Romance Island

"Malakh," he said, "what have you done with the king?"

The old man lifted his head and turned toward St. George a face of singular calm. It was as if so many phantoms vexed his brain that a strange reality was of little consequence. But as his eyes met those of St. George a sudden dimness came over them, the lids fluttered and dropped, and his lips barely formed his words: "The king," he said. "I did not leave the king. It was the king who somehow went away and left me here--"

He threw out his hands blindly, tottered and swayed from the wall; and St. George received him as he fell, measuring his length upon the stones before King Otho's future tomb.

St. George caught down the light and knelt beside him. Death seemed to have come "pressing within his face," and breathing hardly disquieted his breast. St. George fumbled at the old man's robe, and beneath his fingers the heart fluttered never so faintly. He loosened the cloth at the withered throat, passed his hand over the still forehead, and looked desperately about him.

The other inmates of the palace were, he reflected, about two good city blocks from him; and he doubted if he could ever find his unaided way back to them. Mechanically, though he knew that he carried no flask, he felt conscientiously through his pockets--a habit of the boy in perplexity which never deserts the man in crises. In the inside pocket of the coat that he was wearing--Amory's coat--his fingers suddenly closed about something made of glass. He seized it and drew it forth.

It was a little vase of rock-crystal, ornamented with gold medallions, covered with exquisite and precise engraving of great beauty and variety of design--gryphons, serpents, winged discs, men contending with lions. St. George stared at it uncomprehendingly. In the press of events of the last eight-and-forty hours Amory had quite forgotten to mention to him the prince's intended gift of wine, almost three thousand years old, sealed in Phoenicia.

St. George drew the stopper. In an instant an odour, spicy, penetrating, delicious, saluted him and gave life to the dead air of the room. For a moment he hesitated. He knew that the flask had not been among Amory's belongings and that he himself had never seen it before. But the odour was, he thought, unmistakable, and so powerful that already he felt as if the liquor were racing through his own veins. He touched it to his lips; it was like a full draught of some marvelous elixir. Sudden confidence sat upon St. George, and thanking his guiding stars for the fortunate chance, he unhesitatingly set the flask to the old man's lips.