'I am sorry, my lady.'
'And-French in your ideas.'
'You must blame my mother, my lady.'
'You are forgetting that I have been married to Sir Harry for six years, and am the mother of two children, and that next month I shall be thirty.'
'On the contrary, my lady, it was these three things that I was most remembering.'
'Then I am inexpressibly shocked at you. Open the door at once, and let me into the garden.'
'Yes, my lady.'
He pulled back the shutters, and drew aside the long heavy curtains. Something fluttered against the window, seeking an outlet, and as William flung open the door a butterfly, that had become imprisoned in the folds of the curtains, winged its way into the air.
'Another fugitive seeking escape, my lady.'
'Yes, William. She smiled at him an instant, and standing upon the threshold sniffed the cool morning air, and looking up saw the first pale streak of the day creep into the sky. 'Good-bye, William.'
'Au revoir, my lady.'
She went across the grass, clutching her bundle, her shawl over her head, and looking back once saw the grey outline of the house, solid, and safe, and sleeping, with William standing sentinel by the window. Waving her hand to him in farewell she followed Pierre Blanc, with his merry eyes and his dark monkey face and his ear-rings, down through the woods to the pirate ship in the creek.
Somehow she had expected bustle and noise, the confusion of departure, but when they came alongside La Mouette there was the usual silence. It was only when she had climbed the ladder to the deck and looked about her that she realised that the ship was ready for sea, the decks were clear, the men were standing at their appointed places.
One of the men came forward and bowed, bending his head low.
'Monsieur wishes you to go to the quarter-deck.'
She climbed the ladder to the high poop-deck, and as she did so she heard the rattle of the chain in the hawser, the grind of the capstan, and the stamping of feet. Pierre Blanc, the song-maker, began his chant, and the voices of the men, low and soft, rose in the air, so that she turned, leaning over the rail to watch them. Their steady treading upon the deck, the creak of the capstan, and the monotony of their chant made a kind of poetry in the air, a lovely thing of rhythm, all seeming part of the fresh morning and part of the adventure.
Suddenly she heard an order called out behind her, clear and decisive, and for the first time she saw the Frenchman, standing beside the helmsman at the wheel, his face tense and alert, his hands behind his back. This was a different being from the companion of the river who had sat beside her in the little boat and mended her line, and later built a wood fire on the quay and cooked the fish, his sleeves rolled above his elbows, his hair falling into his eyes.
She felt an intruder, a silly woman amongst a lot of men who had work to do, and without a word she went and stood at a distance, against the rail, where she could not bother him, and he continued with his orders, glancing aloft, at the sky, at the water, at the banks of the river.
Slowly the ship gathered way, and the wind of the morning, coming across the hills, filled the great sails. She crept down the creek like a ghost upon the still water, now and again almost brushing the trees where the channel ran inshore, and all the while he stood beside the helmsman, giving the course, watching the curving banks of the creek. The wide parent river opened up before them, and now the wind came full and true from the west, sending a ripple on the surface, and as La Mouette met the strength of it she heeled slightly, her decks aslant, and a little whipping spray came over the bulwark. The dawn was breaking in the east, and the sky had a dull haze about it and a glow that promised fine weather. There was a salty tang in the air, a freshness that came from the open sea beyond the estuary, and as the ship entered the main channel of the river the sea-gulls rose in the air and followed them.
The men had ceased their chanting, and now stood, looking towards the sea, an air of expectancy about them, as though they were men who had idled and lazed too long and were suddenly thirsty, suddenly aflame. Once again the spray rose from the top of a high-crested sea, as the ship crossed the bar at the mouth of the estuary, and Dona, smiling, tasted it on her lips, and looking up, saw that the Frenchman had left the helmsman and was standing beside her, and the spray must have caught him too, for there was salt upon his lips and his hair was wet.
'Do you like it?' he said, and she nodded, laughing up at him, so that he smiled an instant, looking towards the sea. As he did so she was filled with a great triumph and a sudden ecstasy, for she knew then that he was hers, and she loved him, and that it was something she had known from the very beginning, from the first moment when she had walked into his cabin and found him sitting at the table drawing the heron. Or before that even, when she had seen the ship on the horizon stealing in towards the land, she had known then that this thing was to happen, that nothing could prevent it; she was part of his body and part of his mind, they belonged to each other, both wanderers, both fugitives, cast in the same mould.
Chapter XI
IT WAS about seven o'clock in the evening, and Dona, coming up on deck, found that the ship had altered course again, and was now standing in once more towards the coast.
The land was a blur as yet upon the horizon, no clearer than a wisp of cloud. All day they had remained at sea, and in mid-channel, with never a sight of another vessel, while a spanking breeze had held them for the full twelve hours, causing La Mouette to jump and dance like a live thing. Dona understood that the plan was to stay out of sight of land until dusk, and when evening came to creep in-shore under cover of darkness. The day therefore had been little more than a filling up of time, with the added chance, of course, of meeting with some merchant vessel carrying a cargo up-channel, which might offer itself for plunder, but such a ship had not been encountered, and the crew, enlivened by the long day at sea, found their appetites whipped now for the adventure that lay before them, and the unknown hazard of the night. One and all seemed possessed by a sense of excitement, a spirit of devilry, they were like boys setting forth upon some foolhardy venture, and Dona, leaning over the rail of the poop- deck to watch them, would hear them laugh and sing, cracking jokes with one another, and now and again glancing up in her direction, throwing her a look, a smile, all with a conscious air of gallantry, intensely aware of the presence on board of a woman, who had never sailed with them before.
Even the day was infectious, the hot sun, the fresh westerly breeze, the blue water, and Dona had a ridiculous longing to be a man amongst them, to handle ropes and blocks, to climb aloft up the tall raking spars and trim the sails, to handle the spokes of the great wheel. Now and again the spray broke on the deck, splashing her face and her hands, soaking her gown, but she did not care, the sun would soon dry her clothes, and she found a little patch of dry deck to leeward of the wheel where she sat cross-legged like a gypsy, her shawl tucked into her sash, and the wind playing havoc with her hair. By noon, she was prodigiously hungry, and there came to her, from the bows of the ship, the smell of hot burnt bread and bitter black coffee, and presently she saw Pierre Blanc climb the ladder to the poop, bearing in his hands a tray.
She took it from him, almost ashamed of her eagerness, and he-winking at her with an absurd familiarity which made her laugh, rolled his eyes to heaven and rubbed his stomach.
'Monsieur will join you directly,' he said, smiling like an accomplice, and she thought how like William they all were in their linking of two together, and how they accepted it as natural, light-hearted and lovely.
She fell upon the loaf of bread like a creature ravenous for food, cutting a chunk off the black crust, and there was butter, too, and cheese, and the heart of a lettuce. Presently she heard a step behind her and glancing up she saw the captain of La Mouette looking down upon her. He sat by her side and reached for the loaf of bread.
'The ship can take care of herself,' he said, 'and anyway this is her weather, she would keep to her course all day, with a finger to the wheel now and again. Give me some coffee.'
She poured out the steaming brew into two cups, and they drank greedily, watching each other over the rims.
'What do you think of my ship?' he asked.
