Knight Templar, or The Avenging Saint

puzzled question shaped itself in his mind, on the brink of utterance; but then, before he could speak, her lips brushed his mouth, very lightly.

Then he was alone.

'Thank you, Sonia,' whispered the Saint.

He knew there was no one to hear.

Then he went quickly into the wheelhouse; and his hands flashed over the spokes as he put the wheel hard over. And once again he remembered his song:

'Modest maiden will not tarry;

Though but sixteen year she carry,

She must marry, she must marry,

     Though the altar be a tomb— '

The Saint smiled crookedly.

For a space he held the wheel locked over, judging his time; and then he went out again onto the bridge. The line of land was slipping round to the starboard quarter, dangerously near. He went back and held the wheel for a few moments longer; when he emerged for a second survey the coast was safely astern, and he permitted himself a brief prayer of contented thanksgiving.

The quartermaster and the third officer, at the starboard end of the bridge, had both returned to life. Simon observed them squirming in helpless fury as he made for the companion, and paused to sweep them a mocking bow.

'Bon soir, mes enfants,' he murmured. 'Remember me to Monsieur Vassiloff.'

He sped down to the upper deck to the cabin below. His business there detained him only for a matter of seconds; and then he raced down another companion to the main deck. Every second lost, now that the ship was headed away from the shore, meant so much more tedious rowing; and the Saint, when pruning down an affliction of that kind of toil, was in the habit of moving so fast that a pursuing jack rabbit would have suffocated in his dust.

The girl was waiting at the foot of the gangway.

'Filled the aching void, baby? . . . Well, stand by to make the jump when I give the word. It's a walk-over really—but don't lose your nerve, because I shan't be able to hold the boat for ever.'

He dropped on one knee, locking one arm round the lowest rand-rail stanchion and gripping the tworope with his other hand. Inch by inch he edged the boat up to the grating on which they stood, until it was plunging dizzily through the wash only a foot away.

'Go!' said the Saint through his teeth; and she went.

He saw her stumble as the boat heaved up on a vicious flurry of water, and held his breath; but she fell inside the boat—though only just—with one hand on the gunwale and the other in the sea. He watched her scramble away towards the stern; and then he let go the slack of the rope, buttoned his coat, and leaped lightly after her.

A loose oar caught him across the knees, almost bringing him down; but he found his balance, and pivoted round with Belle flashing in his hand. Once, twice, he hacked at the straining rope, and it parted with a dull twang. The side of the ship seemed to gather speed, slipping by like a huge moving wall.

'Hallelujah,' said the Saint piously.

The transhipment had been a merry moment, in its modest way, as he had known all along it would be, though he had characteristically refused to grow any gray hairs over it in anticipation. And in this case his philosophy was justified of the result.

He waved a cheery hand to the girl, and clambered aft. As he flopped onto a thwart and started to unship a pair of oars the black bulge of the steamer's haunches went past him; so close that he could have put out a hand and touched it; and the flimsy cockleshell, slithering into the unabated maelstrom of the ship's wake, lurched up on its tiller and smashed down into a seething trough with a report like a gunshot. An undercarry of fine spray whipped into his eyes. 'Matchless for the complexion,' drawled the Saint, and dipped the first powerful oar.

The lifeboat yawed round, reeling back into easier water. A few strong pulls, and the merry moment was over altogether.

'Attaboy ....!'

He rested on his oars, with the frail craft settling down under him to comparative equilibrium, and carefully mopped the salt spume from his face. Over the girl's shoulder he could watch the shadowy hull of the departing ship sliding mon­strously away into the darkness. The steady pulse-beats of its engines came more and more faintly to his ears—fainter, very soon, than the booming and boiling of its wash against the coast. . . .

The Saint reached forward, lifted a battered sandwich from the girl's lap, and took a large contented bite.

'Feelin' good again, lass?'

'All right now, Big Chief.'

'That's the spirit.' All the Saint's buoyant optimism reached her through his voice. 'And how you'd better get gay with those vitamins, old dear, while I do my Charon act. You can't keep your end up on an empty stomach—and this wild  party is just getting into its stride!''

And, with his mouth full, Simon bent again to the oars.

4

IT WAS A STIFF twenty minutes' pull to the shore, but the Saint took it in his night's work cheerfully. It gave him a deep and enduring satisfaction to feel his muscles limbering up to the smooth rhythm of the heavy sweeps; and the fact that the boat had never been designed for one-man sculling practice robbed him of none of his pleasure. The complete night's party wasn't everyone's idea of a solo piece, anyway, if it came to that; but the Saint wasn't kicking. He was essentially a solo per­former; and, if the circumstances required him to turn himself into a complete brass band—well, he was quite ready to warm himself up for the concert. So he rowed with a real physical en­joyment of the effort, and when the boat grounded at last, with a grating bump, there was a tingle of new strength rollicking joyously through every inch of his body.

'This way, sweetheart!'

He stood up in the bows. Fortunately the beach shelved steeply; watching his chance with the ebb of a wave he was able to jump easily to dry land. The girl followed. As her feet touched the shingle he caught her up and swung her bodily out of reach of the returning water, and stood beside her, his hands on his hips.

'Home is the sailor, home from the spree. . . . And now, what price Everest?'

With a hand on her arm he steered her over the stones. Something like a low wall rose in front of them. He lifted her to the top of it like a feather, and joined her there himself a moment later; and then he laughed.

'Holy Haggari—this is indubitably our evening!'

'Why—do you know where we are?'

'That's more than I could tell you. But I do know that there's going to be no alpine work. Pass down the car, Sonia!'

The land reared up from where they stood—not the scarp that he had expected, but a whale's back, overgrown with stunted bushes. They moved on in a steady climb, the Saint's uncanny instinct picking a way through the straggling obstacles without a fault. For about fifty yards the slope was steep and the foothold precarious; then, gradually, it began to flatten out gently for the summit. Their feet stumbled off the rubble onto grass. . . .

He stopped by a broken-down fence at the top of the climb to give the girl a breather.

Eighty feet below, the sea was like a dark cloth laid over the floor of the world; and over the cloth moved two steady points of luminance—the masthead lights of the ship that they had left. To right and left of them the coast was shrouded in unbroken obscurity. Behind them, the land fell smoothly away in an easy incline, rising again in the distance to the line of another hill, a long slow undulation with one lonely spangle of light on its farthest curve.

'Where there's a house there's a road,' opined the Saint. 'We may even find a road before that, but we might as well head that way. Ready?'

'Sure.'

He picked her up lightly in his arms and set her down on the other side of the fence. In a moment they were