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to the ground, convulsing like a thick, animate jelly. His lips drew back from his teeth in a last idiot snarl.

Henry Morgan stirred the body with his foot, and a change stirred in his mind. He had killed this man. It was his right to kill, to burn, to plunder—not because he was ethical nor even because he was clever, but because he was strong. Henry Morgan was the master of Panama and all its people. There was no will in Panama save Henry Morgan's will. He could slaughter every human in the country if he so chose. All this was true. No one would deny it. But in the Palace back there was a woman who held his power and his will in contempt, and her contempt was a stronger weapon than his will. She fenced at his embarrassment and touched him at her convenience. But how could that be? he argued. No one was master in Panama but himself, and he had just killed a man to prove it. Under the battering of his arguments the power of Ysobel waned and slowly disappeared. He would go back to the Palace. He would force her as he had promised. This woman had been treated with too much consideration. She did not realize the significance of slavery, nor did she know the iron of Henry Morgan.

He turned about and walked back toward the Palace. In the Hall of Audience he threw off his pistols, but the gray rapier remained at his side.

Ysobel was kneeling before a holy picture in her little whitewashed cell when Henry Morgan burst upon her. The dried duenna shrank into a corner