It took them five days to win back to the Samballoes. They entered Springer’s Drive a little before noon, eagerly looking out towards the anchorage. No ships lay there, no guns greeted them from the fort. Margaret and Cammock, walking the poop together, knew that Pain had been before them. A thin expanse of smoke wavered and drifted in films among the trees. When it drove down into the palms, after rising above their level, it scattered the macaws, making them cry out. The flagstaff lay prone, like a painted finger, pointing down the spit to the sea. Tucket’s sloop was fifty yards ahead of the ship, plunging in a smother. There was a cockling sea that morning, the reefs were running white, they gleamed milky for fifty yards about them. There was no other sign of life about the island. The smoke was so thin that it was like mist. The beach, which had so lately been thronged, was busy now with crabs, which scuttled and sidled, tearing at the manchineel trees. A wounded man limped down the sand and waved to them. Margaret, going in in his boat, saw that it was the seaman West. “I been here two days, sir,” he said, “waiting for you. I been living on sapadillies. There been awful times, sir.” “What has happened, man?” “I came from the town, Tolu town, in one of the sloops, sir,” the man answered. “The _Lively_, as they called her. When we come here, Captain Pain got all the men you left, all the guard like, to sign on with him. Then he set the town on fire, and scoffed all your gear, the guns and powder and that. So I got away and hid in the wood. I was afraid they want me to join ’em, or put a knife into me. Then I saw ’em flog that Don Toro, and two other Indians. He flog ’em on the beach, and sent ’em back to the Main, sir. He said that would put all them Indians off giving you a hand in the future.” “What a devil the man must be,” Margaret said. “So I stayed hidden, sir, ever since, hoping no Indians would come over and find me.” “So that’s the end,” said Margaret to himself. He would not go ashore there. He could see the ruins of his city, a mass of fallen earth, a heap of ashes, a sprouting crop blasted. He would never set foot there again. That dream had ended like the other, in savagery, in waste, in cruelty. He would let it end. The fallen gabions of the fort would soon be tangled with grasses. In three months there would be shrubs on the city site. The key would be jungle again, the Indians would be savage again, the privateers would be plundering vagabonds again. The dream was over. All that he could do now was to proceed to Jamaica, to sell his goods there, before sailing for England, a beaten man, threatened by the law.