With the firing of the sunset gun the evening of their last earthly
day, the post-captain visited the condemned men, and spoke with each in
turn; they numbered five. All through the dark hours of that night
heavily armed sentries stood in the narrow passageway before
nail-studded doors, while each hour, as the ship's bell struck, the
Commandant of Marine peered within each lighted apartment where rested
five plainly outlined forms. With the first gray of the dawn the
unfortunate prisoners were mustered upon deck, but they numbered only
four. And four only, white faced, yet firm of step and clear of eye,
stood an hour later with backs to the rising sun and hearts to the
levelled rifles, and when the single volley had echoed and reechoed
across the wide river, the white smoke slowly lifting and blown away
above the trees, only four lifeless bodies lay closely pressed against
the red-brick wall--the fifth condemned man was not there: _Chevalier
Charles de Noyan had escaped his fate_. Like a spirit had he vanished
during those mysterious hours between midnight and dawn, leaving no
trace of his going save a newly severed rope which hung dangling from a
foreyard.

But had he escaped?

That morning--as we learn from private letters sent home by officers of
the Spanish fleet--there came to the puzzled O'Reilly a report that in
the dense blackness of that starless night a single boat sought to slip
silently past beneath the deep shadows of the upper battery. Unhalting
in response to a hail of the sentry, a volley was hastily fired toward
its uncertain outline, and, in the flare of the guns, the officer of
the guard noted the black figure of a man leap high into air, and
disappear beneath the dark surface of the river. So it was the
Captain-General wrote also the name "Charles de Noyan" with those of