The Lighted Match

Blanco raised his voice again in casual conversation and beckoned to the

sentinel at the door. When the man approached the Spaniard pointed over

the wall. "Do you see that rock? Is that a figure crouching behind its

shelter?" he demanded. As the man leaned forward, Manuel suddenly struck

him heavily at the back of the neck with a loose stone caught up from

the masonry's coping. The soldier dropped without a sound.

"Now, Your Majesty, we must risk it down the rock," prompted the man

from Cadiz, in hurried, low-pitched words. "Moments are invaluable....

It is only while I command the guard that there is a chance of your

escape.... An officer may come at any instant on a round of

inspection--my discovery as the Duke's kidnapper is a matter of

minutes.... I have been watched and tested in a hundred ways; it was

only to-day that I convinced them of my fanatic zeal."

Blanco hurriedly gave his cap and cape to the King, donning himself the

blouse of Karyl's undress uniform. Then the two crept cautiously down

the rifted face of the cliff, holding the shadow of the crevices. One

sentry-box they passed safely, and finally they edged by the second

unnoticed. They had negotiated the hundred feet of descent and stood

pressed against the bottom, hugging the black shadow. They were waiting

an opportunity to slip across a narrow sliver of intervening moonlight

to the beach and the boat which lay at the water's edge.

Occasional lazy clouds drifted across the sky. The two refugees, goaded

by the realization that every wasted second cut their desperate hope

more and more to a vanishing point, watched the fleecy scraps of mist

skim by the moon afar off without veiling its face. Then for a short

moment a shred of silver-tipped cloud cut off the radiance. Blanco

seized the King's arm in a wordless signal. Karyl and the bull-fighter

raced across to the boat that lay at the water's edge. In a moment more

it was afloat and they were at the oars. The moon emerged and at the

same instant an outcry came from above. The musket of the man in the

lower sentry-box barked with a blatant reverberation. One of the figures

in the boat drooped forward and sagged limply over his oars. The other

only redoubled his efforts. And then again, like the curtain of a

theater, a cloud dropped downward and quenched the moon and the sea and

the rock in impartial obscurity.