"Indeed!" replied the voice which had first spoken; "then we, for our part, can stop neither for my lord nor any other lord in heaven or on earth. For Captain Smith of Poole has weighed his anchor, and waits now only the boat's return to run for Branksea, with the wind and the white horses at his tail. Nor is he the man to play pitch-and-toss out there very long, even for his own long-boat and shipmates, with such a spanking blow astern of the _Sea Unicorn_." "My lord will doubtless be here directly. His horse was at the door ere we left," again answered the metallic voice with the quirk in the tail of it. "We will e'en give him other ten minutes," quoth the sailor, imperturbably. [Illustration: "THE MAN CARRIED HER EASILY THROUGH THE SURF"] And he stood with his ship's watch in his hand, swinging his lantern up and down in answer to some signal from the ship, too faint for ordinary eyes to catch across the whip and swirl of the uneasy waves. But he was spared any long time of waiting; for a man in uniform rode up, whose horse, even in the faint light, showed evident signs of fatigue. "You are to proceed on board at once with your charge. My lord has been stricken down by an assassin. He lies in the palace of Amersfort, dangerously but not fatally hurt. Nevertheless, you are to carry out his directions to the letter, and at the end of your journeying he or his steward will meet you, and you shall receive the reward." "That will not do for Captain Smith," cried the sailor, emphatically. "He must have the doubloons in hand ere a soul of you quit the coast." The man who had held Kate in his arms during her night-ride turned sharply about. "Quit your huxtering! I have it here!" cried he, indignantly, slapping his pocket as he spoke. "Run out the boat!" shouted the man, promptly, and half a dozen sailors squattered mid-thigh in the foam and swelter of the sea. "Now, on board with you this instant!" he cried, as one accustomed to command where boats and water were in question. Then the man with the money took Kate again in his arms and carried her easily through the surf to where the men held the leaping craft. One by one the dripping crew and passengers scrambled in, and presently, with four stout fellows bending at the long oars, the boat gathered way through the cold gray waves of the bar towards the masts of the ship which tossed and heaved in the offing. CHAPTER XVI THE BREAKING OF THE PRISON Black Peter Hals stood grumbling and snarling at the door of the prison of Amersfort. It was almost sundown, and the outer city ports were closed at that hour. A crowd of merrymakers had just passed on their way to sup at a dancing-tavern. They had cried tauntingly to him as they went by, and the laughing, loose-haired girls had beckoned tantalizingly with their hands.