Sir Edward started and turned round. It was the sleeper, it seemed, who had risen and come behind him unobserved--an immense shambling figure of a man, ragged and hoary. Power no less than age spoke in his massive frame, in his hands like roots, in his sinewy neck. Even the few teeth that remained to him were like bones of contention in a resolute jaw. Shadowy, a dim giant, he stood up in his mouldy duds in the starlight. An opportune phantom, too foul and solitary for a spy. Sir Edward, under stress of urgency, took what the Fates had sent him. “Can you pull?” he asked only. The great creature jeered hoarsely. “Aye,” he said, “though it were the house of Dagon about the ears of the Philistines.” Sir Edward made a wry mouth; there was a tang in this of the pietistic cant he was old enough to remember. But the occasion was urgent. “We desire to light at Gravesend before dawn,” he said. “You shall be well paid if you enable us.” He entered the boat, and the man followed, the latter signifying in a determined manner that he would pull stroke. The concession being made to a certain arrogance of will in the fellow as much as to his physical strength, they took their seats and the craft put off. The four passengers were all in cloaks and unfeathered hats. The King, unconscious, it seemed, of the addition to their number, or of the brief parley which had led to it, sat next the water, dark, silent, preoccupied. They had hardly reached midstream when he put his hand over the side, and something slid from it into the flood without splash or sound. As he recovered his position with a sigh, his eyes encountered those of the new-comer, and he started slightly and spoke under his breath: “Who is this?” “A figure of exigency, sir,” whispered Sheldon, “hired to speed us the quicker to an end. A supplementary hand and a strong one was needed, it seems, to bring us under night to our goal.”