“You here, Sir Hugh?” she gasped.

“Where you are, there I am,” he answered, with a sneer upon his coarse, handsome face.  “Did I not swear that it should be so, beauteous Rosamund, after your saintly cousin worsted me in the fray?”

“You here?” she repeated, “you, a Christian knight, and in the pay of Saladin!”

“In the pay of anyone who leads me to you, Rosamund.”  Then, seeing the emir Hassan approach, he turned to give some orders to the sailors, and she passed on to the cabin and in her agony fell upon her knees.

When Rosamund rose from them she felt that the ship was moving, and, desiring to look her last on Essex land, went out again upon the poop, where Hassan and Sir Hugh placed themselves, one upon either side of her.  Then it was that she saw the tower of St. Peter’s-on-the-Wall and her cousins seated on horseback in front of it, the light of the risen sun shining upon their mail.  Also she saw Wulf spur his horse into the sea, and faintly heard his great cry of “Fear not!  We follow, we follow!”

A thought came to her, and she sprang towards the bulwark; but they were watching and held her, so that all that she could do was to throw up her arms in token.

Now the wind caught the sail and the ship went forward swiftly, so that soon she lost sight of them.  Then in her grief and rage Rosamund turned upon Sir Hugh Lozelle and beat him with bitter words till he shrank before her.

“Coward and traitor!” she said.  “So it was you who planned this, knowing every secret of our home, where often you were a guest!  You who for Paynim gold have murdered my father, not daring to show your face before his sword, but hanging like a thief upon the coast, ready to receive what braver men had stolen.  Oh! may God avenge his blood and me on you, false knight—­false to Him and me and faith and honour—­as avenge He will!  Heard you not what my kinsman called to me?  ‘We follow.  We follow!’ Yes, they follow, and their swords—­those swords you feared to look on—­shall yet pierce your heart and give up your soul to your master Satan,” and she paused, trembling with her righteous wrath, while Hassan stared at her and muttered: 

“By Allah, a princess indeed!  So have I seen Salah-ed-din look in his rage.  Yes, and she has his very eyes.”

But Sir Hugh answered in a thick voice.

“Let them follow—­one or both.  I fear them not and out there my foot will not slip in the snow.”

“Then I say that it shall slip in the sand or on a rock,” she answered, and turning, fled to the cabin and cast herself down and wept till she thought that her heart would break.