le doubled-up fist.

He put his hand to his lip and found it bleeding. He showed her what she
had done. She drew back, and regarded him with mingled pity and
exultation.

"Now will you let me go?" she cried.

"Madge," he returned, "Joe's drunk in his berth. I made him drunk,
Madge. I had to talk to you alone, and there was no other way."

She was stung to the quick. Her husband's shame was hers, and it was
somehow plain that Horble had been at fault before. She never thought to
doubt Greg's word, though his callousness revolted her.

"What is it you want to say?" she said at last in an altered voice.

"To ask you to forgive me."

"For what? for taking advantage of Joe's one failing?"

"No; for leaving you the way I did."

"I'll never do that, Greg--never, never, never!"

"Your father----"

"Don't try and blame my father, Greg."

"I blame only myself."

"Why have you come back to torture me?" she exclaimed. "You said it was
forever. You cast me off, when I cried, and tried to keep you. You said
I'd never see you again."

"I was a fool, Madge."

"Then accept the consequences, and leave me alone."

"And if I can't----"

She looked him squarely in the eyes. "I am Joe's wife," she said.

"Madge," he said, "I am not trying to defend myself. I'm throwing myself
on your mercy. I'm begging you, on my knees, for what I threw away.
I----"

"You've broken my heart," she said; "why should I mind if you break
yours?"

"Madge," he cried, "in ten minutes we can be aboard the _Northern Light_
and under weigh; in an hour we can be outside the reef; in two, and this
cursed island will sink forever behind us, and no one here will ever see
us again or know whither we have gone. Let us follow the gale, and push
into new seas, among new people--Tahiti, Marquesas, the Pearl
Islands--where we shall win back our lost happiness, and find our love
only the stronger for what we've suffered."

She pointed to the windward sky. "I think I know the port we'd make,"
she said.

"Then make it," he cried, "and go down to it in each other's arms."

For a moment she looked at him in a sort of exaltation. She seemed to
hesitate no longer. Her hot hands reached for his, and he felt in her
quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a
child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her
hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff
of a sail as any man's, she kne