All distinction of faith was lost in the general ridicule.  Now the Westphalian was gone, there was not a man among them to doubt that a navigation, so accompanied, would be cursed.  Baptiste stammered, muttered many incoherent sentences, and finally, in his impotency, he permitted the dangerous secret to escape him.

The intelligence that Balthazar was among them produced a solemn and deep silence.  The fact, however, furnished as conclusive evidence of the cause of their peril to the minds of these untutored beings, as a mathematician could have received from the happiest of his demonstrations.  New light broke in upon them, and the ominous stillness was followed by a general demand for the patron to point out the man.  Obeying this order, partly under the influence of a terror that was allied to his moral weakness, and partly in bodily fear, he shoved the headsman forward, substituting the person of the proscribed man for his own, and, profiting by the occasion, he stole out of the crowd.

When the Herr Mueller, or as he was now known and called, Balthazar, was rudely pushed into the hands of these ferocious agents of superstition, the apparent magnitude of the discovery induced a general and breathless pause.  Like the treacherous calm that had so long reigned upon the lake, it was a precursor of a fearful and violent explosion.  Little was said, for the occasion was too ominous for a display of vulgar feeling, but Conrad, Pippo, and one or two more, silently raised the fancied offender in their arms, and bore him desperately towards the side of the bark.

“Call on Maria, for the good of thy soul!” whispered the Neapolitan, with a strange mixture of Christian zeal, in the midst of all his ferocity.

The sound of words like these usually conveys the idea of charity and love, but, notwithstanding this gleam of hope, Balthazar still found himself borne towards his fate.

On quitting the throng that clustered together in a dense body between the masts, Baptiste encountered his old antagonist, Nicklaus Wagner.  The fury which had so long been pent in his breast suddenly found vent, and, in the madness of the moment, he struck him.  The stout Bernese grappled his assailant, and the struggle became fierce as that of brutes.  Scandalized by such a spectacle, offended by the disrespect, and ignorant of what else was passing near—­for the crowd had uttered its resolutions in the suppressed voices of men determined—­the Baron de Willading and the Signor Grimaldi advanced with dignity and firmness to prevent the shameful strife.  At this critical moment the voice of Balthazar was heard above the roar of the coming wind, not calling on Maria, as he had been admonished, but appealing to the two old nobles to save him.  Sigismund sprang forward like a lion, at the cry, but too late to reach those who were about to cast the headsman from the gangway, he was just in time to catch the body, by its garments, when actually sailing in the air.  By a vast effort of strength its direction was diverted.  Instead of alighting in the water, Balthazar encountered the angry combatants, who, driven back on the two nobles, forced the whole four over the side of the bark into the water.