“It is Satan!” they shouted, “Satan, who comes to drag the folk of Venice down to hell.  Kill him ere he lands.  Kill him!”

Even Grey Dick went mad like a dog when he meets a ghost.  His pale hair rose upon his head, his cold, quiet eyes started.  He set an arrow on the string of the black bow, drew it to his ear and loosed at the figure on the poop.  But that arrow never left the string; it shattered to flinders where it was and fell tinkling to the marble floor.  Only the barb of it turned and wounded Grey Dick in the chin, yes, and stuck there for a while, for his right arm was numbed so that he could not lift his hand to pull it forth.

“Truly, I have shot at the Fiend and hit that at which I did not aim,” muttered Grey Dick, and sat himself down on a post of the quay to consider the matter.  Only, as it seemed to him, he who stood on the poop of the ship not ten yards away smiled a little.

Unheeding of the clamour, this man upon the poop suddenly lifted the coil of rope and threw it shoreward.  It was a thick and heavy rope, with a noose at its end, so heavy that none would have believed that one mortal could handle it.  Yet it shot from him till it stood out stiff as an iron bar.  Yes, and the noose fell over one of the stone posts on the quay, and caught there.  Now the rope grew straighter still, stretching and groaning like a thing in pain as it took the weight of the great, drifting ship.  She stayed; she swung round slowly and ranged herself broadside on against the quay as a berthed ship does.  Then down the ladder on her side came the Man.  Deliberately he set his white-sandalled feet upon the quay, advanced a few paces into the full light of the bright moon and stood still as though to suffer himself to be seen of every eye.

Truly he was worth the seeing.  Hugh noted his garments first, and particularly the head-dress, which caught his glance and held it, for never had he known such a one before.  It was a cap fitting tight to the skull, only running across the crown of it was a stiff raised ridge, of leather perhaps, jagged and pointed something like the comb of a cock.  This comb, of brilliant red, was surmounted at its highest point by a ball of black of the size of a small apple.  The cap itself was yellow, except its lowest band, which stood out from it and was also black.  In the centre of this band upon the forehead glowed a stone like a ruby.

Such was the head-dress.  The broad shoulders beneath were covered with a cape of long and glossy fur blacker than coal, on to either shoulder of which drooped ear-rings made of rings of green stone which afterward Hugh came to know was jade.  The cape of fur, which hung down to the knees and was set over a kind of surplice of yellow silk, was open in front, revealing its wearer’s naked bosom that was clothed only with row upon row of round gems of the size of a hazel nut.  These like the fur were black, but shone with a strange and lustrous sheen.  The man’s thick arms were naked, but on his hands he wore white leather gloves made without division like a sock, as though to match the white sandals on his feet.