“Yes, Miss; that’s it,” said Bill.  “You see, Miss, one wants space for a doccymint.  If it were a ship or a flag, now, or a fancy pictur of your young man, I might manage it on your arm, but there must be breadth for a legal doccymint, more especially as I should like to make a good job of it while I is about it.  I don’t want none of them laryers a-turning up their noses at Bill Jones’ tattooing.”

“Very well,” said Augusta, with an inward sinking of the heart; “I will go and get ready.”

Accordingly she adjourned into the hut and removed the body of her dress and turned down the flannel garment underneath it in such a fashion as to leave as much of her neck bare as is to be seen when a lady has on a moderately low dress.  Then she came out again, dressed, or rather undressed, for the sacrifice.  Meanwhile, Bill had drawn out the ink-bag of the cuttle, had prepared a little round fragment of wood which he sharpened like a pencil by rubbing it against a stone, and had put a keen edge on to a long white fishbone that he had selected.

“Now, Mr. Bill, I am ready,” said Augusta, seating herself resolutely upon a flat stone and setting her teeth.

“My word, Miss; but you have a fine pair of shoulders!” said the sailor, contemplating the white expanse with the eye of an artist.  “I never had such a bit of material to work on afore.  Hang me if it ain’t almost a pity to mark ’em!  Not but what high-class tattooing is an ornimint to anybody, from a Princess down; and in that you are fortunit, Miss, for I larnt tattooing from them as can tattoo, I did.”

Augusta bit her lip, and the tears came into her eyes.  She was only a woman, and had a woman’s little weakness; and, though she had never appeared in a low dress in her life, she knew that her neck was one of her greatest beauties, and was proud of it.  It was hard to think that she would be marked all her life with this ridiculous will—­that is, if she escaped—­and, what was more, for the benefit of a young man who had no claim upon her at all.

That was what she said to herself; but as she said it, something in her told her that it was not true.  Something told her that this young Mr. Eustace Meeson had a claim upon her—­the highest claim that a man could have upon a woman, for the truth must out—­she loved him.  It seemed to have come home to her quite clearly here in this dreadful desolate place, here in the very shadow of an awful death, that she did love him, truly and deeply.  And that being so, she would not have been what she was—­a gentle-natured, devoted woman—­had she not at heart rejoiced at this opportunity of self-sacrifice, even though that self-sacrifice was of the hardest sort, seeing that it involved what all women hate—­the endurance of a ridiculous position.  For love can do all things:  it can even make its votaries brave ridicule.

“Go on,” she said sharply, “and let us get it over as soon as possible.”