“Marion has not been seen since morning.  The king’s officers are searching for her.”

The door slammed, the chains clanked loudly, and above the sound of Jeekum’s departure Neil’s voice rose in a muffled cry of joy.

“They are gone!  They are leaving the island!”

Nathaniel stood like one turned into stone.  His heart grew cold within him.  When he spoke his words were passionless echoes of what had been.

“You are sure that Marion would kill herself as soon as she became the wife of Strang?” he asked.

“Yes—­before his vile hands touched more than the dress she wore!” shouted Neil.

“Then Marion is dead,” replied Nathaniel, as coldly as though he were talking to the walls about him.  “For last night Marion was forced into the harem of the king.”

As he revealed the secret whose torture he meant to keep imprisoned in his own breast he dropped upon the pallet of straw and buried his face between his arms, cursing himself that he had weakened in these last hours of their comradeship.

He dared not look to see the effect of his words on Neil.  His companion uttered no sound.  Instead there was a silence that was terrifying.

At the end of it Neil spoke in a voice so strangely calm that Nathaniel sat up and stared at him through the gloom.

“I believe they are coming after us, Nat.  Listen!”

The tread of many feet came to them faintly from beyond the corridor wall.

Nathaniel had risen.  They drew close together, and their hands clasped.

“Whatever it may be,” whispered Neil, “may God have mercy on our souls!”

“Amen!” breathed Captain Plum.

CHAPTER XI

“THE STRAIGHT DEATH”

Hands were fumbling with the chain at the dungeon door.

It opened and Jeekum’s ashen face shone in the candle-light.  For a moment his frightened eyes rested on the two men still standing in their last embrace of friendship.  A word of betrayal from them and he knew that his own doom was sealed.

He came in, followed by four men.  One of them was MacDougall, the king’s whipper.  In the corridor were other faces, like ghostly shadows in the darkness.  Only MacDougall’s face was uncovered.  The others were hidden behind white masks.  The men uttered no sound but ranged themselves like specters in front of the door, their cocked rifles swung into the crooks of their arms.  There was a triumphant leer on MacDougall’s lips as he and the jailer approached.  As the whipper bound Neil’s hands behind his back he hissed in his ear.

“This will be a better job than the whipping, damn you!”

Neil laughed.

“Hear that, Nat?” he asked, loud enough for all in the cell to hear.  “MacDougall says this will be a better job than the whipping.  He remembers how I thrashed him once when he said something to Marion one day.”