She panted.  Her heart was beating against my breast.  I said, ’I take you from those people.  You came to the cry of my heart, but my arms take you into my boat against the will of the great!’ ‘It is right,’ said my brother.  ’We are men who take what we want and can hold it against many.  We should have taken her in daylight.’  I said, ’Let us be off’; for since she was in my boat I began to think of our Ruler’s many men.  ‘Yes.  Let us be off,’ said my brother.  ’We are cast out and this boat is our country now—­and the sea is our refuge.’  He lingered with his foot on the shore, and I entreated him to hasten, for I remembered the strokes of her heart against my breast and thought that two men cannot withstand a hundred.  We left, paddling downstream close to the bank; and as we passed by the creek where they were fishing, the great shouting had ceased, but the murmur of voices was loud like the humming of insects flying at noonday.  The boats floated, clustered together, in the red light of torches, under a black roof of smoke; and men talked of their sport.  Men that boasted, and praised, and jeered—­men that would have been our friends in the morning, but on that night were already our enemies.  We paddled swiftly past.  We had no more friends in the country of our birth.  She sat in the middle of the canoe with covered face; silent as she is now; unseeing as she is now—­and I had no regret at what I was leaving because I could hear her breathing close to me—­as I can hear her now.”

He paused, listened with his ear turned to the doorway, then shook his head and went on: 

“My brother wanted to shout the cry of challenge—­one cry only—­to let the people know we were freeborn robbers who trusted our arms and the great sea.  And again I begged him in the name of our love to be silent.  Could I not hear her breathing close to me?  I knew the pursuit would come quick enough.  My brother loved me.  He dipped his paddle without a splash.  He only said, ’There is half a man in you now—­the other half is in that woman.  I can wait.  When you are a whole man again, you will come back with me here to shout defiance.  We are sons of the same mother.’  I made no answer.  All my strength and all my spirit were in my hands that held the paddle—­for I longed to be with her in a safe place beyond the reach of men’s anger and of women’s spite.  My love was so great, that I thought it could guide me to a country where death was unknown, if I could only escape from Inchi Midah’s fury and from our Ruler’s sword.  We paddled with haste, breathing through our teeth.  The blades bit deep into the smooth water.  We passed out of the river; we flew in clear channels amongst the shallows.  We skirted the black coast; we skirted the sand beaches where the sea speaks in whispers to the land; and the gleam of white sand flashed back past our boat, so swiftly she ran upon the water.  We spoke not.  Only once I said, ’Sleep, Diamelen, for soon you may want all your strength.’  I heard