Someone had lashed a lantern at the head of the ladder. Lifting his eyes to it in the foggy darkness, the Commandant saw a solitary figure standing there in the gangway and looking down on him--a woman. She lifted a hand as if to enjoin silence, and came swiftly down a step or two in the shadow of the vessel's side. "You are Major Vigoureux?" she asked in a quick whisper, leaning forward over him. "At your service, madam," he stammered, taken fairly aback. "Ah! I am glad of that!" She ran down the remaining steps and set her foot lightly on the boat's gunwale. "You will row me ashore?" "If you wish it, madam." He was more puzzled than ever. He saw that she wore a dark cloak of fur and was bare-headed. She spoke in a sort of musical whisper. Her face he could not see. "In a minute or two my men----" "We will not wait for your men," she said, quietly, seating herself in the stern sheets. "They can easily be put ashore--can they not?--in one of the other boats." From under her fur cloak she reached out an arm--a bare arm with two jewelled bracelets--and took the tiller. "I can steer you to the quay," she said, and leaning forward in the light of Sergeant Archelaus' lantern, she lifted her eyes to the Commandant. The Commandant pushed off, shipped the paddles into the thole pins, and began to row, as in a dream. CHAPTER VI HOW VASHTI CAME TO THE ISLANDS "You do not remember me, Major Vigoureux?" The Commandant looked at her, across the lantern's ray. Something in her voice, vibrating like the rich, full note of a bell, touched his memory ... but only to elude it. The face that challenged him was not girlish; the face, rather, of a beautiful woman of thirty; its shape a short oval, with a slight squareness at the point of the jaw to balance the broad forehead over which her hair (damp now, but rippled with a natural wave, defying the fog) lay parted in two heavy bands--the brow of a goddess. Her eyes, too, would have become a goddess, though just now they condescended to be merry. Tall she was, for certain, and commanding. Her cloak hid the lines of her body, whether they were thin or ample; but, where the collar opened, her throat showed like a pillar, carrying her chin upon a truly noble poise. It was inconceivable (the Commandant said to himself) that he had met this woman before and forgotten her. He came back to her eyes. They challenged him fearlessly. He could not have described their colour; but he saw amusement lurking deep in their glooms while she waited. "I am sorry. It is unpardonable in me, of course----" "And I, on the contrary, am glad," she interrupted, with a laugh that reminded him of the liquid chuckle in a thrush's song, or of water swirling down a deep pool; "for it tells me I have grown out of recognition, and that is just what I wanted." This puzzled him, and he frowned a little. "You know the Islands?" he asked. "This is not your first visit?"