My wife wrapped her mantle closer about her, and, leaning back in her seat in the stern beside me, raised her face to the wild and solemn heavens. Diccon sat apart in the bow and held his tongue. The minister bent over, and, lifting the man that lay in the bottom of the boat, laid him at full length upon the thwart before us. The moonlight streamed down upon the prostrate figure. I think it could never have shone upon a more handsome or a more wicked man. He lay there in his splendid dress and dark beauty, Endymion-like, beneath the moon. The King's ward turned her eyes upon him, kept them there a moment, then glanced away, and looked at him no more.
"There's a parlous lump upon his forehead where it struck the thwart," said the minister, "but the life's yet in him. He'll shame honest men for many a day to come. Your Platonists, who from a goodly outside argue as fair a soul, could never have been acquainted with this gentleman."
The subject of his discourse moaned and stirred. The minister raised one of the hanging hands and felt for the pulse. "Faint enough," he went on. "A little more and the King might have waited for his minion forever and a day. It would have been the better for us, who have now, indeed, a strange fish upon our hands, but I am glad I killed him not."
I tossed him a flask. "It's good aqua vitae, and the flask is honest. Give him to drink of it."
He forced the liquor between my lord's teeth, then dashed water in his face. Another minute and the King's favorite sat up and looked around him. Dazed as yet, he stared, with no comprehension in his eyes, at the clouds, the sail, the rushing water, the dark figures about him. "Nicolo!" he cried sharply.
"He's not here, my lord," I said.
At the sound of my voice he sprang to his feet.
"I should advise your lordship to sit still," I said. "The wind is very boisterous, and we are not under bare poles. If you exert yourself, you may capsize the boat."
He sat down mechanically, and put his hand to his forehead. I watched him curiously. It was the strangest trick that fortune had played him.
His hand dropped at last, and he straightened himself, with a long breath. "Who threw me into the boat?" he demanded.
"The honor was mine," declared the minister.
The King's minion lacked not the courage of the body, nor, when passionate action had brought him naught, a certain reserve force of philosophy. He now did the best thing he could have done,--burst into a roar of laughter. "Zooks!" he cried. "It's as good a comedy as ever I saw! How's the play to end, captain? Are we to go off laughing, or is the end to be bloody after all? For instance, is there murder to be done?" He looked at me boldly, one hand on his hip, the other twirling his mustaches.