PART IV.  THE GIFT OF THE SHALLOWS

I

Lingard brought Mrs. Travers away from the yacht, going alone with her in the little boat.  During the bustle of the embarkment, and till the last of the crew had left the schooner, he had remained towering and silent by her side.  It was only when the murmuring and uneasy voices of the sailors going away in the boats had been completely lost in the distance that his voice was heard, grave in the silence, pronouncing the words—­“Follow me.”  She followed him; their footsteps rang hollow and loud on the empty deck.  At the bottom of the steps he turned round and said very low: 

“Take care.”

He got into the boat and held on.  It seemed to him that she was intimidated by the darkness.  She felt her arm gripped firmly—­“I’ve got you,” he said.  She stepped in, headlong, trusting herself blindly to his grip, and sank on the stern seat catching her breath a little.  She heard a slight splash, and the indistinct side of the deserted yacht melted suddenly into the body of the night.

Rowing, he faced her, a hooded and cloaked shape, and above her head he had before his eyes the gleam of the stern lantern expiring slowly on the abandoned vessel.  When it went out without a warning flicker he could see nothing of the stranded yacht’s outline.  She had vanished utterly like a dream; and the occurrences of the last twenty-four hours seemed also to be a part of a vanished dream.  The hooded and cloaked figure was part of it, too.  It spoke not; it moved not; it would vanish presently.  Lingard tried to remember Mrs. Travers’ features, even as she sat within two feet of him in the boat.  He seemed to have taken from that vanished schooner not a woman but a memory—­the tormenting recollection of a human being he would see no more.

At every stroke of the short sculls Mrs. Travers felt the boat leap forward with her.  Lingard, to keep his direction, had to look over his shoulder frequently—­“You will be safe in the brig,” he said.  She was silent.  A dream!  A dream!  He lay back vigorously; the water slapped loudly against the blunt bows.  The ruddy glow thrown afar by the flares was reflected deep within the hood.  The dream had a pale visage, the memory had living eyes.

“I had to come for you myself,” he said.

“I expected it of you.”  These were the first words he had heard her say since they had met for the third time.

“And I swore—­before you, too—­that I would never put my foot on board your craft.”

“It was good of you to—­” she began.

“I forgot somehow,” he said, simply.

“I expected it of you,” she repeated.  He gave three quick strokes before he asked very gently: 

“What more do you expect?”

“Everything,” she said.  He was rounding then the stern of the brig and had to look away.  Then he turned to her.