The stops so formidable at first became as stars in the dark....  Little loves, little fears and sins and hopes were all he had known before; and now he entered into the torrential temperaments of the masters—­magnificent and terrifying souls who dared to sin against God, or die defying man; whose passions stormed the world; whose dirges were wrung from heaven.  Why, these men levelled emperors and aspired to angels, violated themselves, went mad with music, played with hell’s own dissonances, and dared to transcribe their baptisms, illuminations, temptations, Gethsemanes, even their revilings and stigmata.

The dirges lifted him to immensity from which the abysses of the world spread themselves below.  Two marches of Chopin, and the death-march of Siegfried, the haunting suggestion of a soul’s preparation for departure in Schubert’s Unfinished; the Death of Aase, the Pilgrim’s Chorus, one of Mozart’s requiems, and that Napoleonic funebre from the Eroica—­these, with others, grouped themselves into an unearthly archipelago—­towering cliffs of glorious gloom, white birds silently sweeping the gray solitudes above the breakers....

It was during the four days while Captain Carreras remained in Coral City with Jaffier, that Bedient entered into the mysterious enchantment of the Andante movement of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  He had played it all, forgetting almost to breathe, and then returned to the second movement which opens with the ’celli: 

[Illustration:  Musical notation]

Again and again it unfolded for him, but not its full message.  There was a meaning in it for him!  He heard it in the night; three voices in it—­a man, a woman and a soul....  The lustrous third Presence was an angel—­there for the sake of the woman.  She was in the depths, but great enough to summon the angel to her tragedy.  The man’s figure was obscure, disintegrate....  Bedient realized in part at least that this was destined to prove his greatest musical experience....

Captain Carreras found much to do in the city, but he did not tell Bedient that the real reason for his remaining four days was that he couldn’t sooner summon courage for the long ride home.  He spoke but little regarding the reasons Jaffier had called him.

“He’s afraid of Celestino Rey, and likely has good reason,” said the Captain wearily.  “The old pirate is half-dead below the knees, but his ugly ambition still burns bright.  He thinks he ought to be drawing all the Island tributes, instead of the government.  Jaffier expects assassination.  On this point, it would be well to watch for the death of Rey.  These two old hell-weathered Spaniards are worth watching—­each tossing spies over the other’s fences, and openly conducting affairs with melting courtesy toward each other—­but I don’t seem to have much appetite for the game.  There was a time when I would have stopped work and helped Jaffier whip this fellow.  But I hardly think he’ll take our harvests and the river-beds just yet—­”