What had happened along that moonlit coast? * * * * * Night waned. Morning dawned with all the fair golden glory of that southern clime. On the shore of Isola Sacra stood a man, his gaze fixed eastward as it had been fixed ever since the growing light had enabled him to perceive distant objects with any degree of distinctness. The British regiment at Corfu would have failed to recognize their captain in this man with his wild air, blood-shot eyes, and haggard face staring continually over the sea. For the twentieth time his shaking hands raised the field-glasses. Whenever he turned the binoculars to that point of coast where Castel Nuovo should have been, he found that Castel Nuovo was not there. Focus the glasses as he would, he could not detect a trace of the edifice. The blue sea seemed to be rolling over the site! In like manner other landmarks along the coast had disappeared, notably a white lighthouse a few miles to the north of Castel Nuovo. The mountains, too, seemed to present an outline differing from that of the previous day. Then the truth in all its ghastliness broke upon Paul, and, strong man though he was, he dropped upon the sands as one dead. The explanation was simple and terrible. During the night an earthquake had devastated the coast of Dalmatia; towns had been laid in ruins; scores of people had perished; and, among a crowd of minor catastrophes enumerated by the "Zara Times" of that week, was the complete submergence of a picturesque edifice, erected in the fourteenth century by the Doge Marino Faliero, and known by the name of Castel Nuovo! THE STORY CHAPTER I TWO YEARS AFTERWARDS "Here's to the Princess of Czernova!" cried Noel Trevisa,--a dark-eyed, handsome young fellow,--raising his glass as he spoke. "Have you seen her yet, Paul?" Captain Cressingham, or to use the new name assumed by him on the death of a relative, Captain Woodville, smiled at the enthusiasm with which his friend proposed the toast. "I entered Slavowitz only last evening," he replied, "and have already been asked that question six times. It seems to be the first one put to a visitor." "And when you have seen her you will cease to wonder at the pride of the Czernovese in their princess. Natalie Lilieska is more than beautiful,--she is Beauty's self." This interchange took place on an elevated balcony of the Hôtel de Varsovie, the principal establishment of its kind in Slavowitz, the picturesque capital of the old Polish principality of Czernova. Between Paul and his companion stood a marble-topped table decorated with a bottle of Chartreuse and a box of cigars, and in the quiet enjoyment of these luxuries the two Englishmen yielded themselves to lazy abandon in the soft sunshine of a spring morning, watching the gay current of Czernovese life as it flowed along the boulevard beneath their feet.