At this she smiled again, and then looked serious.  For it could not be unpleasant to her to be told of her power, and she had some sense of her responsibility.  She slipped away from me suddenly, because Heemskirk, with old Nelson in attendance at his elbow, was coming up the steps of the verandah.  Directly his head came above the level of the floor his ill-natured black eyes shot glances here and there.

“Where’s your girl, Nelson?” he asked, in a tone as if every soul in the world belonged to him.  And then to me:  “The goddess has flown, eh?”

Nelson’s Cove—­as we used to call it—­was crowded with shipping that day.  There was first my steamer, then the Neptun gunboat further out, and the Bonito, brig, anchored as usual so close inshore that it looked as if, with a little skill and judgment, one could shy a hat from the verandah on to her scrupulously holystoned quarter-deck.  Her brasses flashed like gold, her white body-paint had a sheen like a satin robe.  The rake of her varnished spars and the big yards, squared to a hair, gave her a sort of martial elegance.  She was a beauty.  No wonder that in possession of a craft like that and the promise of a girl like Freya, Jasper lived in a state of perpetual elation fit, perhaps, for the seventh heaven, but not exactly safe in a world like ours.

I remarked politely to Heemskirk that, with three guests in the house, Miss Freya had no doubt domestic matters to attend to.  I knew, of course, that she had gone to meet Jasper at a certain cleared spot on the banks of the only stream on Nelson’s little island.  The commander of the Neptun gave me a dubious black look, and began to make himself at home, flinging his thick, cylindrical carcass into a rocking-chair, and unbuttoning his coat.  Old Nelson sat down opposite him in a most unassuming manner, staring anxiously with his round eyes and fanning himself with his hat.  I tried to make conversation to while the time away; not an easy task with a morose, enamoured Dutchman constantly looking from one door to another and answering one’s advances either with a jeer or a grunt.

However, the evening passed off all right.  Luckily, there is a degree of bliss too intense for elation.  Jasper was quiet and concentrated silently in watching Freya.  As we went on board our respective ships I offered to give his brig a tow out next morning.  I did it on purpose to get him away at the earliest possible moment.  So in the first cold light of the dawn we passed by the gunboat lying black and still without a sound in her at the mouth of the glassy cove.  But with tropical swiftness the sun had climbed twice its diameter above the horizon before we had rounded the reef and got abreast of the point.  On the biggest boulder there stood Freya, all in white and, in her helmet, like a feminine and martial statue with a rosy face, as I could see very well with my glasses.  She fluttered an expressive handkerchief, and Jasper, running up the main rigging of the white and warlike brig, waved his hat in response.  Shortly afterwards we parted, I to the northward and Jasper heading east with a light wind on the quarter, for Banjermassin and two other ports, I believe it was, that trip.