urved into an outline
that suggested a deep recess. The figure of a crowned woman, that moved
rigidly up and down, was silhouetted over my body. Groaning creaks of
wood and the faint swish of water made themselves heard continuously.

I turned my head to a click, I saw a door open a little way, and the
small blue flame of a taper floated into the room. Then the door closed
with a definite sound of shutting in. The light shone redly through
protecting fingers, and upwards on to a small face. It came to a halt,
and I made out the figure of a girl leaning across a table and looking
upwards. There was a click of glass, and then a great blaze of light
created a host of shining things; a glitter of gilded carvings, red
velvet couches, a shining table, a low ceiling, painted white, on carved
rafters. A large silver lamp she had lighted kept on swinging to the
gentle motion of the ship.

She stood just in front of me; the girl that I had seen through the
door; the girl I had seen play with the melon seeds. She was breathing
fast--it agitated me to be alone with her--and she had a little shining
dagger in her hand.

She cut the rope round my ankles, and motioned me imperiously to turn
round. "Your hands--your hands!"

I turned my back awkwardly to her, and felt the grip of small, cool,
very firm fingers upon my wrists. My arms fell apart, numb and perfectly
useless; I was half aware of pain in them, but it passed unnoticed among
a cloud of other emotions. I didn't feel my finger-tips because I had
the agitation, the flutter, the tantalization of looking at her.

I was all the while conscious of the--say, the irregularity of my
position, but I felt very little fear. There were the old Don, an
ineffectual, silver-haired old gentleman, who obviously was not a
pirate; the sleek O'Brien, and Carlos, who seemed to cough on the edge
of a grave--and this young girl. There was not any future that I could
conceive, and the past seemed to be cut off from me by a narrow, very
dark tunnel through which I could see nothing at all.

The young girl was, for the moment, what counted most on the whole,
the only thing the eye could rest on. She affected me as an apparition
familiar, yet absolutely new in her charm. I had seen her gray eyes; I
had seen her red lips; her dark hair, her lithe gestures; the carriage
of her head; her throat, her hands. I knew her; I seemed to have known
her for years. A rush of strange, sweet feeling made me dumb