As soon as we clambered on board, dripping from our swim, Dirk dismissed me below without a word except a rough good night. I didn't know how he had come to play the part he had done in the dark adventure of the evening, nor did I give the matter much thought, for my mind was too busy with other aspects of the problem. The feeling that for so long I had been blindly groping on a forlorn quest, and that now by my enemies' own move I had suddenly accomplished not only the mission on which Jenny had sent me, but my own private revenge as well, was like the falling away of an enormous chain, or the flooding of a prison with noonday light. As I lay on my bunk tossing in my excitement I hugged my arms across my breast and laughed into my blankets. It all seemed so miraculous, so incredible, as though Providence had planned the move and I had merely trodden an ordained path, I wondered whether I were indeed especially cared for and watched over by Heaven. Perhaps my affairs were in the keeping of a power beyond myself. But the thought was swallowed up in my exultation. For I was in a glow of excitement and couldn't sleep. I didn't want to sleep. I wanted to lie awake and let my imagination wing me away to Jenny and the meeting that was to be; for now I could say to her, "He is dead; your father need fear no more." Again and again I pictured the scene to myself in a tumult of rapture. I wouldn't merely be going to her because she had sent for me. The joy I had felt when I learnt she wanted me was intensified a hundredfold by the knowledge that now I had fulfilled the task she had set me to do. The consideration that I had avenged my father's murder didn't give me so much satisfaction as the knowledge that I had struck down the Captain's foe. I think revenge had become merely a shadowy sort of duty to me, whereas there was a real purpose served in freeing a living man from a lifelong persecution. It needed the bodily presence of my enemy to whip up my fury to the pitch of mortal hatred. While he sat there before me in the boat my fingers had itched for the blow. But now that the blow had been given I felt no hatred. Indeed I gave little thought to the fellow at all. My mind was turned homewards to Jenny and the welcome that awaited me; and the things that lay at my heart to say made me flush and throb as with a fever.