to have."

        La Cerda set his pennon on St. Michael's wall on the next day, having no mind that any should say that he loitered at such a time nursing a wound. He had a bitter wrath against La Valette, whom he would gladly have slain at a quieter time.

        He charged him in his heart with Venetia's loss and perhaps her death. For he was convinced that she had had no purpose of flight when he had left her, a few hours before she was gone. That he thought (and was right in part) was the result of Valette's harshness to him. She had fled in panic, when she had heard that he was arrested without a cause - had fled to what fate, and where? It might be to death or torture or unspeakable shames at the infidels' hands. And he held Valette to be guilty of this by his intolerance of the natural conditions of human life; as also by the arrogance with which he imposed his power upon those who were of nobler blood than himself, and of higher rank in their own lands: and who might, by whatever scale of judgement, be better men; and also by the stubborn military folly of which he had made him the victim first, and then unjustly confined him without trial or question asked, which had been the final cause of Venetia's flight.

        His attachment to her might have no spiritual profundities, no intellectual support, but it was real in its own way. He loved her for what she was, as well as what he supposed her to be. At the least, she was a possession he valued much. She was the most costly of all the gay material things: castles and woods, horses and hawks, tapestries and jewelled clothes, which had embroidered his life till now.

        And Valette had taken his mistress, as he had taken his horse, and had even done these things without courtesy of request, in an unmannerly way, like the boor that he surely was. He had assaulted his honour too, which might have been as hard to forgive had not La Cerda felt that his loss was less under that count. It stood, he thought, too secure for Valette to have pulled it down. Yet even there he had a wound that he felt more than a burnt arm, it being the pain of that which drove him to take the wall when most would have said that he was unfit to serve.

        For it is certain that he did not go thus to the wall because his passion for slaying Turks was beyond control (as might have happened to some of the Order's knights), nor did he think St. Michael's peril to be so nicely poised that it would stand or fall by his single arm. He went that he might assert his valour in all men's sight, and be esteemed among the Italian knights who were his natural friends.

        The last hour he had had with Venetia, when Angelica left them alone, had assured him both of her loyalty to himself and of her innocence of any different offence. He would have sought her now, to the delay of his pennon's flaunt, as well from obstinacy as regard, but that he was not sure that it was what she would thank him to do.

        If he found her, could he protect? It was a bitter question to have to ask himself, and take a doubtful reply.

        If he should find her, and did not disclose her hiding, it was doubtful that he could do her any avail, while the search itself might be watched by those who would make it their aid to find her for other ends. And if any were giving her harbour now in the town, to disclose what they had done would be to put them in the way of a likely death.

        If she had escaped, whether to Christian or Turk, whether by land or sea, he could do nothing to aid her more. If she were still in the town she would hear of him, though he might know nothing of her, and she might find safer means of letting him know of any need that was hers than he could find to reach her.

        These things were simple to see, but they did not content his mind. It is always harder to remain still than to act, even though action and wisdom may not lie in the same bed. He must learn what he could, and for this there were three to whom he could talk, though in different ways.

        He would see Sir Oliver and Don Garcio (as he supposed she must still be called), and Don Francisco, whom he had ceased to suspect. He had La Valette and the Provost-Marshal further back in his mind.

        He went to Sir Oliver first, who received him with courtesy though without warmth, being a tired man, and burdened with matters for which he felt greater concern than for any troubles which (he would have said) La Cerda had brought on to his own back.

        "You will admit," La Cerda said, "that she was one whom it was my part to protect, having brought her here."

        "It may have been your part," Sir Oliver replied, "but it was not mine. Yet I did something in that, and perhaps more than I should; and I think, had she not fled as she did, I should have sent her hence with a whole skin."

        "With a whole skin!" La Cerda exclaimed, taking the phrase in a more literal way than it may have been meant, "would you say that she risked that? Why what, in the devil's name, or in the Grand Master's if you prefer, had she done but what her honour required? I should say that some have been sainted for less than that. . . . And does he think that she can be shamed and my honour stand? It is poor reward that Sir John gives to those who put all aside that they might come here at the greatest peril that well could be."

        "You speak," Sir Oliver more quietly replied, "beyond reason and beyond fact. You have not been without cause for wrath, and there are matters in which I have not been less than your friend, as perhaps you see.

        "But I must remind you first that she was kept here by a trick, after I had secured that she should be sent safely away. That was an affront to me, of which I might say more than I have yet done, and you may see how your honour came clear in that (if I may say it without offence) more than I have been able to do.

        "And, beyond that, when a man is slain at a dagger's point, in a place apart, it is required in all lawful lands that he by whom it is done (and a woman cannot be in a better case) shall come forward to show that there was sufficient cause. What has she done? She has replied by hiding and flight, as one who protests her guilt. Yet, had she been found, she would have had fair trial of all, as I may say that she will now.

        "But the last thing I must say is that you use the Grand Master's name as it is not reason to do (I say naught of our vows, of which each must judge), for we did not come here as doing favour to him, but as being joined in a common cause; of which, by our own votes, we had made him head."

        "Yes. We were demented in that."

        "I must differ there. I say he is the man for this hour, and a better would not be easy to find."

        "Well, he is friend to you."

        "He is more than that. He is Malta's shield."

        "So he should be. We will not quarrel for that. I came not to ask of him. Have you tidings of her?"

        "I can answer freely in that, having had none. We may hope that she has fled far. But if I knew more, I might have said less, rather than told it to you. I cannot counsel more as a friend than when I say you should put her out of your thoughts. This is not randomly said, for it is like I know more of her than you ever will. I say not this of myself but of the office I hold. It is my business to know."

        There were angry words on La Cerda's lips, which he did not speak. He remembered that he had come there resolved that he would not injure his cause (or else hers) because patience failed, as he had done before then.

        "But I will tell you this," Sir Oliver went on; "if you find a man who is giving her harbour now, you will meet one who is next neighbour to death, for orders may not be lightly flouted in time of war. I had that in mind when I said that I hoped she had fled away."

        "You would let me know without pause, if she were found?"

        "Yes. It would be your due."

        "Then I can ask nothing more."

        He rose with these words, feeling that it would be waste to speak more, and aware that Sir Oliver would be very willing for him to go. He resolved that, should she be found, as he thought it likely she would, he would test his strength to the last friend he had before he would see her shamed or death come to those who had been her aid. . . .

        She lay on a bed at this time, having excuse that there was little else for her to do. She had learnt that La Cerda was released from any charge the Grand Master had made, and that he was walking abroad, though with an arm that was thickly wrapped, at which she bit a petulant lip. Would he neither prevail nor die? A protector who could no longer protect was no use to her. She cursed the day that she had lost sight of Sicily's shore. "I lie here," she said to herself, "and the food is poor. And if it were better, I dare not eat as I would. I must starve or grow fat as I lie here. . . . Yet it might be changed for a worse jail. . . ." She thought of La Cerda again and wished he were dead, which would solve much. For she had other plans that went well.

CHAPTER III

        LA CERDA met Angelica in the hall.

        "Don Garcio," he asked, with more courtesy than he would have given to whom she professed to be, "may I speak with you apart?"

        "Yes," she said, with a readiness which she would have found it hard to assume, "we can talk here, if you will. . . . But will you do me the kindness to recollect that I am that which you called me now?"

        As she spoke, she had turned to a window-seat in an alcove near, which was so placed that those who were seated there could not be secretly overheard. She had no quarrel with La Cerda, whom she might rather have felt to be somewhat in her own case, and in an alliance of which she could not make him aware, but the tone and gesture of his address had been such as would be given more naturally to a woman than to another knight, and her first thought had been to restrain that and to draw him quietly apart. It was only when they were seated that she recalled that there were things which she knew or guessed that he must not suspect, but by that time the frankness of her first response had assured him that she had no reserve on her mind, and that her sole fear had been that he might make disclosure of whom she was, which her first words confirmed.

        "I would be sure," she said, "that you would not reveal - "

        "It was needless to ask, for that which you did being for Venetia, and therefore for me, we are bound alike to hold the confidence which you thereby gave."

        "I did not doubt," she replied, "that you would regard it thus; but I had rather in mind that more is disclosed by inadvertence than by design." She did not add that she would not trust Venetia a yard away, let him protest as he might. If Venetia kept a closed mouth, it must be that she could open it to no gain, or that it had been shut for another than her.

        "It shall be my care," he said, "that I do not err in that wise.

It was from your room, as I understand, that Venetia went. May I ask if you have either knowledge or guess as to where she may be now, which, though you might withhold from others, you would not cover from me?"

        "She went while I slept, having said nothing of her intent. I have not heard from her since."

        "Do you think she went out alone, or was she taken or lured?"

        "As I think, she went of herself, and with a good will, for she had unbolted the door, and she had dressed with some leisure and care, taking some things of mine which she must have preferred."

        "It was freely done," La Cerda allowed. "She may have thought it was for your own peace that you should have no knowledge of where she went."

        Angelica agreed about that, thinking it might have even more reason that he supposed. She said: "Well, she took naught that I grudge, and her need was surely the more." She turned the course of her words to ask of his hurt, which he answered was well enough. He looked at her for herself at this time, and had a wonder of what she did. He could not think that she had come with no more resolve than to be her cousin's mistress in that inferno of bitter war, nor did it consort either with the way in which he had seen her to risk her life in active affairs, nor with Sir Oliver's knowledge of whom she was and that she was allowed to remain. Yet Sir Oliver (he reminded himself) had been more lenient to Venetia than the Grand Master might have approved. It was a puzzle it might be profit to solve, with Venetia in jeopard, and in a case that seemed somewhat alike, and yet it might be that which his honour would not allow.

        "I would," he said, "that you could have shown me more than you do. But I can see that she went in a secret way. I owe you thanks, which I will pay if occasion come."

        He went with no other courtesy of retreat than he would have shown to a knight of his own rank, being much younger than he.

        Angelica reflected that she had revealed no more than she had told Sir Oliver at the first, and that La Cerda had no share in her own guess, of which she supposed that she must be glad.

CHAPTER IV

        LA CERDA had resolved that there was one more to whom he should have something to say, though with less expectation that there was knowledge of Venetia to be gained. Still, he told himself, he had gained nothing where he had gone in more hope, and the third attempt might well result in a contrary way.

        He was rebuffed at his first effort to meet Francisco, being told that he was seldom seen in the castle now, and that his chamber was given up to another knight.

        "Well," he thought, "I suppose there is one above that will do better for him, when he has the time to come here." But that thought was confused by what he heard in the next breath.

        "Don Francisco will not leave his battery more than he must, the Turks being round on all sides, and none knowing when they may assault the boom which it is his special duty to guard, but I should say that he has less cause to come here than he once had, for he had but one of whom he made friend before, that being Don Garcio, who is of a land that is near to his, and it has been observed that they will not meet since the time when, as it is said, Don Garcio had a -" The speaker, an old gossiping knight, who was too maimed for the wars, and had an usher's duty about the hall, became suddenly aware of the indiscretion he had been near to commit. He was so facile of tongue that he had hardly regarded until that moment that it was La Cerda to whom he spoke. He remembered that the wanton of whom the talk had been that she was found in Don Garcio's room (but whom no one had seen) was said to be one that La Cerda had kept for his own bed.

        He added: "There is always talk, which is mostly false, and the rest better unsaid. But it is true that they do not meet, for either will turn aside to avoid that, as I have observed more than once, as I have stood here."

        La Cerda thanked him, and walked on. The battery was not far. He could quickly be there. That Francisco had quarrelled with Angelica since they had fought in her room might point to something he had not guessed, and that it would be useful to know. But he saw that the evidence did not go far. If a special intimacy had been noticed between them, it might be policy only which now kept them apart - a discretion that came too late, and that might be most strictly observed when a certain old gossiping knight had his eyes upon them in open hall.

        The battery of which Francisco had charge lay, as has been previously observed, outside St. Angelo's wall, on the narrow space that divided the citadel from the harbour waters. It had, in that respect, a position that was specially precarious, mitigated by the fact that it lay so closely under the castle's seaward guns and that it could only be attacked from the water while St. Angelo stood.

        It had a further peculiarity, or potential weakness, in the fact that its guns did not point outward across the harbour, where its own danger lay, but were mounted diagonally to St. Angelo's wall, being trained to protect the boom, which closed the inner harbour from hostile attack, and protected the Maltese fleet, which was anchored therein.

        The obligations of military discipline can never be more urgently necessary than in a place that is closely sieged, and defended by a mixed garrison in which there is no unity either of language or race, the dangers of treachery or surprise rising under such conditions to their maximum possibilities. It might be said, beyond that, that the exposed position of Francisco's battery, being beyond the main walls of defence, imposed a special obligation of vigilance, for though, as yet, he had commanded no more than an idle post, and might continue to do no more till the siege should end, yet if the call to defend himself or the boom should come, it might be both sudden and vital in its demand.

        La Cerda did not expect to find the battery wide open to any who might wish to inspect its guns. Even in time of peace there might have been less freedom than that; but he encountered a rigidity of discipline and precaution beyond anything which he had expected to meet.

        Though his dress and demeanour proclaimed him an Italian knight of high rank, and would have enabled him to walk freely through most places within the Christian lines, he found himself challenged sharply before he had even entered the trench by which the battery was approached on its northern side. At the further end of that trench the password and his own name proved insufficient to procure him a further advance until the Captain's will should be known. The sentinel was deferential enough, but his halberd remained lowered across the way.

        He was kept there for more minutes than his dignity could lightly endure before Captain Antonio came, so that he had leisure to observe, so far as his position allowed, that the battery was now a larger and more substantial work than he had expected to find, and to hear sounds of mattock and spade proclaiming that its strength was not yet equal to Francisco's desire.

CHAPTER V

        CAPTAIN ANTONIO might have come at a better speed had he been otherwise engaged than he was or had he heard any name but the one he did. It was but a few moments before that he had stood at the backs of two men who had not heard his approach, owing to the noise of the excavating at which their companions worked, and at which they should have been doing an equal part.

        "But," he overheard, "if it should be she for whom the proclamation is made -" The man's voice ceased, as he became aware that his captain was not more than three paces away.

        Lonzo," Captain Antonio asked, "of whom are you talking now?"

        The man became silent, looking confused, and would have been urged by a sharper word, but his companion replied:

        "It is that he saw a lady enter the Captain's room, when the moon shone over the scarp."

        "Then," Captain Antonio advised, "he should drink less."

        "He is not one," his self-appointed advocate replied, for the man said nothing at all, "to drink more than he should."

        "To how many has this folly been told?"

        "To no other but me, for I am his only friend, and he had mentioned it but a moment before."

        "Which was too soon for such talk. Lonzo, I say this to you, and to Pietri alike. There could be no lady enter the Captain's room, for there is none here. I swear that by Our Lady Herself, which is not an oath on which I would be forsworn." He added the names of certain Genoese saints which he was known to revere, feeling that what he did should be done well, and assuring himself that he swore truth, for who could call that slut by the name which God's Mother does not despise?

        "No," he said, "no madonna is there. It was the shadows that lied of the passing clouds. . . . But I will give you counsel that you should heed.

        "You are men who have been chosen by me, being changed from those who were first here, as you all are. You are well paid from the Order's chest, and you have more beyond that, which Don Francisco supplies. You were chosen thus because there is little that can be said or done, whether in castle or town, of which the Turks do not hear by the next day, and Don Francisco was well resolved that no word should pass out from this place, for which the reason is known to you.

        "Now if you should gossip in foolish ways, you would show that you are not worthy of such a trust. You might find yourselves in a worse place and taking a smaller pay. And if you should tell a tale that was false you might end, beyond that, where you would be sorry to be. For it is by such ways that men come to the lash or the prison cell, who are too good for such use.

        "And even if you should tell one which is true (but which you need not have seen, had you looked aslant), which you could not do for this time, there being no substance in what you say, should you be the better for that?

        "Let us suppose that you had come on traces of her for whom proclamation is made, as you were rashly saying you might have done. Well, it would be your duty to so report. I shall not tell you other than that. But would it be to your gain? I should say not. You would be a witness to be questioned apart. If you did not say all that they would think that you ought to know, or if there should be dispute, so that your tale should become suspect and yourself therefor, would not the thumbscrew be called to aid? He is a man with good eyes who can be blind when he should not see. It is such men who live long."

        The man, Pietri, who had seen the wraith in the night, and who had been silent till now, found some words to say when Antonio's lecture was done.

        "Captain," he said, "I have eyes which see well in the light" (he could not deny that, for it was as a gunner that he drew pay), "yet it is well known that they are of little avail when the light is poor."

        "So I had supposed," Captain Antonio replied, "from that which I heard you say." And as he spoke there was one at his side with a tale that La Cerda was there, and seeking speech with Don Francisco on private affairs, and there was no name that Antonio, who desired trouble neither for others nor for himself, would have been less willing to hear.

        "Well," he said, "let him wait, while Don Francisco shall be informed. . . . Or it may be enough that I see him first, for it may be a matter too light to disturb Don Francisco's rest."

        And having said that, he went in no haste (for he had some thinking to do), to where La Cerda waited at the near end of the trench.

        He met a man whose patience was not reputed to last overlong, and was near its end, whom he greeted with the deference that his rank required, but without speaking the one word that La Cerda expected to hear.

        "I have come myself," he said, "being in command while Don Francisco is taking rest, and he having given me charge that he shall not be called unless there is reason of war."

        "The matter on which I came," La Cerda replied, "is one on which I can speak only to him. . . . Do you say that he will sleep long?"

        Captain Antonio would have liked to lie, but he was not sure that he would be thanked by him for whom it would have been done. "He is to be roused," he said, "within half an hour of this time."

        "Then I will wait, in what comfort you have, making my time his."

        "My orders," Captain Antonio replied, in some embarrassment, which was not usual to him, "are strict and exact, that none may enter beyond this point, except at my captain's leave."

        La Cerda stared his surprise. "Why, man," he exclaimed, with more contempt for him he addressed than he would have shown at a better time, "do you think I shall stand here? Do you call me Turk?"

        Antonio felt a doubt of whether he had been as wise as he wished. Orders were strict, and had a cause which the Grand Master himself would have approved, but he was not sure that they should be applied to one who was a Commander of the Order himself, and whom he knew well by sight. Beyond that he had a shrewd doubt that he was acting as he would not have done but for another thing, which it was equally sure that the Grand Master would have condemned, and of which no suspicion, however faint, should be allowed to rise in La Cerda's mind.

        "You will admit," he said, "that in time of war orders may be so framed as to hinder those for whom they are not meant, and that he may take blame who shall interpret them in a better way, being beyond that which he has commission to do. Yet I am assured that this order was not to have held you here, and it shall be my risk that you wait in a better place."

        La Cerda was little appeased by an admission that came too late. He said: "You are a wise man," in a tone that proposed a doubt, or at best that his wisdom had been tardy in its advice. He followed Captain Antonio through a tunnel which had been hewed from the rock, having small chambers along its side, and was again surprised that so much had been done at what he had thought to be little more than a gun-platform outside the wall. He came to where the guns were, and saw two long culverins of the newest make pointing through embrasures which showed him, as in a frame, a picture of the long floating boom and of St. Michael's fort at its further end, and something of the inner and outer harbours to left and right.

        "I had not been told," he said, "that you had such weapons as these. I thought that you had but three sakers, such as would throw their discharge to little more than the boom's length."

        "So we had," Captain Antonio replied, "and so we have still," and he pointed to where these cannon were drawn aside, "but Don Francisco would have these guns from the Santa Martha, which was his own ship, thinking that they might be of more use. . . . It is that which is known to none but the twelve men we have in garrison here, and the seamen by whom they were brought during the night, which must be excuse for the strict orders I have that none shall enter without his leave."

        La Cerda was more appeased when he saw that it was something beyond the routine of a leaguered place which had held him back; he unbent enough to discuss matters of warfare by land and sea, on which Captain Antonio had some observations of wit to make and some tales to tell. The time did not seem long before Francisco appeared.

        He had heard already, by Captain Antonio's care - though no more than the bare fact - that La Cerda waited him by the guns. He could not guess what La Cerda knew, nor to what questions he might have to make instant reply, and though he came forward in a quiet and confident style, born of his pride and his blood, yet he could not tell, being young, how he should act, nor what he would be likely to say.

        La Cerda, having folded his cloak for a seat, had found comfort enough on a stone ledge of the parapet which protected the guns. Captain Antonio stood at his side, in which positions their heights were not so different that they could not discourse with ease. La Cerda rose as Francisco approached, and looked at one who seemed to have advanced in dignity and the qualities by which manhood is known since he had seen him before, more than the short weeks would explain. "War," he thought, laying praise at a wrong door, "may do much for those men it does not kill."

        He spoke at once when they met, without waiting to be asked why he had come.

        "Don Francisco," he said, "I am still in doubt of whether I owe you thanks, or the word of regret that it may be knightly to speak at times, or no more than a bare sword, such as was between us before, but, by your leave, I will put such questions aside at this time, both because it is hour of war and because you could say that I am unfit" (he looked down at his bandaged arm) "to support my words, and also until I am more fully informed. But I would ask you now, on your knightly word, if you can give me help on a search which I still make?"

        "Chevalier," Francisco replied, "it is knightly said, and I will answer it in the best manner I may.

        "As to ourselves, there are times when I have the same doubt; but, by your own choice, I will say no more, except that, as I suppose, my honour is still clean.

        "As to what you ask, I would ask this in reply: If one should know, or suppose, to where the lady Venetia has made her retreat, is it that which should be told to any without her leave, she being in the great jeopard she is, and there also being proclamation of death against whoever may have taken her in?"

        La Cerda weighed the implications of this in a mind that was alert, and with suspicions not buried to any depth. He remembered what he had been told in the last hour, that Francisco had quarrelled with her whom he supposed to have been more close than she was, and that that had been from when they had found him in the room where Venetia lay. It was a simple conclusion that Francisco could tell him where she now was, and a presumption that she was still in the Maltese lines. His doubt of Francisco's faith stirred him to an anxious wrath that he could not lightly restrain.

        Yet restrain it he did, remembering the declaration that he had just made; and so, reflecting that it was by patience, if at all, that he would come to the knowledge he sought, he made a reasoned reply.

        "As to that - I must conclude that you would not propose it in such a form unless your own knowledge made it to be of something more than idle debate - you may think the Lady Venetia's jeopard to be much more than it is. I have been told by Sir Oliver Starkey himself that she may not have much to dread if she will come forward now, and I should say that her peril is greatly more while she lie concealed, for she will have less mercy to hope if she be dug out than if she will now advance, saying that she did but wait till I should be free to give her support.

        "As to the part of who may have been her aid I will say this: It could be told to me - as I think it should, I having the right I have - on my plighted word (which should be assurance enough) that there would be no disclosure without consent, nor such as would bring him to peril he might have missed."

        "There would be the question, beyond that, of her own will."

        "Which you would ask me to doubt?"

        "I mean that she may not agree that she can come forward at little cost, and a mistake would be learned too late."

        "But is it not that for her, and for me? Do you propose that I might betray her against her will?"

        La Cerda spoke now with an impatience he could hardly repress. Francisco's words seemed to make it clear that he knew where Venetia lay, and his tone to imply that he had a right of decision, and even to speak for her, which gave jealousy more grounds than the position must have contained in its simplest form.

        Yet he reminded himself again that, if Francisco had secured her safety when he was himself unable to do so, there might be a debt of thanks to be paid in a better form than the base coinage of suspicions which might be utterly false, and, beyond that, he must have put himself in a peril which was even greater than hers, and that alone must give him some right to say what should be done now. And while he strove to control himself to a temperate mood, and yet one which would still persist - for he was resolved that he would not now turn from that quest, till he had heard Venetia protest her truth with her own lips - Francisco answered with more candour than he had spoken before.

        "Chevalier," he said, "I would have you know that I wish to act as a knight should, and I will say that I have no practice in such matters as this, and that I would that the course of honour were more easy to see.

        "I will tell you that she came to me, being in a great dread, when she heard that you were powerless (as for that time) to be her support. She asked for aid which I did not refuse, and I suppose that we may have no quarrel for that."

        "As to that," La Cerda interposed, "you have thanks." The words were well enough, but they were without warmth, as though he waited to hear that which was still to say.

        "I put myself in your hands," Francisco went on, "in the confidence of your own pledge, and because you urge that you have a right to be told, when I say that I may know where she is now. But you must own that my obligation is not to you, but to her. I will see her between now and tomorrow noon, and, if I have her consent, I will then lead you to where she is."

        La Cerda heard this, and suspicions stirred with more force in his mind and would not be still. He was not too angry to see that, in the strict logic of the position, Francisco was right; but passion put logic aside to ask with what object he had helped her at all, and why he should be in doubt (as he professed) as to whether she should be willing for him to tell where she now lay. He had to remind himself of his bandaged arm, and of the resolution he had made, as he replied:

        "Well, it is but a day, and I suppose there is no doubt of what her answer will be. We will so agree till tomorrow noon, if you will assure me of but one thing, which you will forgive that I ask - "

        But the question, which might have brought crisis in its reply, was not asked, the words being drowned in a thunder of Turkish guns which broke out in a sudden fury of storm from every battery round St. Angelo's girth. It was a thunder that did not cease, and La Cerda said: "I must seek my post. I will be here at tomorrow noon."

        He spoke to one who had ceased to give attention to him, and went in haste to take boat across the inner harbour to reach his place on St. Michael's wall. He went through a bustle of those who ran different ways with the same object as he, for the noise of the Turkish guns was now drowned in the nearer thunder of Christian reply, and the bells tolled to call all men to their stations upon the walls.

CHAPTER VI

        SIR OLIVER picked up his sword, which he did not constantly wear. He was slightly bent with his studious toils, so that, as they stood, Angelica's height was little the less and in the supple straightness of youth she might have been held for the better man.

        "We must to the wall," he said, "and I would that you had some armour of proof, of which I should have warned you before, though it has been my thought to hold you excused, as long as I can, from the active strife which you should not see, and of which, as I suppose, you will be in no danger today. . . . It is the risk of a straying shot."

        "You mean that they will not attack our part of the wall?" ..

        "Yes. For it is what they cannot do until they have made much further advance, unless it were from the sea, with the fleet to aid."

        "And they will not do that?"

        "No. It is such a risk as Piali might not scruple to try, but Mustapha would not waste ships and men in so simple a way. It would be stone against wood, and at a short range, and our cannon pointed downward upon their decks. . . . There is no peril of that. . . . The Turks will fire from all sides, that we may be in doubt of where they will throw their strength, yet that is not in much doubt. It is St. Michael that they will pull down, if the fiends are strong."

        Sir Oliver went to the wall where he held command, rather in the routine which would not let any part remain unwatched at a time of storm than with expectation that there would be occasion for its defence. He had sent the best part of his own men to the support of those who were more likely to face attack on the Bourg front, but he had little doubt that it was on the southern side that the worst fury of storm would beat for that day.

        He went on, as he ascended the winding stair, with Angelica at his side:

        "There is a friend of yours who has come, so it is said, to the Turkish camp. I mean Hassan, whom you met on his own deck, and who, by Dragut's death, is now Viceroy of the whole Barbary coast. I should have said on a deck which he had made his, having beer ours at the first, and where you made him your jest, as we may suppose that he will not quickly forget. I should say that he would have more lust to meet you again than it would be pleasure to you. Which is a reason (for you) that we guard our walls."

        "Is it sure he is here?"

        "There is the Flying Hawk in Massa Muscetto bay, which he is said to choose for his own ship since he took it from us, finding its speed to be hard to match. . . . There is no doubt he has come, and with him some thousands more of the corsairs that Barbary breeds. He is lord now of all Tripoli and Algiers, and it is said that Dragut's wealth is for him, to augment his own. He keeps Mahound's law so far that he has not Dragut's liking for rum, but that he holds to the Prophet's limit of wives is what I have not heard, though it may also be true."

        Angelica laughed in her quick way at a recollection which came with Sir Oliver's words.

        "I know not how many he have, nor how few, but I was to be extra to them, unless Dragut should refuse to forego my price for a better deal. . . . I thought it was time that I came away."

        It was a danger passed, at which the light spirit of youth could look back in a mocking mood, but there was no levity in the tone with which Sir Oliver made reply.

        "The saints keep you from that! - as they doubtless did, with your own courage to aid. But you may well pray that you do not fall to his hands for a second time, which would be no jesting for you."

        "Well," she replied, somewhat sobered by this, but still feeling confident against a danger so vague and far, "I suppose I am secure for this time; and I have heard you say that if we fret at a distant fear we are likely to vex our peace for that which will never be. . . . Is St. Michael in peril beyond likely defence? Are we greatly maimed if it fall?"

        "I would not say that it is in peril beyond repulse, nor that we are lost if it fall. St. Michael is more strong than St. Elmo was, whether we reckon by weight of guns or by height of walls, or by its nearness to us. But the whole length of the Sanglea is less strong, and that not only where it faces the land but because its southern water is shallow, so that it is said that it may be waded at more places than one, and it is no more than a short gunshot from shore to shore.

        "If St. Michael fall we shall still stand, but we shall have a wound which will bleed much. It is a greater risk that they will cut it off, winning the Sanglea, so that the inner harbour and our galleys would be under their fire, but we may have good hope that they will not prevail, even to that."

        They spoke amid a surrounding rumble of guns, and the louder separate thunder of those that fired from the castle walls that were near at hand. It was clear that the Turks attacked with their utmost force, being insurgent on every side. Mustapha, having slain the calf, had now come for the cow, and would not be lightly denied.

        Angelica watched from the outer angle of the wall, where her station was, and could see little beyond the smoke of St. Michael's guns and that which rose and drifted over the Sanglea, which, being lower and further from her own front, was beyond her sight, though she could see part of the inner harbour where the Maltese galleys were sheltered safely as yet, and the boom at its mouth was beneath her eyes, as was the battery of which Francisco had charge. She saw him at times, waiting watchful beside his guns, though as yet they could not point at a foe. But it would not be supposed that he should attempt to look up to a place where he did not know her to be, even if he would if he had. . . .

        The hours passed, and Sir Oliver came to her side.

        "There is little use that I stay here, where we can but watch what we do not share. I have given command to the Chevalier de la Roye, for I have more urgent matters with which to deal. You must stay, for you make one, and give release to a man who can be used at another place. . . . But what are they that come out from the further shore?"

        There was a scurry of strife at this time at the entrance to the inlet which was south of St. Michael's fort, which was almost beyond their sight, where Mustapha's swimmers strove with axes to break down the palisade, and Del Monte had called for volunteers to swim out and prevent the damage they sought to do.

        He found no lack of those who could swim and who would risk their lives in that way, but the palisades were easier to break down than to mend, and while men fought like sharks in the reddened flood it was broken in places beyond repair. . . .

        Angelica, watching from St. Angelo's higher wall, could see ten great boats come out, one after one, from the further shore. They were loaded with men, bearing more than a thousand in all, and they came at a great pace, being propelled by those who knew that a second saved might be no less than the lives of all.

        Avoiding all but such guns of St. Michael's fort as could be hastily trained their way, which were neither many nor of much range, they came round toward the gaps in the palisade which had been broken to let them through, aiming to pass under St. Michael's fort and take by storm the long, low waterfront of the Sanglea.

        "If they succeed in that," Sir Oliver said, "they will thrust a wedge between the fort and those who defend the Sanglea on its land-ward side, so that those last may be surrounded and sped," and as he spoke a rumble of distant sound arose to further confuse the tormented air, from where, far beyond their sight, Hassan's corsairs swarmed to attack the Sanglea at its southern end.

        "Francisco," Angelica said, looking down, "is getting busy at last. But what can he hope to do?"

        "Well," Sir Oliver answered to that, "I did not know that he had guns of so great a range, for he was set there to defend the near boom. But if you ask what he can do, I must reply that it will be nothing or all."

        Francisco looked out through an embrasure from which pointed the long black muzzle of one of the culverins which he had brought from his own ship and he knew that his day had come.

        "Antonio," he asked, "could you reach them now?"

        The little captain looked out over the boom, past the entrance to the inner harbour, past the spur which was crowned with St. Michael's fort, to where the ten great boats came on, with trails of following foam, toward the gaps in the palisade which he could not see.

        "I could reach them now, but there would be those who would get free, if they were speedy to turn. I will wait yet for a minute's space." He spoke to the man who stood waiting his word at the other gun with his linstock lit: "You said your sight was good in the day? It is now you must prove your word."

        A moment later, Angelica, looking down, saw sudden flashes that came as one from the out-thrust muzzles. She saw the great guns leap to the recoil, wrenching their chains. She heard, next instant, the double thunder of their discharge amid the din of encircling sound.

        Far out, on the harbour water, a boat sank by the head, spilling its cargo of dead and maimed, and of those who would be unable to live in an element they did not know. Another boat was struggling to turn, pushing frantic oars, while the water poured through a broken side. Below, the two guns were being sponged and loaded anew, and, as it seemed, in no more than a moment's time, they were thrust outward again, sending an even more deadly message of death to boats which had now bunched in a confusion between those who would fall back, those who would still go on, and those who lay on uncertain oars disputing among themselves. But after those second shots, there was but one mind among men who saw that their deaths were near: they turned in flight and, as they did so, the cannon thundered again.

        Of the ten boats which set out, bearing about eight hundred of the janissaries which were the flower of Mustapha's troops, and two hundred more of the Tripoli corsairs that Candelissa led, there was but one that got back to the shore; and but two hundred men, including those who were able to swim to land, who would answer their names when the roll would be called on the next day.

        Antonio, overlooking the cleaning out of the culverins with a gunner's eye, knew that their work was done for that time and, perhaps, till the siege should end. But it had been enough. It was an example of that which is frequent in the annals of war, of a device which goes beyond that for which it was thought at first; for it was a battery that would not have been erected at all but that the Grand Master had been urgent to protect the inner harbour, where the fleet must be laid up, with an ample boom, and then with guns to defend that. And so it was seen that, with longer guns, it might be used to another end, firing over Isola Point to guard the approach to the Sanglea, which would be likely to be much sooner attacked.

        "We shall see no more," Sir Oliver said, "from this point, and I cannot longer remain. But you may have a good hope that St. Michael will not go down for this day, and your cousin has won a praise which, as I suppose, will be the talk of more lands than one."

        He went with that word, but the noise of storm that beat on the Sanglea did not slacken till evening fell.

CHAPTER VII

        VENETIA, clasping small, soft, muscular hands behind her pale-gold head, and lifting a flower-fair face to Francisco's regard, had a thought of content, both for the judgement which had brought her to where she lay and the skill with which she had handled a position which had been novel to her, so that the highest stake for which she could play might still be within her grasp. She had come to a rich market, where the prospects of barter grew better with every day.

        Now she listened to Francisco's account of how he had shattered the Turkish boats, and she thought him one who might rise high in the turbulent world she knew. She did not think of it as much more than a fortunate chance (as it was), though the idea of the longer guns had been his, with a boy's desire to make the most of his own command. Actually, he seemed to her, at this moment of conscious triumph, younger, less mature, than she had seen him before, as the excitement of the deed broke through the reserves which were born of shyness and pride, and had been augmented by the restraints which he practised toward herself.

        For the moment, it even caused him to forget La Cerda's visit, and that which must shortly be asked of her.

        Venetia, surveying the world around her with cool and accurate eyes, did not regard him as a genius of battle, but as a gallant and very fortunate boy, which it was much better to be. For fortune, in her world, was a very tangible thing.

        It would have been absurd to compare him, in military experience, in political knowledge, in a score of various abilities, with La Cerda, who had the name of one of the most capable men of his troubled times. But what was the use of that, if it had not kept him from the Grand Master's disgrace, from the peril of St. Elmo's massacre? He was one to whom fortune showed a frown which seemed unlikely to change. . . . And Venetia meant that Francisco should give her more than it could ever be in the power of La Cerda to do.

        Her first thought had been no more than to change protectors, when it had seemed that La Cerda's star had been near to set; and had he been later by half an hour when he came on Francisco and her in Angelico's room, she might have put the virtue of the younger man to a test which it would not easily have sustained. But after that she had changed to a bolder dream. To be Francisco's mistress might be pleasant enough, but it would be better to be his wife.

        There was nothing in the fact of her known position as the amie of a monkish prince to prevent such a marriage, either in civil or ecclesiastical law, or in the social customs that ruled the time. There was more obstacle in the gutter from which she came, but even that was no more than had been overcome by other women who were among the highest in Europe then. Indeed, her position as La Cerda's mistress might be held as evidence that it had already suffered its first defeat. By the code of that day, it was demonstration that she could not be entirely unfitted to become one of the most honoured ladies of Spain. Still - she had far to go, and some high barriers to be overcome.

        She did not doubt that she had shown wisdom in her restraint, though she chafed at times that she must not follow her body's will. To be wanton to this proud and very innocent boy (who was nearly of her own years, but was child to her) would have been pleasant enough, and would have held him by a strong cord, but she had resolved that she would be a madonna instead, and was shrewd enough to see that she took a way that held him more strongly still.

        So she endured the confinement of the small chamber of stone, coming out only at night, as her safety required, feeling that she had found a safe lair at a very difficult need, and that she was not wasting her time.

        None would disturb her there: the discipline was too strict: the movements of the men too straitly controlled. The turn in the stone entrance, which was in lieu of a door, and was intended to secure the occupant from the danger of shot, or flying fragments of stone, was as absolute as a concealment could be, unless one of the men should step in, and look round into his captain's retreat; and who would venture to leave his post for such a purpose as that?

        Even so, he might have been silenced or cajoled, either by bribe or threat; but, in fact, none looked, and none but Captain Antonio, who had an adjoining retreat, had suspicion, until she had become careless, and stood revealed to a sudden moon, of which she was still unaware. A few yards from the movements of men, she had been as secure as though separated by dividing miles.

        She had used the exigencies of that narrow space, into which Francisco must frequently come, and where he must sleep and dress, with a discreet skill, which would have been beyond the resource of one less experienced in the world's ways, and in the habits and dispositions of men.

        He had given up his chamber within the castle, under pretext that he would not leave the battery now that St. Angelo was so closely besieged, but with the further reason that he must be constantly there to secure the privacy for his own cell that it had become vital to have. He must make it his in fact, as well as in name, that the intrusion of others might not be risked.

        In this intimacy, she had been careful to maintain a physical distance, a discreet modesty, such as would hold his respect: she had made pretence that she trusted his chivalry as sufficient shield for one who was La Cerda's mistress, not his.

        But having established this distance first, she had proceeded to allure him with every weapon she had, either of beauty or wit, as though seeming unconscious of what she did; doing no more in this than to secure redundant victories in a strife she had already won. And gradually, as the days passed, she had hinted in casual ways that she was in no haste to return to La Cerda's arms. Was it wonder if he dreamed, though with slender hope, of a time when she might come to his in a woman's way? That she was seldom out of his waking thoughts? That in his heart he cursed the way that she had come to his power, so that he supposed he could not press her to love without his own honour's loss, unless they should come to a freer time? Understanding which, Venetia smiled in the dark, and was well content. . . .

        Now, after she had lain on her couch in that narrow place, listening to the confused uproar that told of the Turkish storm, and then to the crashing discharge of culverins that were not many yards from her own head, Francisco had come to tell her of the effect with which he had been able to use his guns.

        "It will be," she said, "a most high honour for you; for which the Order should give you thanks in a public way."

        "They will not do that," Francisco replied, being a better prophet than she on that point. "It is not their way. Nor have I done more than to take a chance that came to my hands, and I could not miss. I have done nothing, beyond that I changed the sakers for guns of a better length that were idle in my own ship, it being moored to the inner quay. After that, the praise is for them who laid them well, that they did not miss."

        "But that," she said, "even though it were fairly said, is not how honour is paid. It is he who succeeds, from whatever cause, and he who is first in command on the winning day who will take reward. They would make you Commander, I well suppose, for this and your Uncle's name. But you do not think to take the oath of a Maltese knight?"

        There was something more than a casual curiosity in the way in which this question was put, something of the tone of one who has a personal stake at issue on the reply, of which he could not fail to become aware, as she may have meant.

        "I have not thought much of that," he replied; "it was my uncle's design, which, had he lived, he would have urged me to do. It is a high honour, and so esteemed in all Christian lands. But I like not the monkish vows."

        "The vows," she said, "are not such as can be praised by a woman's lips, be they evil or good. Nor am I likely to love that which has chased me here.

        "And the Grand Master," she went on, feeling it to be a discourse that the text required, "may not show his full wisdom in this, that he holds that we who have the high honour to be the consolation of Knights of God, are in ourselves of less honour than ladies should like to be; which is because, as I suppose, if he had his way, they would have no consolation at all, which may be more than men of a living blood will consent to endure.

        "But he would see, if his harshness of hate did not cast a scarf round his reason's eyes, that if we be faithful to whom we love, though we be not held in the Church's bond, our honour must stand with those who may be wed in a colder way."

        She spoke what she had thought out before, as having a good sound for Francisco's ears, but she was not unaware that it had more than one edge, coming from the lips of her who had little will to be true to La Cerda now. She had a sound instinct that, though she might be legally free to wed, she would have a better chance to win Francisco to that end if La Cerda were not alive. Why would he not die, where so many did? Even St. Elmo had not been able to bring him to that!

        Her words brought La Cerda to Francisco's mind in another way, which was as unwelcome to him.

        "The Chevalier La Cerda was here today," he said, "enquiring for you.

        "Leon here! "she exclaimed. "You told him naught? He does not know where I hide?"

        Her voice was sharp with a sudden dread, which confirmed the doubt he had felt before as to what she would wish him to do, and gave him a satisfaction therefrom which it would have pleased her to know. But she had little pleasure in his reply, though he could deny that he had done that which was her first fear.

        "I said I could tell him naught, unless I have warrant from you."

She saw some implications of that which she did not like.

        "Then he must know I am here?"

        "He knows less than that. He will conclude that I can see you within the day. That I could not avoid."

        Could not avoid! She thought things which it would have been foolish to say. She grew very still, as she would when danger was near. Her face ceased to reveal her thoughts.

        As she was not quick to speak, he went on: "I have his promise that he will not make revelation of aught to which you do not consent; and even then it shall be in such form that there will be nothing said of how I have held you here."

        "And how," she asked, with some reason behind her scorn, "did he think to contrive that? We are to plead mercy of most pitiless men, and I with my hands red with the blood of death, and we are to elect what we will say, or where we will remain still. It would be to ask for the rack in an urgent voice!"

        "I know not what he may have in mind," Francisco replied, feeling that he faced a blame which should not be his, "but he would have it that I presumed too far in that which was his matter and yours, and on which he would let me know that you would come to easy accord if I let you meet. . . . But that his arm is not healed, and that I did not know what you would wish, it had been likely to come to steel, as it did when we met before."

        "When will he be next here?"

        "At tomorrow noon."

        "I will tell you before then what you shall say. We will leave it now. . . . But I have been sheltered here while the storm goes by, and to venture out, when there is no evident need - !"

        Francisco felt with her in that. For her to go would be as though the sun should have left the sky; and he could not think either that La Cerda would find her a surer retreat, or that she could now be disclosed without more trouble than it would be easy to overcome. Why must the man come with a bandaged arm? He should have been met with denial of all reply but a dagger's point, and if swords and daggers had soon been bare - well, there might have been some comfort in that!

        Even the great deed he had done had come to seem no more than a little thing, nor was he urgent to know whether, in that noise of strife that still thundered to south and east, the Sanglea endured or was overrun. War and love battled for his regard, and he was most aware of the tyranny of a woman's eyes, which might be withdrawn after they had lately softened to him.

        He went out to where Antonio watched by the waiting guns that. would not be loosed on another prey, or at least not for that time.

CHAPTER VIII

        MUSTAPHA, having resolved to attack the Sanglea with all the force that he had, had given Hassan sole command of the operations there against, both by water and land. He had done this because Hassan had come with a crescent fame: he had the vigour of youth: he had the confident manner of those who are sufficient for the crises of life: and his name was one to give valour to doubtful men.

        It was also to be weighed that he had had no share in St. Elmo's siege, and its abortive assaults, which had brought no glory to Turkish arms, but only reaped with a hungry sickle the lives of men. He came freshly upon the scene, with an unsullied prestige.

        But Mustapha, who resolved all in a subtle mind, had a motive beyond these. The losses of the regular army of the Turks, of the famous regiments of spahis and janissaries whose horsehair standards had been the terror of the Balkan battlefields for the half-century that had seen the Cross go down, and the rise of the Crescent Moon, had suffered losses since they had been landed in Malta two months before, of which he had dreaded to make report.

        He knew that Soliman would hear more lightly of the loss of every man that Dragut brought to the war than that one of his favourite regiments had been destroyed. And Dragut had stubbornly and perversely regarded matters in a quite opposite light. If Piali would attack too soon, he had said more than once, it should be Turkish lives that should be exposed to the Christian fire. He preferred that his pirates should live to another day.

        Mustapha considered the new levies that Hassan had brought, and he thought that it would be an excellent thing that they should advance on the Sanglea redoubts, and be shot down by St. Michael's guns. But he saw that Hassan might be of Dragut's mind, rather than his, on this point. To ensure that he should not refuse his own troops, there could be no better way than to give him command of the whole operation, to which, indeed, Hassan made no demur.

        He agreed to conduct the attack on the Sanglea, and that his own corsairs should lead the assault on the inland side. Mustapha made his mistake when he loaded the boats with the very flower of the Turkish ranks. He had been subtle in that too, not doubting that they would land, and at a time when the Christian strength would have been largely engaged (if not spent) in resisting Hassan's attack, so that the honour of success might be lightly theirs, as he would prefer it to be.

        Hassan made no more objection to that. With a seaman's eye, he may have judged the risk of the water attack to be greater than it appeared to one who was more familiar with operations on solid ground. He said that his own lieutenant, Candelissa, should command the boats, for which he was as good a man as could have been found. So it is said that he did. But as he was alive on the next day, we must suppose that he was in the one boat that was left unsunk, or that he found some pretext to stay ashore.

        When Piali sulked that the command was not to be his, as Mustapha had expected him to do, he was appeased with words adroit in a falsehood which could not be seen, if at all, till a later day: "This is not for you, whether it may fail or succeed. For, if it fail, it will remain yours to succeed at a better time. And should it succeed is there not St. Angelo standing beyond? It will be your turn for the greater deed."

        But in his heart Mustapha resolved that there should be no other name than his own to be linked with that last assault, when the eight-pointed cross should be trampled down from its last footing on Malta's rocks, as he had served it in the fertile garden of Rhodes, forty years before. . . .

        Hassan looked with cool and confident eyes on a chaos of strife and blood that spread far around the bastioned trenches of the Sanglea, and from which a confused and dreadful noise rose into the tortured air.

        The Christians fought well. So he had expected that they would do. The losses of his own troops must be rising to a high tale. He had expected no less. He knew (as De Broglio said before) that a fosse will feed on the lives of men. But he knew, beyond that, that the cost of failure, at the last count, is always heavier than that which success will ask. He did not intend to fail. He loved the war of the sea better than these bloody scuffles upon the shore, but, if he undertook to storm the Sanglea, he meant that it should be done.

        When they brought him the tale (which he had partly seen from afar) of the dreadful loss of the boats, he could afford to take it without despair, seeing how sorely he pressed the Christian lines by that time. He may even have thought: "Well, it is Tripoli will have honour here," with a content that he must not show.

        He looked at the Christian ramparts, against which his legions rose like a storming sea. Knightly pennons which had flaunted at dawn were no longer there. They were in his own camp, the raped spoil of waves of attack which had risen over the wall. These had been thrown back, but they rose again, and he watched for a higher wave to advance at last which would rise, and rise - and go on.

        They who fought to retain the low long ramparts of the Sanglea were not in danger alone from those who made its assault; they were exposed to a pitiless, ceaseless fire from a surrounding circle of foes, who were in number as six to one. They must show themselves to a hail of death, or, if they crouched low, it would be to see the gleam of scimitars rising over the wall.

        Hassan said: "It is time to bring this to a right end." He planned well. He saw that the most part of the defenders had been drawn to the eastward ramparts that faced the land, which it was his effort to take by storm. He judged that there would be few left to protect those that faced the inlet, between the land and the fort of St. Michael at the end of the spur. He ordered that the cannon that had bombarded the Sanglea over the narrow inlet, shattering the palisade which ran the length of the middle creek, should prepare to augment their fire. He chose men of good courage, used to water, and to taking ships by the board. He ordered that they should be led by those who knew where the shallow inlet could be waded, leaving their shoulders bare at the deepest parts. The shorter men were to fall out of the ranks at their own choice, should they be unable to swim.

        When he had launched these attacks, which he did not expect to succeed, he supposed that they would draw off many of those who were now on his own front, who were few and weary enough as they then were, and so the time would come for the last assault, by which he was resolved to prevail.

        He marshalled his best troops, which he had held back till that time, and rode along the front of the fierce turbaned ranks, pointing with his scimitar to the ramparts that had so far endured, but which he thought to be near their fall.

        "Sons of the Prophet," he cried, "I point the way of honour and safety alike, for if you allow yourselves to be thrown back now, as you need not be, you must charge again, at a further cost, till that wall is won. The Christian dogs are weary and few. Forward, my children, in Allah's name, and the town is yours."

        The fierce dark fanatic faces, lifted to his, burst into a wild barbaric cry, as of a beast that has scented prey. With shouts of God's and the Prophet's names, with clash of cymbals and throbbing of urgent drums, they surged forward to the attack.

        The Christians met them with a fire that strewed the ground with the best and bravest who led the charge, but it was one that would not falter nor pause. Gapped and thinned as they were, the ardent ranks swept on, and over the wall. Sword and scimitar, axe and pike, met in a turmoil of bitter strife, where no thought of mercy would be likely to come. Either side might have their own chivalries for themselves, but in this war they slew dogs, such as could not be too quickly sent to their native hells. He who, for the moment, could not meet with an active foe, would seek the wounded, to make an end with another thrust, knowing that what he did would be pleasing to God, and might cancel a score of sins. But such respites were few. Under the meeting ranks, fosse and wall became a shambles of blood and the trampled dead.

        Hassan had not led the charge, which it was not his business to do. But he rode forward, urging the rearward rank in support, and reined his horse so close to the fosse's edge that he could observe how each man played his part for honour or blame, which he would not forget to give.

        There was, in fact, little danger in what he did, for the discharge of firearms had almost ceased on both sides, now that they were locked in so close a broil that no shot could have been aimed at a foe which would not have been as likely to find its rest in a friend's back. He sat there as separate and secure as one who looks on at a show.

        As he looked, his face took on a stern satisfied smile, for he saw that his corsairs' fury was not in vain. Inch by inch, they won footing upon the wall.

        But the Christian knights, though driven back for some space, were of no disposition to fly. They fought on in a stubborn way, and others came running to their support. The strife swayed backward again. Hassan's face changed. He shouted encouragement to men who were unable to hear: who were most concerned with their own lives, as they struggled to hold their ground, drenched, as they mostly were, either with their own or another's blood.

        He saw that it was one of those moments when the issue quivers between victory and defeat, and may be turned by a shout, or a single blow. He rode his horse back for a few yards, and then forward toward the ditch, which he took with a flying leap.

        The splendid barb that he rode came down on the curtain's edge as surely as a swallow alights, but the next moment it rolled screaming upon the ground, its belly pierced by a Christian lance. Hassan avoided it as it fell. His scimitar came down in a flashing death upon a man whose lance could not be recovered in time to protect his head. He shouted a war-cry that rose over the clamour of meeting steel and the voices of frenzied men, and his name echoed an inspiration along the strife. The Moorish line was swaying forward again.

        La Cerda had been among those who had run to the support of that perilled front. He had been sent, on Del Monte's order, with other knights from a quieter place. They came fresh of vigour and heart among wearied and wounded men. For a moment they had sustained the defence, until Hassan had leapt the fosse. A short distance behind, Del Monte himself, with all the men he could spare from St. Michael's fort, was hurrying to the threatened line.

        Hassan saw a knight who was not easy to miss. He showed some freshness of silk, and of polished steel, among those whose armour was soiled and dimmed. He stood firm also, among men who gave ground, who flinched somewhat away. He bore no shield, but had his sword in a single hand, his left arm bandaged against his side.

        Hassan's scimitar, keen and curved, cut the air as it threatened the head of the Christian knight, and was parried well. Hassan had a small round buckler on his left arm, to take the point of the straighter sword which was the weapon of Western lands. So it must do now. The two warriors found themselves engaged in one of those duels which were common in the hand-to-hand strife of that day, from which others might stand aside. The difference of weapons and styles of fence made attack more dangerous than defence was sure, and such combats were quickly done.

        Hassan gave the first wound. Aiming at the weakest approach, he slashed at La Cerda's left, so that the scimitar's keen thin point cut down the length of the upper arm to such depth that the blood spouted high from the wound. Seeing, that he could not endure with that hurt, La Cerda staked all on a downward blow that the Moor was too late to turn. He wore a turban lined with Damascus steel, which was well for him. The fine metal was furrowed deeply, but not cut through. Hassan stumbled forward, and fell at La Cerda's feet.

        The fierce hostile crowds that had paused a moment to watch the bout closed in an instant rush to rescue or make an end. Behind them, Del Monte, with a score of knights at his side, charged forward in a rush that regained the wall. The corsairs perished or fled, their inspiration ended with Hassan's fall, but not till they had borne him safely away. In another hour, he was again in control, with no more hurt than a bruised head, and a turban to be repaired.

        But Del Monte had bent his knee by a dying man. The arm might have been staunched, and would have proved less than a fatal wound, but La Cerda had taken another thrust from a nameless hand.

        Del Monte heard talk that La Cerda had cut down the Moorish leader, so that it was likely that he was dead. It was certain that his valour, and Hassan's fall had held back the tide of attack, giving Del Monte time to arrive.

        He would have shriven him, seeing him to be close to death. "You have done well," he said, "for the Cross of Christ, and if you are sped now, as you must know that you are, it is such a death as must give pleasure to God. Have you aught you would now confess? Have you worldly charge that I can make mine, to secure your peace?"

        La Cerda spoke from a fluctuant mind, and his voice was low.

        "I would have your word," he said, "- for the Commanders will listen to you when the Council meets - I would have your word that he shall do me no further despite."

        "If I understand what you mean," Del Monte replied, "as I will not pretend in another way, it is that which is lightly sworn, for the Grand Master will give you honour for what you have done this day, as it is his nature to do."

        "I will take your oath," La Cerda replied to that, "though as to what the Grand Master would be likely to do, I should say you mis-deem, for he has a venom which will not stay at the gates of death. . . . But I will die content that I have your oath that he shall do me no more despite, either against her, or him who has sheltered her from his bitter hate."

        The words were slow and faint, so that Del Monte must bend to hear. As he caught them, he was perplexed with a doubt that he had been taken to swear something more and different from that which he had supposed to be in La Cerda's mind.

        So he would have said, or at least that he must be better informed on that which he was expected to do, but he saw that he spoke, if not to a dead man, to one who had become deaf to all earthly words.

        "It is the death," he said, "of a good and most misfortunate knight." He made .he sign over his breast which the devils fear, and turned to order a strife which was not yet done, though its issue was no longer in doubt.

CHAPTER IX

        "HE shall be buried," the Grand Master said, "with all the honour his deeds deserve, for it was a most valorous act to so stand his ground when the line sagged, and against one of Hassan's repute, he having, as we may say, but one arm.

        "I have a confident hope that God allowed him thus to assoil his soul, putting aside the feeble counsel he gave before, which came, as I suppose, from the lecherous life which he then led, by which devils had entrance to whisper behind his ear. But we may hope that he had also renounced that lechery from his soul, its cause having been vanished away."

        He said this in Sir Oliver's room, Del Monte also being there. He was exultant at the great success of the last day, for if they had to provide for the burial of two hundred who had been slain, including such knights as it was pity to lose, yet the attack had been thrown back upon every side, and with such loss that the Turks might not be over-quick to attempt it a second time. It was talked that, including those who had been drowned from the boats, their loss was not far short of four thousand men, which may be hard to believe; but if we suppose it to include such as would soon be healed for another bout, we may say that it is no more than may be the lot of those who set flesh against stubborn stone, if it be defended well from above.

        The Grand Master spoke less as one expecting reply, than as giving judgement over the dead, but Del Monte was a man of plain words, though not contentious of mood, and he would make it clear that he did not agree.

        "You are right," he said, "as to half, and perhaps more. But as to St. Elmo, and the counsel he gave, I would advise, if you will not take it amiss, that there should be no such words over his tomb, if you should have occasion to speak in a public way when our brothers are laid to rest. For there are many who hold that he said no more than a good knight should, giving honest counsel of war; and he has shown by his end that he did not speak from any faintness of heart, as was said by some at that time.

        "And as to putting lechery from his soul, it is between God and him now, and there is no need to say more; except only this, that as he died he made his appeal to me, that I should speak on his part, if you should seek to do him further despite.

        "That I said you would never practise to do, and so I lightly swore that I would take his part in such case; but if I should prove to be in error in that, then, by the high Passion of God, I will not be dumb.

        "Yet I will say that at the time I swore I did not clearly perceive (hearing but the faint words of a dying man) that his thoughts were on her whom you supposed he had put aside, his petition being made for the wanton who fled away, and for one (as I understood) who had sheltered her from the law's pursuit."

        The Grand Master listened to this with a look in which resentment followed surprise, but he controlled himself as a smaller man would have been less able to do.

        "Del Monte," he said, "we will have no quarrel for this, and on a day when Heaven's mercy has blessed our arms. La Cerda's soul is with God, and its judgement His, and we have our own, which are still to save. But having sworn such an oath to maintain his part, I will say that you have spoken knightly and well, though it may have been little honour to me. Nor would I be wroth at honest words which are spoken for me to hear, knowing that worse are said when I am further away, by those who are worthy of less esteem. . . . And as to the wanton who could so corrupt the soul of a knight of God, I will go so far as to hope she may not be found. But if she be, I will do justice without reprieve, thinking only of the high office I hold, and neither to favour the living, nor to heed the pleas of the dead."

        Having said this, he went out, being more deeply moved even than his words showed, for he thought at times that he was hated by all, and was less than sure that he had such support of God as should make him deaf to the contemning voices of men.

        Sir Oliver looked after him, and spoke with a friend's voice.

        "I would that he were not so deeply stirred as he often is, for he is not young" (La Valette was sixty-eight at this time), "and he spends his strength in too free a way. He is wrong at times, as we may be tempted to think, but I suppose that he was sent by God to support this hour, and he lives for Malta alone."

        "You are his good friend," Del Monte replied, "and have spoken nothing to which I do not agree. . . I will tell you this, that I was, as it were, trapped to the oath I gave, from which I cannot think that I am therefore absolved, for I do not conclude that La Cerda meant to trap me at all. But he thought of a woman he loved, as a man will at the gates of death, and St. Elmo was in my mind."

        "So I have no doubt that it was; yet, if you will heed my guess, the woman of whom you speak, as she is not one to deserve a love of a constant kind, so she did not have it from him. It was pride that stirred, rather than love, in a dying man. It was, in your own word, which I take for his, that the Grand Master should not do him further despite."

        Del Monte did not dispute that. He said: "Well, there was one hope the Grand Master had, with which we may both accord. It will be well that she be not found."

        It was at this time that Francisco was with Venetia in his rock-hewn cell, and they talked of La Cerda's death. It was a joy to her which she knew she must not show. She had contrived a tear, which may have been slower to fall, knowing that there were no more of its kind to come.

        Francisco sat by her couch, and a soft hand fell on his wrist, as though by an idle chance, and was not taken away.

        "I cannot grieve," she said, "as I should, having been so friended by you."

        Francisco kissed her hand for so kind a word.

        His fingers moved on her arm, and were sharply withdrawn, for he had thrilled to a sudden passion at which he feared, lest his knighthood be brought to shame. Yet La Cerda's death had been joy to him, with the birth of a better hope than he had been able to feel before. It was a hope he could not obtrude in this moment of natural grief. . . . But at a near day. . . . When this siege would be done, as it soon might (how many more boats must be first sunk? What a slaughter it must have been to a nearer view!) and when people would come and go in a free way, so that she could be removed without fear - or perhaps sooner than that - he had eager, impatient dreams, over which honour shone, an unclouded star. . . .

        An hour later, when they were talking still, between silences which were more pregnant than words, he was roused by Captain Antonio's voice. He stood discreetly without. He said: "Captain, the Grand Master is nearly here. I suppose I am not to hold him at bay?"

        Francisco went out with an elation that he found hard to conceal beneath the cloaks of shyness and pride, for he knew that the Grand Master must be coming to inspect the battery which had worked such havoc the day before, and perhaps to give him some tangible honour, or more certain praise for the part which he had been able to play.

        He did not meet the Grand Master alone, for Sir Oliver Starkey was there; and three other Commanders of the Order; and a file behind of the gay-uniformed Castle Guards showed that the visit was of an official sort. There was one other that Francisco had not expected to see, for Sir Oliver brought Angelica at his side.

        "You shall come," he said; "for it must be pleasure to hear that your cousin will have a merited praise, and to him alike to know that you hear it said."

        Angelica would have preferred to have kept away, but she had been alert that Sir Oliver should have no guess that Francisco and she were estranged, lest he should guess further toward the cause, and the same caution had kept her dumb now, being unable to think of a plausible pretext that she would not be glad to be there.

        The Grand Master was generous in his praise, and particular in the inspection he made. He must see not only the Santa Martha's guns, by which the boats had been overset, but the ways in which the battery had been made strong, beyond the thought of its first design.

        "I had no purpose in this," he was frank to say, "beyond to here establish guns of such range that they would command the boom which they overlook. But you have brought guns of a greater range, and made it an outwork of solid strength, so that both harbour and castle are more secure; and, beyond that, you have been able to strike in a vital way from where they thought we had no such fangs. . . . I marvel that it had not been betrayed before now, for there is little they do not learn."

        Francisco must answer that with explanation of the care with which he had chosen those who must handle the battery guns, and the discipline which made spying hard, and the Grand Master approved again.

        "You are of your Uncle's blood," he said, "and it is pleasure to know that it does not fail. For it draws the venom of death if we can feel that we live again in those that are of a near blood." He sighed, as he spoke, from a private grief, having had his own son (or nephew as he must be called by the etiquette which the Statute of De L'Isle Adam required, and which he had himself been stern to enforce, since he had come to his present power) killed but a few days before, which may be held to show that he had been less austere in his younger days than he now was; but he said nothing of that.

        He asked how the guns with which the battery had been first supplied would be put to use, and gave praise again when he was shown that preparations to mount them at a new angle were well advanced.

        "By which time," Sir Oliver said, "I must make allotment of further men for this post. Can you give good shelter to such?"

        Francisco said there need be no doubt about that, and the Grand Master, who was ever one to see all, to the last item there was, must inspect the excavations in which men might crouch secure against hostile shot, when they were not working the guns.

        Venetia heard the voices without, which approached her cell. She could tell they were looking into that which Captain Antonio had, being next to hers. She was in her bed at this time, being the sole one that the cell held, for Francisco would lie on the floor. There she would be most of these days, having no purpose for which to rise. She had lain as they had talked for the last hour, with Francisco on a stool at her side.

        Now she looked round in a sudden fear. Was there no place where she could hide from intruding eyes? She sprang out to the floor. As to clothes, she could have had more on, and not much. She ran round, like a trapped rat, seeking a hole that was not there. She heard Captain Antonio's voice without: "There is naught to be seen here, it is like to mine." She stood in the midst of the floor, not daring to move. Was the danger past?

        She heard a more austere voice, being that of the Grand Master, though that was more than she knew. "But the angle should be sharper than that, if it is to keep out a fragment of flying stone. Now you observe here - "

        Footsteps approached round the bend.

        For once Venetia did not know what to do. She stood still.

        The Grand Master stopped, as must those behind, who could see less. He may be excused that there was a moment when amazement had made him dumb.

        He came from the sun to a cell that was dimly lit, and may have wondered at first if he could be deceived by the sudden gloom. But as his eyes adjusted themselves he became assured that he looked at a woman whose body, supple and young, was reserved from sight by no more than a short shift, and a shawl of price, blue and broidered with gold, that was round her neck as a frame for a pale-gold head.

        "Oliver," he said, "what in the fiend's name do we find here?"

        The Grand Master did not suppose that Sir Oliver had any special knowledge of this. He simply appealed to him for any information that he required; as it was his habit to do.

        Had he not been directly asked, Sir Oliver might have kept still, and the Grand Master discovered no more than that Francisco kept a wanton within his cell. That might have been trouble enough, but it could not have gone deep or far after the service he had just done, for he was not bound by the Order's vows.

        But, being so addressed, Sir Oliver made explicit reply: "As I think, it is she who is sought for the steward's death."

        "It is shrewdly guessed." The Grand Master had advanced into the cell by this time, and it was half filled by those who crowded behind. He looked round to ask in a sharp voice: "Don Francisco, will you explain?"

        Francisco had been at the rear of the group, and, as those of better right followed the Grand Master into the cell, Angelica was left at his side. She knew what was to come some seconds before the Grand Master spoke, for it was what she had been fearing to see. For where else could he have hidden the girl, as she had no doubt he had done?

        She had watched Antonio turn La Valette adroitly to his own cell, and then his futile effort to prevent the entrance of that before which they stood. At the moment, all other thoughts were swept back by that of the danger in which Francisco lay.

        Standing as though dazed, to await that which he had no power to control, he heard her voice, low and intense, at his side: "Francis, will you not go? There is yet time."

        Antonio spoke at his other hand. "There is a boat under the quay, at the hither steps." It was a provision he had made for such a moment as this, though he had said no word of it before.

        And it was clearly a chance. There were none around but the Grand Master's Guards, who surely would not oppose his way, and some of his own men. If he could reach the boat, he might row round to some part of the island which was still in Maltese hands. With the help of gold, of which he carried a full pouch. . . . Antonio would have said that a slender chance is much better than none.

        There was a moment during which Francisco was unresolved, though it is unlikely that he would have fled, being of too high a pride not to defend that which he had thought fitting to do. But while he paused, he heard Venetia's voice - a cool, insolent voice - and his resolution was made. "I will not leave her," he said, "having done nothing beyond my right."

        Venetia had not left it to Francisco to give the Grand Master reply. In that pause of silence she had seen that she was cornered beyond retreat, and her courage rose to the audacity which (as she thought) the occasion required.

        "If you will know who I am," she said, "I am here to ask. I am La Cerda's amie, as you suppose. I was his who died for your cause in the last day. Would you seek to shame me for that? Is it knightly done, that you do not retire when you see me as I now am?"

        Francisco had come forward by this. He faced the Grand Master in the pride of youth and a foolish love, and was neither abashed nor afraid.

        "There is not much to explain. I gave shelter to one who came to me in a great need, he who should have been her shield having been jailed for a cause which I do not know. If I may say it with great respect, I am not of the High Order of which you are Head, nor am I under its vows, but I have done in this as my own honour required (or as I so held); and for this you may hold me excused the more if I have been of some service to you, as you have graciously said in the last hour."

        The Grand Master heard them both, but did not directly reply. He looked round the narrow cell, and its meaning did not seem doubtful to him, seeing what she had been, and what she was to his own eyes. He saw that the cell had no exit, except that through which they had come. He said to her: "You will have time to be more seemly attired for this hour, and for walking abroad, but you must do it with speed. You are charged with a man's death, and you must first answer to that."

        He turned, and those who were there withdrew before him out of the cell, so that Venetia was left alone. He placed two of his guards at the entrance, to make arrest when she should come out. "You will give her," he said, "to the Provost-Marshal's hands, letting her have commerce with none till you have delivered her thus, she being charged with a public crime."

        He walked away with no further word till he mounted the castle stairs, letting those follow who would. Then he turned to say: "Oliver, I would be alone. We will talk of this at a later hour."

        He saw that he was alone already, except that Sir Oliver had come closely behind, and there were two guards who had followed to the foot of the stair, as their duty was. He went on to his own room, which he still kept for his official affairs, though his lodging was in the town.

CHAPTER X

        ANGELICA, with misery at her cousin's peril warring with other feelings (but with a bright colour in none), lingered at his side, unsure that he wished her there, but reluctant to go. Antonio stood his ground alike, thinking that he saw what must be done, and of a resolute purpose to make it clear.

        Francisco stood with no thought now of the flight which Antonio would have urged. His irresolution was of another sort. How could he aid her most? Should he go to her now, to take counsel while there was time? He was unsure whether the guards who stood waiting to make her arrest would regard it as within their duty to bar his way, and he might well hesitate to incur the humiliation of refusal or to attempt a violent entrance.

        Antonio, knowing his own mind better than the others knew theirs, was the first to speak.

        "If you will take advice from one who has seen more of the ways of men than you have had leisure to do, and can observe where you stand, as has ever seemed to be somewhat beyond your sight, you will use a time which may not be long. You should be away in this hour."

        The words brought decision to Francisco's mind, or perhaps rather consciousness of decision already made.

        "You may see well," he replied, "with your eyes, but they are not mine. I will neither desert her part at this need, nor will I fly as one pleading a guilt which I do not own. . . . And I may be in less danger than you suppose, for you must see that the Grand Master has passed me by, though he has made her arrest, he being silenced by what I said."

        "I have observed you," Antonio answered to that, "to be as guileless as any man I have met, and as no woman could ever be; but, if you can think that, you are more innocent than I had concluded before. He owes you thanks for these guns, and for what they did. He will neither forget that, nor will it turn him aside from the hard methods of war. He will act by the process the law provides, without dally or haste, and if you should use the time to be quickly gone, I would not say that he would be overmuch grieved. But in her case there was process already out, and her arrest is the routine of the law. . . . And he may be the more content that you go, having her safely within the bag. . . . Here is Don Garcio, who was once your friend. He may know more of these matters than we, being in Sir Oliver's grace as few are. You can ask him, if you will, and see whether we do not counsel alike."

        Francisco must look at his cousin when this was said, and met troubled eyes.

        "Francis," she said, "I would not urge you to flee, if you think it shame, but I am in a great fear. There was proclamation of death against who should do what you cannot deny, and it was said to be without favour to any, of whatever degree. It is time of war, and the Grand Master can be a most hard, though I would not say that he is a pitiless man."

        "Be he as hard as he may," Francisco replied, "he has foes enough over the wall, without making others of those who have done such service as I. . . . I would say that it is counsel of cowards, if you will not take it amiss. But we may urge our friends to that which our honour would not allow."

        "Then," Antonio replied, "if you call me coward, I will say no more, beyond this. You may go in the next hour, or you will be dead in a week. So in that space you must get all the further honour your life will know."

        "That you are wrong in that," Francisco replied, with more confidence than he had spoken before, "I would wager all you could lose, except that, if the loss were mine, I might lack occasion to pay. But, in a word, I will stay here, as my duty is. Only, I will leave you in charge for a short time, for I will see the Provost-Marshal, that she be lodged as her station requires, and have such comforts as gold will buy."

        "You may spare your legs," Antonio replied, "for a better cause. For I can tell you that the Provost-Marshal has not so base an apartment to give, but it would be better than was the cellar from which she came."

        Angelica did not understand all the implications of this remark, not being aware that Venetia had been born in the next Genoese street to that in which Captain Antonio made his home, but she felt that there was another beside herself who would not have valued Venetia at her own price, at which she was not displeased. She felt also that Francisco was taking the course which honour required, and, if that were so, it must not be her part to turn him aside for any peril it had.

        She saw too that dignity and discretion (for even he must see that his friends were few enough now!) might be insufficient to restrain her cousin's resentment at Antonio's contemptuous words, and was the quicker to speak, that she might turn his mind in another way.

        "Francis, I would not ask you to play the coward, as I think you know. But will you assent that I see Sir Oliver now, and learn all I can of what the Grand Master will be likely to do? And I will meet you again, and you could then resolve how it may be avoided, or else met."

        "Yes," he said, though with less grace than he might, "I will thank you for that, if it can be readily learned, for it will be of avail to know. . . . Can you say a word beyond that, that Venetia be not too straitly confined, she having done that which her honour required, and no more?"

        There was a pause during which she was not sure what her answer would be. Venetia's honour? She did not think its requirements could be much, at whatever pass. Much less than even a steward's blood should be spilled to save. Look where she was now! But then she laughed in her sudden way: "Yes. I will say that, if you so desire." She turned abruptly, seeing that Venetia was coming out, whom she was not anxious to meet.

        Francisco, when he cast his thoughts in that way at a later hour, was content to feel that the shadow which had lain between his cousin and him was somewhat lifted aside. He associated it vaguely with his having taken Venetia under his protection, which it had been necessary to conceal, even from her. But if she had not known, nor perhaps guessed, till now, could it be that? Then he remembered Angelica's reproach that he had put her in such a position that she had been obliged to appear as his mistress in La Cerda's eyes, lest there should have been more mischief than that. . . . It had been as they came down the stairs that the quarrel had reached its head, though it had been latent before. Its root had lain in his reproaches against herself that she had come in a disguise that he thought shame to the name she bore. . . . Yet he saw that her honour stood, and that she had maintained it somewhat more firmly than he could be said to have done with his to that hour. He saw also that she had shown more loyalty to himself than he had to her (though he would never have loitered to reach her side, had she been in peril that he could aid, as he may have failed to observe), and these were thoughts that he did not like. They abased his pride. He had been grave to rebuke what he thought the unseemly prank that had brought her there, and it was he who was fallen into the pit, while she walked cool and secure.

        Yet he was glad to feel that the cloud between them was less, though it had not gone. When he thought of that, he realised, by instinct's rather than logic's aid, that Venetia was the cause, and that she was one whom Angelica was never likely to love. In fact, he must make a choice. Sooner or later, it would come to that, more definitely than now. He did not doubt what the choice would be, for Venetia filled his thoughts, and every passionate hope was centred upon her sharp gay wit, her courageous conduct of life, and the grace of her pale-gold head; but the thought gave him no joy. For, by a paradox which is frequent in the interchanges of human life, as Angelica had become less to him, she had become more. But Venetia was the madonna who filled his dreams.

        Turning from these thoughts to his own peril (if such it were), he found that he could face it with less fear than it may have seemed to deserve. Every passion must thrive at the cost of others, which dwindle that it may swell. He thought of what he had done, and could see little to blame, and even less to regret. The Grand Master's proclamation might threaten a felon's fate, but why should such things be proclaimed? Bitter anger and pride strengthened him to fight fear, and to meet any accusation which might be made with a bold front. Had he not sunk the boats which would else have landed those who might have won the centre of the Sanglea, even had St. Michael's fort still flown the eight-pointed cross, which was less than sure? And it had been something more than the competence which every battery commander may be expected to show, that his guns be fired at the best time, and pointed aright. It was through himself alone that there had been guns there of range sufficient to fire across the whole length of the Christian defence on the harbour-front. And his reward was no more than this! He felt that he would not lack words in his own relief, though he was not always known for a fluent tongue. If he had played a boy's part, it seemed that it would be met in a man's way.

        He had these thoughts as he walked back from the common jail in the Bourg, where Venetia had been confined. He had found gold to be as potent there as it ever is, whether in palace or slum; though he had paid out less than he would, having had the use of Antonio's wisdom before he went.

        For the little captain had not spared his advice, though he thought it to be a fool's errand which Francisco pursued. "You will do less with ten crowns of gold," he had said, "if you pay them down, than if you give one, and show other four which are to be earned in a settled way. But with gold enough that is kept in sight but not pouched, you could put her even to the Grand Master's bed, so that he must sleep on the floor."

        Francisco may have gained less for Venetia than for his own peace; for she knew enough of jails on their inner side to have got most that she would, short perhaps of the master-key, but she would have paid in a coin which he would not have been quick to guess; as to which she would have said that it left her as rich as she was before, which we may find to be true enough, if we consider it well.

        Francisco was not overlong abroad, but he found that Angelica had come and gone when he got back, having had no more to say than she could ask Antonio to report to him.

CHAPTER XI

        "I MUST know," Angelica said, "in what danger my cousin lies, for I can have no peace till I do."

        Sir Oliver did not resent the words or manner of this address, which would have been unfitting from whom she pretended to be, and was not much better from whom she was as they both knew, for the sharp anxiety in her tone was easy for him to hear, and his reply was kinder than may be plain in the written word.

        "Then you must know something I cannot tell, for there is nothing resolved. But I tell you all that I may when I say that the Grand Master is agreed that he will do nothing alone. There is Council called for the last hour of the day, when the Commanders will consider your cousin's case."

        "Then he can be under no restraint till that hour?"

Sir Oliver frowned a little at a question which he thought should not have been asked, and the more so if it were not done in an idle way.

        "Why do you ask? It is that which you should be able to resolve in your own mind, without assurance from me."

        "I ask because I would have it clear that he will remain of his own will, as having done nothing which should be dispraised in a just mind."

        "Can you think that?"

        "It is not what I think that can be of any account. It is for him I would speak. He is resolved that he will not go, as he has time to do."

        "Can you say where?"

        "No. But there are those who could. Of whom he is one."

        "You have learnt this from him?"

        "There are things I have heard, and I think there are none that I may not say, or at least to you, so that I mention no name but his. He could have gone if he would."

        "Well, I will not ask where, which is not easy to see. But I will say that I think him wise. . . . Yet, when I say that, you must not build on it too much, for this is a matter on which I shall have no warrant to deal. It is over me.

        "I should