“He did it!” Heywood’s hands opened and shut rapidly, like things out of control.  “Oh, Wutz, how did they—­Saint Somebody—­the martyrdom—­ Poussin’s picture in the Vatican.—­I can’t stand this, you chaps!”

He snatched blindly at his gun, caught instead one of the compradore’s halberds, and without pause or warning, jumped out into the shallow water.  He ran splashing toward the bank, turned, and seemed to waver, staring with wild eyes at the strange Tudor weapon in his hand.  Then shaking it savagely,—­

“This will do!” he cried.  “Good-by, everybody.  Good-by!”

He wheeled again, staggered to his feet on dry ground, and ran swiftly along the eastern wall, up the rising field, straight toward his mark.

Of the men on the knoll, a few fired and missed, the others, neutrals to their will, stood fixed in wonder.  Four or five, as the runner neared, sprang out to intercept, but flew apart like ninepins.  The watchers in the boat saw the halberd flash high in the late afternoon sun, the frightened pony swerve, and his rider go down with the one sweep of that Homeric blow.

The last they saw of Heywood, he went leaping from sight over the crest, that swarmed with figures racing and stumbling after.

The unheeded sentinel in the marsh fled, losing his great hat, as the boat drifted round the point into midstream.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DRAGON’S SHADOW

The lowdah would have set his dirty sails without delay, for the fair wind was already drooping; but at the first motion he found himself deposed, and a usurper in command, at the big steering-paddle.  Captain Kneebone, his cheeks white and suddenly old beneath the untidy stubble of his beard, had taken charge.  In momentary danger of being cut off downstream, or overtaken from above, he kept the boat waiting along the oozy shore.  Puckering his eyes, he watched now the land, and now the river, silent, furtive, and keenly perplexed, his head on a swivel, as though he steered by some nightmare chart, or expected some instant and transforming sight.

Not until the sun touched the western hills, and long shadows from the bank stole out and turned the stream from bright copper to vague iron-gray, did he give over his watch.  He left the tiller, with a hopeless fling of the arm.

“Do as ye please,” he growled, and cast himself down on deck by the thatched house.  “Go on.—­I’ll never see him again.—­The heat, and all—­By the head, he was—­Go on.  That’s all.  Finish.”

He sat looking straight before him, with dull eyes that never moved; nor did he stir at the dry rustle and scrape of the matting sail, slowly hoisted above him.  The quaggy banks, now darkening, slid more rapidly astern; while the steersman and his mates in the high bow invoked the wind with alternate chant, plaintive, mysterious, and half musical:—­