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“Jack!” cried Brady in a stifled voice.

The lad took a step back. The girl moaned, and tried to run between Hatch and Stanbury-Jones. The old seaman caught and shook her like a dog, tearing away the whistle she put to her lips and dashing it on the floor. Jack put up his hand and snatched a pistol hidden in the thatch of the roof. Brady, on the instant, leveled his own and thundered out:

“Drop it, or I’ll shoot!”

“Shoot, and be damned!” returned Jack, and with that he turned his pistol on himself, and, placing the muzzle against his forehead, pulled the trigger.

It missed fire.

Before he could try again Brady had caught him round the neck, while Hatch, resigning the girl to Stanbury-Jones, ran in and snapped the handcuffs on his wrists.

“Jack,” cried Brady, “we aren’t going to hurt you. We’re rescuing you from the hill tribes. Man, you’re saved!”

“You never was no deserter,” said Hatch.

“Mind you back us up, old fellow,” said Winterslea.

“Give us your fin, boy,” said Hotham.

It was some time before Jack could pull himself together. When at last he did so, and began to appreciate the generosity of his captain and shipmates and their astounding concern to save him from the penalty of his crime, he underwent one of those reactions when despair gives way to the maddest gayety. He swore at Hatch, and made him take off the irons; he got out a bottle of white rum and forced them all to drink his health; he kept them in a roar with the story of his adventures, and laughed and cried in turn as he described his life ashore.

“What does she want?” demanded Brady, as Tehea insistently repeated some words in native.

“She says,” said Jack, calmly picking up the whistle from the floor and touching it to his lips, “she says I’ve only to blow this and you will all be dead in five minutes.”

A hush fell upon the company.

Jack, with an oath, flung the whistle from him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I am grateful. I am damned grateful! If I live I shall try and repay each one of you. I shall try and be a better man. I shall try to be worthy of your kindness.”

He went round and shook hands solemnly with every one of them. “Damned grateful!” he repeated.

“Let’s be off,” said Brady.

“Now, lad, your word of honor,” said Winterslea. Jack looked about him helplessly.

“I suppose I’ve no right to ask such a thing,” he said. “I know how good you’ve been to me already, and all that. But–but, gentlemen, she’s my wife. I love her. I shall never see her again. May I not entreat a minute to myself?”

“No,” said Brady.

Jack went over to Tehea and took her hand. He put his arms about her, and, unashamed before them all, pressed her comely head against his breast. He tried to explain the inexorable fate he was so powerless to resist; in incoherent whispers he told her he would break his chains and return to her, free in the years to come to devote his life to the woman he loved. He called her the dearest names, and begged her not to forget him. But she, with a perception greater than his own, swept away these despairing protestations with disdain. The daughter of one king, the sister of another, could she not meet force by force? These fierce intruders, with their rough voices and drawn pistols, who were they, to threaten a princess of the royal blood and carry away her lover before her eyes? If they were strong, she was stronger; and what ship cannon, she asked, however murderous or far-ranging, could penetrate those mountain recesses whither she would carry him before the morning? Ah, she said, it was for him to choose between her and them; between Britain and the island; between love and the service of the white Queen beyond the seas.