"Hush!" I whispered, and jumped into the stern.
Dorothy made room for me beside her.
"Push off," she said; and in a moment we were floating down the river, in and out between the ships.
"Give me the tiller," said I.
"No," said Dorothy; "it was my doing that you were brought into peril.
Let me steer you out of it."
The number of ships diminished. Before they were about us like the trees of a forest, now they were the trees of an alley down which we pa.s.sed; and ever the alley broadened and the trees grew scarce.
"I saw you that night at Carlisle," she began, "when you were taken to the castle;" and at that she broke off suddenly and her voice stiffened.
"My kinsman came to you at Carlisle. What did he say?"
"He said that he was charged with the friendliest messages from you."
"Is that all?"
Now, there was something more, but I thought it wise to make no mention of it.
"He did not repeat the messages," was all I said, and she sat up as though her pride was relieved, and for a little we were silent. A ship was anch.o.r.ed some way ahead of us, and a lanthorn swung on its p.o.o.p.
"Is it the _Swallow?_" I asked.
"Yes," said she; and then, "before I left Carlisle I saw her."
For a moment I wondered of whom she was talking.
"I saw her and her husband."
Then I understood.
"She is very plain," said Dorothy in a whisper.
"Oh no," said I, "indeed she is not. You do her an injustice."
"But she is," repeated Dorothy, "she is."
It would have been better had I left the matter thus, but I was foolish enough to seriously argue the point with her, and so hot became the argument that we overshot the ship.
"That is your fault," said Dorothy, as she turned the boat
We rowed to the ship"s side, a ladder was hoisted over, and a lanthorn held. By the light of it I could see Mr. Curwen, and behind him my servant Ashlock. I rose to give a hand to Dorothy, but she sat in the stern without so much as a pretence of movement.
"Come, Dorothy," said Mr. Curwen.
Dorothy looked steadily at me.
"She is very plain," she said, and then looked away across the river, humming a tune.
I was in a quandary as to what I should do. For I knew that she was not plain; but also I knew that Dorothy would not move until I had said she was. So I stood then holding on to the ladder while the boat rose and sank beneath my feet. I have been told since that there was really only one expedient which would have served my turn, and that was to tumble incontinently into the water and make as much pretence of drowning as I could. Only it never occurred to me, and so I weakly gave in.
Dorothy stepped on board. The boat was hoisted, the anchor raised, and in the smallest s.p.a.ce of time the foam was bubbling from the bows.
Overhead the stars shone steady in the sky and danced in the water beneath us, and so we sailed to France.
"Dorothy," said I, "there is a word which has been much used between us--friends."
"Yes!" said she in a low voice, "it is a good word."
And so it was many months afterwards before I came to her again in Paris and pleaded that there was a better.
"I would you thought with me," I stammered out.
Dorothy, with the sweetest laugh that ever my ears hearkened to, began to sing over to herself a verse of "The Honest Lover."
"Dear heart," she said, "I called you an owl, but it should have been a bat."
Jervas Rookley I never came across again. But I know that he did not win Blackladies, though whether a suspicion of his treachery is accountable or the avarice of the Hanoverians, I cannot tell. I have heard, too, that at one time he was the master of a ship trading in the South Seas; but of this, again, I have no sure knowledge.
THE END.