When this was done, and all the knights again assembled, D’Aubusson said, “Our work is nearly done, brothers.  The traitors are all dead, and the revolt is at an end.  It remains but to capture the author of this attempt; but I believe he is already in our hands.  I have given an accurate description of him to Da Veschi, who has taken four knights with him, and they probably will catch him down at the port; if not, he will be arrested the first thing in the morning.  As to the slaves, they will be so utterly cowed by the discovery, that there will be no fear of their repeating the attempt.  I have ordered the officials of the prison to say naught in the town of what has taken place.  There can, however, be no concealment among ourselves.  I shall, of course, lay the whole matter before the council.  The fact that a strong body of knights has, at so late an hour, started on some unknown mission is, of course, already known in the auberges of Auvergne and England.  No concealment of the facts is therefore possible.  It is the most serious attempt at a revolt of the slaves that has ever taken place, and will be a warning to us that more vigilance must be exercised.  As it is, we have only been saved from the loss of our galleys and slaves by the acuteness of one of the youngest of our knights, who, in the first place, noted a suspicious occurrence which would have been passed by without attracting a moment’s thought by ninety-nine out of a hundred men.  He laid the matter before his bailiff, Sir John Kendall, who accepted his offer to disguise himself as a slave, to enter the prison under circumstances that would excite no suspicions among the others, and to live and work among them in order to ascertain whether there was any plot on hand.  This task —­ a painful one, as you may imagine —­ he carried out, and for two weeks he rowed as a galley slave.  His lot was as hard as that of the others, for, as he had reason to believe that some of the officials were concerned in the plot, it was necessary that all should be kept in ignorance that he was other than he seemed to be.  Thanks to his perfect knowledge of Turkish, he was able to carry his mission through with complete success, and to obtain full particulars of the plot we have tonight crushed.  The knight who has performed this inestimable service is Sir Gervaise Tresham, of the English langue.  The action he has performed will be noted in the annals of the Order as an example of intelligence and of the extreme of self sacrifice, as well as of courage; for his life would have been assuredly forfeited had the slaves entertained the slightest suspicion of his real character.”

There was a murmur of acclamation among the knights.  Not one of them but would have freely risked his life in the service of the Order, but there were few who would not have shrunk from the idea of living as a slave among the slaves, sharing their tasks, and subject to the orders of men of inferior rank and often brutal manners.