The ship was the Eagle, sailing home from Virginia, having brought out colonists and supplies. Now it was taking home samples of native products, two or three Indians for show, and not a few dissatisfied adventurers, with others of a stouter make who were bound with representations to the Company or upon various upgathering missions.... Who were the white man and woman? They were Giles and Ellice Heme, shipwrecked here several years ago. The captain, who presently came ashore, was questioning them. From London? Aye, then! and their ship? The Needs Must, sailing from port of London. The captain rubbed his brows. He did not remember the ship or the loss of her, but then more and more ships were going out, and he could not remember all names or accidents. All lost? Giles and Ellice Heme could not tell. They had escaped in a small boat. Those with them had died.—Would they be taken back to England?—The captain was a bluff old sea-dog, literal-minded and not inquisitive. He assumed that their tale was true in the main, and he assumed that, of course, they wished to be taken back to England. Otherwise, there would be something wrong with them. He hardly waited for an answer, but turned eyes and mind toward the water-casks. He was in haste; he wished to up sail and away while the sky was still without clouds. The two, left alone at last after all exclamation and question, faced a decision—how momentous an one made itself felt between them. They stood in the brown light of their hut, the doorway framing blue sea and sky and the Eagle, quivering to be gone. Aderhold spoke. “If we refused to go, it is most likely—it is certain, I think—that they would force us with them. We should be thought mad—or if not that, they would hold that we were not simply castaways. They would take us still, and from the first we should rest under suspicion.” “At any time the Spaniards may come again,” said Joan; “then again horror ... death. Or some other harm may come to one of us here—and the other left alone. That is often in my mind, and I know that it is often in yours.” “If we reached England unsuspected—if we could lose ourselves in London—” “Never could we go back to Hawthorn—nor to the town!” “No.” “Six years.... Gilbert, would we not be safe anywhere else?” “Ours are matters in which no one is safe who thinks not as his neighbours. And say we slipped silent and down-bent through life, giving no present authority offence—yet at some corner comes one who recognizes face or voice and recalls the past—’Ha, you hide!’ And it is all to do again.... I do not think we have any choice. I do not think this captain will leave us here.... There have been men who, under feigned names and away from the place of blackest threatening, have lived long and peacefully.... At first, until we were free of enquiries and had found work by which we might live, there would be thick danger.... We might escape.” “It is best to be with your kind.”