great, and, if it had had a touch of the sordid, it had led me
to this second and more desperate escape--in a cockleshell, carrying
off a silent and cloaked figure, which quickened my heart-beats at each
look. I was carrying her off from the evil spells of the Casa Riego,
as a knight a princess from an enchanted castle. But she was more to me
than any princess to any knight.

There was never anything like that in the world. Lovers might have gone,
in their passion, to a certain death; but never, it seemed to me, in
the history of youth, had they gone in such an atmosphere of cautious
stillness upon such a reckless adventure. Everything depended upon
slipping out through the gullet of the bay without a sound. The men on
the point had no means of pursuit, but, if they heard or saw anything,
they could shout a warning to the boats outside. These were the real
dangers--my first concern. Afterwards... I did not want to think
of afterwards. There were only the open sea and the perilous coast.
Perhaps, if I thought of them, I should give up.

I thought only of gaining each successive moment and concentrated all
my faculties into an effort of stealthiness. I handled the boat with a
deliberation full of tense prudence, as if the oar had been a stalk of
straw, as if the water of the bay had been the film of a glass bubble an
unguarded movement could have shivered to atoms. I hardly breathed, for
the feeling that a deeper breath would have blown away the mist that was
our sole protection now.

It was not blown away. On the contrary, it clung closer to us, with the
enveloping chill of a cloud wreathing a mountain crag. The vague shadows
and dim outlines that had hung around us began, at last, to vanish
utterly in an impenetrable and luminous whiteness. And through the
jumble of my thoughts darted the sudden knowledge that there was a
sea-fog outside--a thing quite different from the nightly mists of the
bay. It was rolling into the passage inexplicably, for no stir of air
reached us. It was possible to watch its endless drift by the glow of
the fire on the point, now much nearer us. Its edges seemed to melt
away in the flight of the water-dust. It was a sea-fog coming in. Was
it disastrous to us, or favourable? It, at least, answered our immediate
need for concealment, and this was enough for me, when all our future
hung upon every passing minute.

The Rio picaroons, when engaged in thieving from some ship becalmed
on the coas