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“What is it you want to say?” she said at last in an altered voice.

“To ask you to forgive me.”

“For what? for taking advantage of Joe’s one failing?”

“No; for leaving you the way I did.”

“I’ll never do that, Greg–never, never, never!”

“Your father—-“

“Don’t try and blame my father, Greg.”

“I blame only myself.”

“Why have you come back to torture me?” she exclaimed. “You said it was forever. You cast me off, when I cried, and tried to keep you. You said I’d never see you again.”

“I was a fool, Madge.”

“Then accept the consequences, and leave me alone.”

“And if I can’t—-“

She looked him squarely in the eyes. “I am Joe’s wife,” she said.

“Madge,” he said, “I am not trying to defend myself. I’m throwing myself on your mercy. I’m begging you, on my knees, for what I threw away. I—-“

“You’ve broken my heart,” she said; “why should I mind if you break yours?”

“Madge,” he cried, “in ten minutes we can be aboard the Northern Light and under weigh; in an hour we can be outside the reef; in two, and this cursed island will sink forever behind us, and no one here will ever see us again or know whither we have gone. Let us follow the gale, and push into new seas, among new people–Tahiti, Marquesas, the Pearl Islands–where we shall win back our lost happiness, and find our love only the stronger for what we’ve suffered.”

She pointed to the windward sky. “I think I know the port we’d make,” she said.

“Then make it,” he cried, “and go down to it in each other’s arms.”

For a moment she looked at him in a sort of exaltation. She seemed to hesitate no longer. Her hot hands reached for his, and he felt in her quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff of a sail as any man’s, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if she lived, it would be after such a bridal that would obliterate her tie to the sot below. Then, on the eve of her giving way, as every line in her body showed her longing, as her head drooped as though to find a resting place on the breast of the man she loved, she suddenly called up all her resolution and tore herself free.

“I’m Joe’s wife!” she said.

Gregory faltered as he tried again to plead with her; but in his mind’s eye he saw that stiffening corpse below, lying stark and bloody on the cabin floor.

“You gave me to him,” she burst out. “I’m his, Greg. I will not betray my husband for any man.”

Again he besought her to go with him. But the moment of her madness had passed. She listened unmoved, and when at last he stopped in despair, she bade him take his boat and go.

He sat down on the rail instead, his eyes defying her.

She stepped aft, and his heart stood still as she seemed on the point of descending the companion. But she had another purpose in mind. Throwing aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later, hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory, like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both sails. The wind thundered in them as they rose; the main boom jerked violently at the sheet and lashed to and fro the width of the deck; the anchor chain fretted and sawed in the hawse hole; the whole schooner strained and creaked and shook to the keelson. Gregory, in amazement, asked Madge what she was doing.