The boatmen climbed the high slant of the bow, planted their stout
bamboos against their shoulders, and came slowly down, head first, like
straining acrobats. As slowly, the boat began to glide past the stairs.
Thus far, though the fire lay scattered in the mud, the smoke drifted
still before them and obscured their silent, headlong transaction. Now,
thinning as they dropped below the corner of the wall, it left them
naked to their enemies on the knoll. At the same instant, from the marsh
ahead, the sentinel in the round hat sprang up again, like an
instantaneous mushroom. He shouted, and waved to his fellows inland.
They had no time, however, to leave the high ground; for the whole
chance of the adventure took a sudden and amazing turn.
Heywood sprang out of his stupor, and stood pointing.
"Look there!" he snarled. "Those--oh!"
He ended with a groan. The face of his friend, by torchlight above the
wall, had struck him dumb. Now that he spoke, his companions saw,
exposed in the field to the view of the nunnery, a white body lying on a
framework as on a bier. Near the foot stood a rough sort of windlass.
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