“How know you that?”

“Saint Christopher! how know I?  Did I not just meet him at the main hatch so drunk he fell over the coamings.  The sojer on guard set him up against the butt of the foremast to sober off in the night air.”

I experienced difficulty in repressing a laugh at the words, but the two fellows were going down by this time, grumbling in their beards because they had discovered nothing wrong as reward for their trip aloft, so I contented myself by silently pressing my companion’s arm, although doubtless he had comprehended no word of the conversation.

We rested there motionless, with no attempt at speech, for fully twenty minutes before I ventured to haul in the line which dangled downward from my hand.  Everything remained quiet below, and, coiling it carefully over my arm, I noiselessly arose to my feet once more, poising myself to essay a second cast.  As straight this time as an arrow from the taut string of a bow the noose sped silently away into the darkness.  I felt a thrill of delight tingle through me as the end settled softly over the end of the vague, distant spar.  I drew the cord taut and firm, not a sound breaking the intense stillness closing us in like a wall.  A heavy wooden post, with a pulley attachment, stood behind where we rested, probably fitted there for hauling up heavy bales of cotton.  Creeping back, I wound the slack of the rope about its base, drawing it as tight as possible, and then placed the end in the hands of the observant and wondering priest, who continued to creep after me like a shadow.

“Now all I expect of you is to hold hard on this rope until I get across on to the spar,” I whispered.  “When I give three distinct jerks on the cord, then let loose of your end; but drop it slowly, mind you, pere, so I can draw it in without noise.  You had better creep to the edge of the roof with it before you release your hold.  Do you understand?”

He nodded silently, his eyes gazing unwaveringly into mine.  I held forth my hand to him, moved by the sudden impulse of such a movement.  As he gave me his own in response it felt as cold as ice, yet I marked his grip was strong.

“As soon as I coil in the rope you had better creep down and go home,” I explained, speaking slowly, for somehow I felt it strangely hard to part with this last tie between the present and the uncertain future.  “You can be no further use to me; Madame will be anxious to hear your report, while it might prove exceedingly awkward for one of your cloth to be trapped here after this night’s work is discovered by the Dons.  So now good-bye; you are a man of nerve, even if you are a priest, and I am glad to have been comrade with you.”