All this the gunner reported at once to his commanding officer.

What Heemskirk intended by taking upon himself to detain the Bonito it is difficult to say, except that he meant to bring some trouble into the life of the man favoured by Freya.  He had been looking at Jasper with a desire to strike that man of kisses and embraces to the earth.  The question was:  How could he do it without giving himself away?  But the report of the gunner created a serious case enough.  Yet Allen had friends—­and who could tell whether he wouldn’t somehow succeed in wriggling out of it?  The idea of simply towing the brig so much compromised on to the reef came to him while he was listening to the fat gunner in his cabin.  There was but little risk of being disapproved now.  And it should be made to appear an accident.

Going out on deck he had gloated upon his unconscious victim with such a sinister roll of his eyes, such a queerly pursed mouth, that Jasper could not help smiling.  And the lieutenant had gone on the bridge, saying to himself: 

“You wait!  I shall spoil the taste of those sweet kisses for you.  When you hear of Lieutenant Heemskirk in the future that name won’t bring a smile on your lips, I swear.  You are delivered into my hands.”

And this possibility had come about without any planning, one could almost say naturally, as if events had mysteriously shaped themselves to fit the purposes of a dark passion.  The most astute scheming could not have served Heemskirk better.  It was given to him to taste a transcendental, an incredible perfection of vengeance; to strike a deadly blow into that hated person’s heart, and to watch him afterwards walking about with the dagger in his breast.

For that is what the state of Jasper amounted to.  He moved, acted, weary-eyed, keen-faced, lank and restless, with brusque movements and fierce gestures; he talked incessantly in a frenzied and fatigued voice, but within himself he knew that nothing would ever give him back the brig, just as nothing can heal a pierced heart.  His soul, kept quiet in the stress of love by the unflinching Freya’s influence, was like a still but overwound string.  The shock had started it vibrating, and the string had snapped.  He had waited for two years in a perfectly intoxicated confidence for a day that now would never come to a man disarmed for life by the loss of the brig, and, it seemed to him, made unfit for love to which he had no foothold to offer.

Day after day he would traverse the length of the town, follow the coast, and, reaching the point of land opposite that part of the reef on which his brig lay stranded, look steadily across the water at her beloved form, once the home of an exulting hope, and now, in her inclined, desolated immobility, towering above the lonely sea-horizon, a symbol of despair.

The crew had left her in due course in her own boats which directly they reached the town were sequestrated by the harbour authorities.  The vessel, too, was sequestrated pending proceedings; but these same authorities did not take the trouble to set a guard on board.  For, indeed, what could move her from there?  Nothing, unless a miracle; nothing, unless Jasper’s eyes, fastened on her tensely for hours together, as though he hoped by the mere power of vision to draw her to his breast.