“Pity, Señor!” he screamed. And then, with low fervour, “Don’t go away. Listen! I am profound. Perhaps the Señor did not know that? Mercy! I am a man of intrigue. A _politico_. You have escaped, and I rejoice at it.”... He bared his fangs, and frothed like a mad dog.... “Señor, I am made happy because of the love I bore you from the first--and Domingo, who let you slip out of the Casa, is doomed. He is doomed. Thou art doomed, Domingo! But the excessive affection for your noble person inspires my intellect with a salutary combination. Wait, Señor! A moment! An instant!... A combination!...” He gasped as though his heart had burst. The seamen, open-mouthed, were slowly narrowing their circle. “Can’t he gabble!” remarked someone patiently. His eyes were starting out of his head. He spoke with fearful rapidity. “... There’s no refuge from the anger of the _Juez_ but the grave--the grave--the grave!... Ha! ha! Go into thy grave, Domingo. But you, Señor--listen to my supplications--where will you go? To Havana. The _Juez_ is there, and I call the malediction of the priests on my head if you, too, are not doomed. Life! Liberty! Señor, let me go, and I shall run--I shall ride, Señor--I shall throw myself at the feet of the _Juez_, and say... I shall say I killed you. I am greatly trusted by the reason of my superior intelligence. I shall say, ‘Domingo let him go--but he is dead. Think of him no more--of that _Inglez_ who escaped--from Domingo. Do not look for him. I, your own Manuel, have killed him.’ Give me my life for yours, Señor. I shall swear I had killed you with this right hand! Ah!” He hung on my lips breathless, with a face so distorted that, though it might have been death alone he hated, he looked, indeed, as if impatient to set to and tear me to pieces with his long teeth. Men clutching at straws must have faces thus convulsed by an eager and despairing hope. His silence removed the spell--the spell of his incredible loquacity. I heard the boatswain’s hoarse tones: “Hold on well, ma’am. Right! Walk away steady with that whip!” I ran limping forward. “High enough,” he rumbled; and I received Seraphina into my arms. CHAPTER FOUR I said, “This is home, at last. It is all over”; and she stood by me on the deck. She pushed the heavy black cloak from over her head, and her white face appeared above the dim black shadow of her mourning. She looked silently round her on the mist, the groups of rough men, the spatterings of light that were like violence, too. She said nothing, but rested her hand on my arm. She had her immense griefs, and this was the home I offered her. She looked back at the side. I thought she would have liked to be in the boat again. I said: “The people in this ship are my old friends. You can trust them--and me.”