He drew her into the shadow under the bulwark, and, sitting down on a coil of rope, crushed her body to his own and began kissing her with fury. She lay, at first, limp in his arms, but gradually she kindled to his passion. A plash of oars announced the approach of the boat. The captain hallooed into the darkness: "Did you find him?" "Yes, we have him here," came back the answer. "Good. Bring him alongside and we'll hoist him up. We have the bier in readiness. He shall lie in state to-night." "But he's not dead," shouted back the voice from the night. "Not dead?" repeated the captain, thunderstruck. "But what about the bier, then?" A thin, feeble voice came back. "Your work will not be wasted, my friend. It will be but a short time before I need your bier." The captain, a little abashed, answered in a gentler tone, "We thought, holy father, that the heathens had done their worst and that Almighty God had already given you the martyr's crown." By this time the boat had emerged from the darkness. In the stern sheets an old man was lying, his white hair and beard stained with blood, his Dominican's robe torn and fouled with dust. At the sight of him, the captain pulled off his cap and dropped upon his knees. "Give us your blessing, holy father," he begged. The old man raised his hand and wished him peace. They lifted him on board and, at his own desire, laid him upon the bier which had been prepared for his dead body. "It would be a waste of trouble," he said, "to put me anywhere else, seeing I shall in any case be lying there so soon." So there he lay, very still under the four candles. One might have taken him for dead already, but that his eyes, when he opened them, shone so brightly. He dismissed from the poop everyone except the young Spaniard. "We are countrymen," he said, "and of noble blood, both of us. I would rather have you near me than anyone else." The sailors knelt for a blessing and disappeared; soon they could be heard weighing the anchor; it was safest to be off before day. Like mourners at either side of the lighted bier crouched the Spaniard and his mistress. The body of the old man, who was not yet dead, lay quiet under the candles. The martyr was silent for some time, but at last he opened his eyes and looked at the young man and the woman. "I too," he said, "was in love, once. In this year falls the jubilee of my last earthly passion; fifty years have run since last I longed after the flesh--fifty years since God opened my eyes to the hideousness of the corruption that man has brought upon himself. "You are young, and your bodies are clean and straight, with no blotch or ulcer or leprous taint to mar their much-desired beauty; but because of your outward pride, your souls, it may be, fester inwardly the more.