One of them stood high on lank black legs, with long black arms thrown up stiffly above the black shape of a hat. The two others crouched low on the very edge of the water, peering as if from an ambush. The clearness of this vision was contained by a thick and a fiery atmosphere, into which a soft white rush and swirl of fog fell like a sudden whirl of snow. It closed down and overwhelmed at once the tall flutter of the flames, the black figures, the purple gleams playing round my oar. The hot glare had struck my eyeballs once, and that melted away again into the old, fiery stain on the mended fabric of the fog. But the attitudes of the crouching men left no room for doubt that we had been seen. I expected a sudden uplifting of voices on the shore, answered by cries from the sea, and I screamed excitedly at Castro to lay hold of his oar. He did not stir, and after my shouts, which must have fallen on the scared ears with a weird and unearthly note, a profound silence attended us--the silence of a superstitious fear: And, instead of howls, I heard, before the boat had travelled its own short length, a voice that seemed to be the voice of fear itself asking, “Did you hear that?” and a trembling mutter of an invocation to all the saints. Then a strangled throat trying to pronounce firmly, “The soul of the dead Inglez. Crying for pain.” Admiral Rowley’s seamen, so miserably thrown away in the ill-conceived attack on the bay, were making a ghostly escort to our escape. Those dead boats’-crews were supposed to haunt the fatal spot, after the manner of spectres that linger in remorse, regret, or revenge, about the gates of departure. I had blundered; the fog, breaking apart, had betrayed us. But my obscure and vanquished country-men held possession of the outlet by memory of their courage. In this critical moment it was they, I may say, who stood by us. We, on our part, must have been disclosed, dark, indistinct, utterly inexplicable; completely unexpected; an apparition of stealthy shades. The painful voice in the fog said: “Let them be. Answer not. They shall pass on, for none of them died on the shore--all in the water. Yes, all in the water.” * * * * * _Part Five: Chapter One._ “_Why have I been brought here your worship?_” I asked with a great deal of firmness. _There were two figures in black, the one beside, the other behind a large black table. I was placed in front of them between two dirty soldiers, in the centre of a large, gaunt room, with bare, dirty walls, and the arms of Spain above the judge’s seat._ _“You are before the Juez de la Primera Instancia,” said the man in black beside the table. He wore a large and shadowy tricorn. “Be silent, and respect the procedure.”_