“You may call me Doña Hermoine,” answers the fair one in a tone that indicates that she is sufficiently well known to be recognizable without any further description or attachment. A moment after she speaks to one of her attendants, who is kneeling beside her, chafing her hands, for the night is very cold, saying quietly: “That will do, Alida, try to warm yourself.” “Yes, Excelentisima,” answers the girl. This high-sounding title only adds to a curiosity that Chester can gratify no further. He is compelled to devote every faculty of his mind, every muscle of his body, to keeping the boat dead before the wind and current as it flies up the Schelde. A single false movement of the rudder might cause it to broach, and that would be destruction on this wild night. He can scarce find time to direct the attendants of the lady to place tarpaulins at her back and to protect her as much as possible from the spray that is following them; every other energy is employed in keeping the frail boat safe in her race with the wild waters round them. He has no trouble with the oarsmen; they row as if they knew their lives depended on their toil. So they fly on. A dark lowering mass upon his right hand indicates the grim Fort of Lillo. This passed Guy knows he is in the very hands of Alva, in the Spanish lines. But they dash ahead, passing ships that have broken from their moorings, and are drifting with the tide; others that have taken refuge in the various estuaries and coves of the Schelde. No boats are out this wild night; the storm has driven everything to shelter. No Spanish galleys patrol the river; but the lights upon the dykes show that the husbandmen are awake, trying to save their live stock and themselves. A little later the lady, who all this time has been compelled to devote herself to keeping warm by many stampings of tiny feet and clappings of delicate hands, in which she has been assisted by her attendants, suddenly says: “Can you not take a little refreshment, Señor Capitan? Even a glass of wine? Your exertions for my safety have been untiring.” “For God’s sake don’t take my attention from the boat!” mutters Guy between set teeth. “We’re running a bend of the river. The wind will be on our quarter. It is our lives that I’m fighting for.” Then he settles himself again to the struggle, for the current and wind are not now exactly together, and it makes his task at the tiller even more difficult. But after making this bend, which is just before they reach the water front of Antwerp, the wind, broken by the land, becomes less fierce, and the rising tide, which has almost reached its height, grows less violent and rapid. “Thank God, we’re over the worst of it,” Guy says with a sigh of relief. “Now I’ll thank you for a glass of wine, fair lady; the night is fearfully cold;” this last comes from between chattering teeth.