Those whom my lord's whistle had brought were now upon the very edge of the wharf. The marshal's voice called upon us in the name of the King to return. Finding that we vouchsafed no answer, he pulled out a pistol and fired, the ball going through my hat; then whipped out its fellow and fired again. Mistress Percy, whose behavior had been that of an angel, stirred in her seat. I did not know until the day broke that the ball had grazed her arm, drenching her sleeve with blood.
"It is time we were away," I said, with a laugh. "If your reverence will keep your hand upon the tiller and your eye upon the gentleman whom you have made our traveling companion, I'll put up the sail."
I was on my way to the foremast, when the boom lying prone before me rose. Slowly and majestically the sail ascended, tapering upward, silvered by the moon,--the great white pinion which should bear us we knew not whither. I stopped short in my tracks, Mistress Percy drew a sobbing breath, and the minister gasped with admiration. We all three stared as though the white cloth had veritably been a monster wing endowed with life.
"Sails don't rise of themselves!" I exclaimed, and was at the mast before the words were out of my lips. Crouched behind it was a man. I should have known him even without the aid of the moon. Often enough, God knows, I had seen him crouched like this beside me, ourselves in ambush awaiting some unwary foe, brute or human; or ourselves in hiding, holding our breath lest it should betray us. The minister who had been a player, the rival who would have poisoned me, the servant who would have stabbed me, the wife who was wife in name only,--mine were strange shipmates.
He rose to his feet and stood there against the mast, in the old half-submissive, half-defiant attitude, with his head thrown back in the old way.
"If you order me, sir, I will swim ashore," he said, half sullenly, half--I know not how.
"You would never reach the shore," I replied. "And you know that I will never order you again. Stay here if you please, or come aft if you please."
I went back and took the tiller from Sparrow. We were now in mid-river, and the swollen stream and the strong wind bore us on with them like a leaf before the gale. We left behind the lights and the clamor, the dark town and the silent fort, the weary Due Return and the shipping about the lower wharf. Before us loomed the Santa Teresa; we passed so close beneath her huge black sides that we heard the wind whistling through her rigging. When she, too, was gone, the river lay bare before us; silver when the moon shone, of an inky blackness when it was obscured by one of the many flying clouds.