The O’Mahony walked, unarmed, and with a light, springing step, across the sloping sward to the tower. He paused at the side of its gray wall for an instant, to note that the _Hen Hawk_ lay only a few feet distant from the pier-end. Then he entered the open ground-door of the tower, and found himself in a circular, low, stone room, which, though whitewashed, seemed dark, after the bright sunlight outside. Some barrels stood in a row against the wall, and one of these was filled with soiled cotton-waste which had been used for cleaning guns. The newcomer helped himself to a large handful of this, and took from his pocket a compact coil of stout packing-cord. Then he moved toward the little iron staircase at the other end of the chamber, and, leaning with his back against it, waited. The next minute the door above opened, and the clatter of spurred boots rang out on the metal steps. The O’Mahony’s sidelong glance saw two legs, clad in blue regimental trowsers with a red stripe, descend past his head, and then the flaring vision of a scarlet jacket. “Well, they’re landing, it seems,” said the officer, as his foot was on the bottom step. The O’Mahony turned like a leopard, and sprang forward, flinging his arm around the other’s neck, and jamming him backward against the steps and wall, while, with his free hand, he thrust the greasy, noxious rags into his mouth and face. The struggle between the two strong men was fierce for a moment. Then the officer, blinded and choking under the gag, felt himself being helplessly bound, as if with wires, so tightly were the merciless ligatures drawn round arms and legs and head--and then hoisted into mid-air, and ignominiously jolted forward through space, with the effect of riding pickaback on a giant kangaroo. The O’Mahony emerged from the tower, bent almost double under the burden of the stalwart captive, who still kept up a vain, writhing attempt at resistance. The whole episode had lasted scarcely two minutes, and no one above seemed to have heard the few muffled sounds of the conflict. [Illustration: 0151] With a single glance toward the companions he had left in hiding among the sycamores, he began a hasty, staggering course diagonally down the side of the mound toward the water-front. He did not even stop to learn whether pursuit was on foot, or if his orders had been obeyed concerning Linsky. At the foot of the hill he had to force his way through a thick thorn hedge to gain the roadway leading to the pier. Weighted as he was, the task was a difficult one, and when it was at last triumphantly accomplished, his clothes hung in tatters about him, and he was covered with scratches. He doggedly made his way onward, however, with bowed, bare head and set teeth, stumbling along the quay to the vessel’s edge. The _Hen Hawk_ had been brought up to the pier-corner, and The O’Mahony, staggering over the gunwale, let his burden fall, none too gently, upon the deck.