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“How dare you!”

The thief whipped himself about, jumped back upon deck, and stood smiling up at her, with the petticoat in his hand. It was the young sailor she had danced with.

“How dare you? Oh, I’d be ashamed!”

“Midsummer Eve!” said he, and laughed.

“Give it up at once!” She dared not speak loudly, but felt herself trembling with wrath.

“That’s not likely.” He unhitched it from the fish-hook he had spliced to the end of his stick. “And after the trouble I’ve taken!”

“I’ll call your captain, and he’ll make you give it up.”

“The old man’s sleeping ashore, and won’t be down till nine in the morning. I’m alone here.” He stepped to the fore-halliards. “Now I’ll just hoist this up to the topmast head, and you’ll see what a pretty flag it makes in the morning.”

“Oh, please…!”

He turned his back and began to bend the petticoat on the halliards.

“No, no … please … it’s cruel!”

He could hear that she was crying softly; hesitated, and faced round again.

“There now … if it teases you so. There wasn’ no harm meant. You shall have it back–wait a moment!”

He came forward and clambered out on the bowsprit, and from the bowsprit to the jib-boom beneath her. She was horribly afraid he would fall, and broke off her thanks to whisper him to be careful, at which he laughed. Standing there, and holding by the fore-topmast stay, he could just reach a hand up to the parapet, and was lifting it, but paused.

“No,” said he, “I must have a kiss in exchange.”

“Please don’t talk like that. I thank you so much. Don’t spoil your kindness.”

“You’ve spoilt my joke. See, I can hoist myself on the stay here. Bend over as far as you can, I swear you shall have the petticoat at once, but I won’t give it up without.”

“I can’t. I shall never think well of you again.”

“Oh, yes, you will. Bend lower.”

“Don’t!” she murmured, but the moonlight, refracted from the water below, glimmered on her face as she leaned towards him.

“Lower! What queer eyes you’ve got. Do you know what it means to kiss over running water?” His lips whispered it close to her ear. And with that, as she bent, some treacherous pin gave way, and her loosely knotted hair fell in dark masses across his face. She heard him laugh as he kissed her in the tangled screen of it.

The next moment she had snatched the bundle and sprung to her feet and away. But as she passed by the trapdoor and hurriedly retwisted her hair before descending, she heard him there, beyond the parapet, laughing still.

IV

Three weeks later she married John Penaluna. They spent their honeymoon at home, as sober folks did in those days. John could spare no time for holiday-making. He had entered on his duties as master of Hall, and set with vigour about improving his inheritance. His first step was to clear the long cliff-garden, which had been allowed to drop out of cultivation from the day when he had cast down his mattock there and run away to sea. It was a mere wilderness now. But he fell to work like a navvy.

He fought it single-handed. He had no money hire extra labour, and apparently had lost his old belief in borrowed capital, or perhaps had grown timid with home-keeping. A single labourer–his father’s old hind–managed the cows and the small farmstead. Hester superintended the dairy and the housework, with one small servant-maid at her beck and call. And John tackled the gardens, hiring a boy or two in the fruit-picking season, or to carry water in times of drought. So they lived for two years tranquilly. As for happiness–well, happiness depends on what you expect. It was difficult to know how much John Penaluna (never a demonstrative man) had expected.

As far as folks could judge, John and Hester were happy enough. Day after day, from sunrise to sunset, he fought with Nature in his small wilderness, and slowly won–hewing, digging, terracing, cultivating, reclaiming plot after plot, and adding it to his conquests. The slope was sunny but waterless, and within a year Hester could see that his whole frame stooped with the constant rolling of barrels and carriage of buckets and waterpots up and down the weary incline. It seemed to her that the hill thirsted continually; that no sooner was its thirst slaked than the weeds and brambles took fresh strength and must be driven back with hook and hoe. A small wooden summer-house stood in the upper angle of the cliff-garden. John’s father had set it there twenty years before, and given it glazed windows; for it looked down towards the harbour’s mouth and the open sea beyond. Before his death the brambles grew close about it, and level with the roof, choking the path to it and the view from it. John had spent the best part of a fortnight in clearing the ground and opening up the view again. And here, on warm afternoons when her house work was over, Hester usually sat with her knitting. She could hear her husband at work on the terraces below; the sound of his pick and mattock mingled with the clank of windlasses or the tick-tack of shipwrights’ mallets, as she knitted and watched the smoke of the little town across the water, the knots of idlers on the quay, the children, like emmets, tumbling in and out of the Mayows’ doorway, the ships passing out to sea or entering the harbour and coming to their anchorage.