He was dead; he was gone; I was free! He would never know where she was; never! He had gone, with the question on his lips; with the agony of uncertainty in his eyes. From the door came an immense, grotesque, and horrible chuckle. “Aha!-Aha! I have saved you, Señor, I have protected you. We are as brothers.” Against the tenuous blue light of the dawn Salazar was gesticulating in the doorway. I felt a sudden repulsion; a feeling of intense disgust. O’Brien lying there, I almost wished alive again--I wanted to have him again, rather than that I should have been relieved of him by that atrocious murder. I sat looking at both of them. Saved! By that lunatic? I suddenly appreciated the agony of mind that alone could have brought O’Brien, the cautious, the all-seeing, into this place--. to ask me a question that for him was answered now. Answered for him more than for me. Where was Seraphina? Where? How should I come to her? O’Brien was dead. And I.... Could I walk out of this place and go to her? O’Brien was dead. But I... I suddenly realized that now I was the pirate Nikola el Escoces--that now he was no more there, nothing could save me from being handed over to the admiral. Nothing. Salazar outside the door began to call boastfully towards the sound of approaching footsteps.’ “Aha! Aha! Come all of you! See what I have done! Come, Señor Alcayde! Come, brave soldiers...” In that way died this man whose passion had for so long hung over my life like a shadow. Looking at the matter now, I am, perhaps, glad that he fell neither by my hand nor in my quarrel. I assuredly had injured him the first; I had come upon his ground; I had thwarted him; I had been a heavy weight at a time when his fortunes had been failing. Failing they undoubtedly were. He had run his course too far. And, if his death removed him out of my path, the legacy of his intrigue caused me suffering enough. Had he lived, there is no knowing what he might have done. He was bound to deliver someone to the British--either myself or Nichols. Perhaps, at the last moment, he would have kept me in Havana. There is no saying. Undoubtedly he had not wished to deliver Nichols; either because he really knew too much or because he had scruples. Nichols had certainly been faithful to him. And, with his fine irony, it was delightful to him to think that I should die a felon’s death in England. For those reasons he had identified me with Nikola el Escoces, intending to give up whichever suited him at the last moment. Now that was settled for him and for me. The delivery was to take place at dawn, and O’Brien not to be found, the old Judge of the First Instance had been sent to identify the prisoner. He selected me, whom, of course, he recognized. There was no question of Nichols, who had been imprisoned on a charge of theft trumped up by O’Brien.