"Before he could fire again I fired at him. He fell with a rattling, broken sound across the floor, and never spoke nor moved. Catharine was there, and she came slowly across the room to me.
"'Ah, you have come,' she said; 'you are too late.'
"I sat down on the bed, and my throat was as dry as a sirocco wind, and laid the double-barrelled pistol, still smoking, by me. Neither of us, I am sure, gave one thought to the man who was lying there, perhaps hardly to Helen, for dishonor is worse than death; and for me I could say no word, but sat there like a thing broken.
"'You are too late,' she repeated; 'and for me this is the only way.'
"And before I could stop her she had taken up the pistol and shot herself through the head.
"The shots had aroused the soldiers, and two or three burst in up the stairs. With the officer's pistol, for I had no time to reload mine, I killed the first, and he went bumping down the stairs, knocking one man over. Then I opened the window and dropped. It was not more than ten feet from the ground, and I had only a few feet to fall."
He paused a moment and stood up, letting go of the rudder and raising his hands.
"God, to whom vengeance belongs," he cried, "and blessed Mother of Jesus, and holy Nicholas, my patron, help me to keep my vow."
"Your vow--your vow!" cried Mitsos. "The foul devils--your vow is to root out the Turk, and to-morrow I, too, will light tapers to the holy saints and make the vow you made. Christ Jesus, the devils! And you must show me how to keep it."
"Amen to that," said Nicholas. "Enough for to-night, we will speak of it no more."
He sat down again and took the rudder, and for five minutes or so there was silence, broken only by the steady hiss of the water round the boat, and then Mitsos, still in silence and trembling with a strange excitement, put about on the second tack. Nicholas did not speak, but sat with wide eyes staring into the darkness, seemingly unconscious of the boy.
This second tack brought them up close under the sea-wall of Abdul Achmet, and the white house gleamed brightly in the moonlight. Then, as Mitsos was putting about again on the tack which would take them home, Nicholas looked up at it and spoke for the first time.