Jeannette Descheneaux had walked through the midst of colonial intrigues without knowing that they existed.  Men she ignored; and she could not now account for her keen knowledge that there was a colonel of the Seventy-Eighth Highlanders.  Her entanglement had taken her in the very simplicity of childhood.  She could not blame him.  He had done nothing but lift his bonnet to her, and treat her with deference because he was sorry she had fallen into his hands.  But at first she fought with silent fury the power he unconsciously held over her.  She felt only the shame of it, which the habitantes had cast upon her.  Nobody had ever called Jeannette Descheneaux a silly woman.  In early life it was thought she had a vocation for the convent; but she drew back from that, and now she was suddenly desolate.  Her brother had his consolations.  There was nothing for her.

Scant tears, oozing like blood, moistened her eyes.  She took hold of her throat to strangle a sob.  Her teeth chattered in the wind blowing down river.  Constellations came up over the rock’s long shoulder.  Though it was a dark night, the stars were clear.  She took no heed of the French camp fires in the gorge and along the bank.  The French commander there had followed the erratic motions of English boats until they ceased to alarm him.  It was flood tide.  The prison ship sat on the water, scarcely swinging.

At one o’clock Jeannette was still on deck, having watched through the midnight of her experience.  She had no phrases for her thoughts.  They were dumb, but they filled her to the outermost layer of her skin, and deadened sensation.

Boats began to disturb her, however.  They trailed past the ship with a muffled swish, all of them disappearing in the darkness.  This gathering must have been going on some time before she noticed it.  The lantern hanging aloft made a mere warning spot in the darkness, for the lights on deck had been put out.  All the English ships, when she looked about her, were to be guessed at, for not a port-hole cast its cylinder of radiance on the water.  Night muffled their hulls, and their safety lights hung in a scattered constellation.  In one place two lanterns hung on one mast.

Jeannette felt the pull of the ebbing tide.  The ship gave way to it.  As it swung, and the monotonous flow of the water became constant, she heard a boat grate, and directly Colonel Fraser came up the vessel’s side, and stood on deck where she could touch him.  He did not know that the lump of blackness almost beneath his hand was a breathing woman; and if he had known, he would have disregarded her then.  But she knew him, from indistinct cap and the white pouch at his girdle to the flat Highland shoes.

Whether the Highlanders on the ship were watching for him to appear as their signal, or he had some private admonition for them, they started up from spots which Jeannette had thought vacant darkness, probably armed and wrapped in their plaids.  She did not know what he said to them.  One by one they got quickly over the ship’s side.  She did not form any resolution, and neither did she hesitate; but, drawing tight around her the plaidlike length of shawl which had served her nearly a lifetime, she stood up ready to take her turn.