‘Thou hast a warm heart, lad,’ he said, ’and ’tis for that I like thee.  And if thou hast a chief place in thy heart for me, I cannot grumble if thou find a little room there even for our enemies.  Would I could set thy soul at ease, and do all that thou askest.  In the first flush of wrath, when he was taken plotting against our lives, it seemed a little thing enough to take his evil life.  But now these morning airs have cooled me, and it goes against my will to shoot a cowering hound tied hand and foot, even though he had murdered twenty sons of mine.  I have thought if there be any way to spare his life, and leave this hour’s agony to read a lesson not to be unlearned until the grave.  For such poltroons dread death, and in one hour they die a hundred times.  But there is no way out:  his life lies in the scale against the lives of all our men, yes, and thy life too.  They left him in my hands well knowing I should take account of him; and am I now to play them false and turn him loose again to hang them all?  It cannot be.’

Still I pleaded hard for Maskew’s life, hanging on Elzevir’s arm, and using every argument that I could think of to soften his purpose; but he pushed me off; and though I saw that he was loth to do it, I had a terrible conviction that he was not a man to be turned back from his resolve, and would go through with it to the end.

We came back together from the brambles to the piece of sward, and there sat Maskew where we had left him with his back against the stone.  Only, while we were away he had managed to wriggle his watch out of the fob, and it lay beside him on the turf, tied to him with a black silk riband.  The face of it was turned upwards, and as I passed I saw the hand pointed to five.  Sunrise was very near; for though the cliff shut out the east from us, the west over Portland was all aglow with copper-red and gold, and the candle burnt low.  The head of the pin was drooping, though very slightly, but as I saw it droop a month before, and I knew that the final act was not far off.

Maskew knew it too, for he made his last appeal, using such passionate words as I cannot now relate, and wriggling with his body as if to get his hands from behind his back and hold them up in supplication.  He offered money; a thousand, five thousand, ten thousand pounds to be set free; he would give back the Why Not?; he would leave Moonfleet; and all the while the sweat ran down his furrowed face, and at last his voice was choked with sobs, for he was crying for his life in craven fear.

He might have spoken to a deaf man for all he moved his judge; and Elzevir’s answer was to cock the pistol and prime the powder in the pan.

Then I stuck my fingers in my ears and shut my eyes, that I might neither see nor hear what followed, but in a second changed my mind and opened them again, for I had made a great resolve to stop this matter, come what might.

Maskew was making a dreadful sound between a moan and strangled cry; it almost seemed as if he thought that there were others by him beside Elzevir and me, and was shouting to them for help.  The sun had risen, and his first rays blazed on a window far away in the west on top of Portland Island, and then there was a tinkle in the inside of the lanthorn, and the pin fell.