The four men charged us fiercely, and while we were fighting just inside the room, Frances worked her way from behind our antagonists toward the battered door and was about to make her escape when one of the king’s men struck her a cowardly blow with the hilt of his sword, and she fell to the floor at the head of the stairs.

“You and Hamilton take her to the boat,” cried De Grammont, speaking to me, but continuing to fence, as though by instinct.  “I’ll hold the door till you call; then I’ll run.  The next best thing to fighting is running.”

I regretted the use of Hamilton’s name, as it would betray his presence, if overheard, which otherwise would not have been suspected, all of us being well masked.  But I had no time to waste in vain regrets, so George and I lifted Frances from the floor and helped her down to the boat, leaving De Grammont just outside the battered door, defending himself nobly against four armed men and keeping them inside the king’s closet.  He seemed to be enjoying himself, for he was laughing, bowing, parrying, and thrusting, as though he were at a frolic rather than a fight.  There is but one people on earth in whose blood is mingled fire and ice—­the French.

When we reached the water, we found that the running tide had carried the boat a short distance down-stream, but Bettina was standing on the stern thwart, bending this way and that in her endeavor to scull back to the landing by means of the steering oar.  Every drop of blood in Bettina’s plump little body was worth its weight in triple fine gold to us that night, for she brought the boat back to us without delay, and George helped Frances aboard while I ran to the foot of the privy stairs, shouting loudly:—­

“Come on, Berkeley!  Come quickly!”

Usually I think of the right thing to say a fortnight after the opportunity, but this once the name Berkeley came to me in the nick of time, and I evened my score with its possessor for many a dirty trick he had put upon me.  To suspect was to condemn with Charles, and I knew that if he heard me call Berkeley’s name, that consummate villain would suffer the royal frown.  And so he did, never having been able to explain, nor deny, satisfactorily to the king, his presence at the head of the privy stairs that night.  But to return to the fight.

De Grammont heard my summons, came down the stairs three steps at a time, and sprang into the boat from the landing.

“The oars!  The oars!” cried Hamilton.

“Death is between them and us!” cried De Grammont.

“Let us go!” cried Betty.  “I’ll scull the boat with the steering oar!”

There was not a man in the boat who knew the art of propelling it with one oar.  Truly Betty was our salvation that night.

I shoved the boat off, Betty turned its head down-stream, and away we shot.  We were not ten paces from the water stairs when five men came running from the privy stairs to the landing.  I recognized the king, who was in the lead.  As they reached the water edge of the landing, I heard a splash.  Majesty, in his eagerness to overtake us, had gathered too great headway and had landed, if I may use the word, in the water.