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“You compel me?”

“Certainly I compel you. I am not going to be poisoned if I can help it. Drink, I tell you!”

Brother Bartolome shrugged his shoulders. “It is against the vow … but, under compulsion … and truly I make it even better than I used,” he wound up, smacking his thin lips as he handed back the bottle.

The buccaneer took it, watching his face closely. “Here’s death to the Pope!” said he, and tasted it, then took a gulp. “The devil, but it is hot!” he exclaimed, the tears springing into his eyes.

“Certainly, if you drink it in that fashion. But why not try it with ice?”

“Ice?”

“You will find a chestful in my cell. Here is the key; which, by the way, has no business with this bunch. Felipe, yonder, who was always light-fingered, must have stolen it from my work-bench.”

“Hand it over. One must go to the priests to learn good living. Here, Jacques le Bec!” He rattled off an order to a long-nosed fellow at his elbow, who saluted and left the chapel, taking the key.

“We shall need a cup to mix it in,” said Brother Bartolome quietly.

One of the pirates thrust the silver chalices into his hands: for the bottle had been passed from one man to another, and they were thirsty for more. Brother Bartolome took it, and looked at the Carmelite. For the moment nobody spoke: and a queer feeling came over me in my hiding. This quiet group of persons in the quiet chapel–it seemed to me impossible they could mean harm to one another, that in a minute or two the devil would be loose among them. There was no menace in the posture of any one of them, and in Brother Bartolome’s there was certainly no hint of fear. His back was towards me, but the Carmelite stood facing my gallery, and I looked straight into her eyes as they rested on the cups, and in them I read anxiety indeed, but not fear. It was something quite different from fear.

The noise of Jacques le Bec’s footstep in the ante-chapel broke this odd spell of silence. The man Evans uncrossed his legs and took a pace to meet him. “Here, hand me a couple of bottles. How much will the cups hold?”

“A bottle and a half, or thereabouts: that is, if you allow for the ice.”

Jacques carried the bottles in a satchel, and a block of ice in a wrapper under his left arm. He handed over the satchel, set down the ice on the pavement and began to unwrap it. At a word from Evans he fell to breaking it up with the pommel of his sword.

“We must give it a minute or two to melt,” Evans added. And again a silence fell, in which I could hear the lumps of ice tinkling as they knocked against the silver rims of the chalices.

“The ice is melted. Is it your pleasure that I first taste this also?” Brother Bartolome spoke very gravely and deliberately.

“I believe,” sneered Evans, “that on these occasions the religious are the first to partake.”

The friar lifted one of the chalices and drank. He held it to his lips with a hand that did not shake at all; and, having tasted, passed it on to Evans without a word or a glance. His eyes were on the Carmelite, who had taken half a step forward with palms held sidewise to receive the chalice he still held in his right hand. He guided it to her lips, and his left hand blessed her while she drank. Almost before she had done, the Frenchman, Jacques le Bec, snatched it.

The Carmelite stood, swaying. Brother Bartolome watched the cups as they went full circle.

Jacques le Bec, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, spoke a word or two rapidly in French.

Brother Bartolome turned to Evans. “Yes, I go with you. For you, my child!”–He felt for his crucifix and held it over the Carmelite, who had dropped on her knees before him. At the same time, with his left hand, he pointed towards the altar. “For these, the mockery of the Crucified One which themselves have prepared!”

I saw Evans pull out his knife and leap. I saw him like a man shot, drop his arm and spin right-about as two screams rang out from the gallery over his head. It must have been I who screamed: and to me, now, that is the inexplicable part of it. I cannot remember uttering the screams: yet I can see Evans as he turned at the sound of them.

Yet it was I who screamed, and who ran for the door and, still screaming, dashed out upon the staircase. Up the stairs I ran: along the corridor: and up a second staircase.

The sunshine broke around me. I was on the leads of the roof, and Panama lay spread at my feet like a trodden garden. I listened: no footsteps were following. Far away from the westward came the notes of a bugle–faint, yet clear. In the northern suburbs the dogs were baying. I listened again. I crept to the parapet of the roof and saw the stained eastern window of the chapel a few yards below me, saw its painted saints and martyrs, outlined in lead, dull against the noonday glow. And from within came no sound at all.