She took a stumbling step forward, her hand on Perrin’s arm, then paused, and faced Margaret. “You think, Charles. You think, because. Because I’m not very happy. That I shall not notice. But I see. Oh, I see so well. You wish to poison me against Tom. You wish me to think. That. That. Him guilty.” “Quiet, Margaret,” said Howard. “Mrs. Stukeley, it’s my duty to tell you that your husband is guilty. Better now than later,” he added to Margaret in a low voice. “She can’t have two scenes like this. It’d kill her. It is true, Mrs. Stukeley,” he continued. “If he returns to England, he will be hanged. Now you two, take her out. She’s stunned. Take her out before the flunkies notice. Get to sea. Don’t wait. Into the boat with her. Get to sea. Get to the devil.” The two men supported the dazed creature to the boat. Howard watched them from his pleasaunce, with an air of weary boredom. “Like clubbing a kitten,” he said to himself. “But nervous women are. They are.” He watched them pass away into the night, the oars grunting through the darkness, the voice of the coxswain sounding very clear. He noted it as a sign of rain. Afterwards he heard the feet tramping round the capstan, amid yells and screams and pistol-shots. “There are the men of war. The buccaneers,” he said cynically. “My reputation’s gone. I forgot them.” He stood amid his flowers, watching the fireflies, waiting for the end. He saw dimly the jib of the great ship cloaking a star. Then among the screams of many drunken men, with laughter, and shots, and oaths, the topsails jolted up, the parrels groaning, to a ditty about a girl in Paradise Street. The roaring chorus woke the ships in harbour. The crews answered, cheering, beating their bells. The bell of the _Broken Heart_ was rung like the alarm of fire. He smiled to hear them, repeating the phrases he had planned for his official report. “She stole away, unnoticed, in the night,” he repeated. “So that I could not give effect to the Honourable Board’s command.” “It’s getting chilly,” he said. “I must go in. She’s gone. She’s out of sight.” From very far away came the words of a chorus, the cat-fall chorus, sung by men so drunk that they had to take the cat-fall to the capstan:-- Blow, my bullies, blow For Springer’s Key, ay O. There’s plenty of gold, So I’ve been told, On the banks of the Rio Diablo. It was the last of her farewells. Howard went indoors, to his game of cribbage with Mrs. Prinsep. “They have gone to found an empire,” he said to himself. “That song is an imperial hymn. Men of the Breed. Eh?” X. THE LANDFALL “We are arrived among the blessed islands, Where every wind that rises blows perfumes, And every breath of air is like an incense; The treasure of the sun dwells here.” _The Island Princess._ “This new come Captain Hath both a ship and men.” _The Sea Voyage._