mist of the evening, and many
voices rang in it joyfully. While they were making the boats ready to
beat up the fish, my brother came to me and said, 'To-night!' I looked
to my weapons, and when the time came our canoe took its place in the
circle of boats carrying the torches. The lights blazed on the water,
but behind the boats there was darkness. When the shouting began and the
excitement made them like mad we dropped out. The water swallowed our
fire, and we floated back to the shore that was dark with only here
and there the glimmer of embers. We could hear the talk of slave-girls
amongst the sheds. Then we found a place deserted and silent. We waited
there. She came. She came running along the shore, rapid and leaving
no trace, like a leaf driven by the wind into the sea. My brother said
gloomily, 'Go and take her; carry her into our boat.' I lifted her in
my arms. She panted. Her heart was beating against my breast. I said, 'I
take you from those people. You came to the cry of my heart, but my arms
take you into my boat against the will of the great!' 'It is right,'
said my brother. 'We are men who take what we want and can hold it
against many. We should have taken her in daylight.' I said, 'Let us be
off'; for since she was in my boat I began to think of our Ruler's many
men. 'Yes. Let us be off,' said my brother. 'We are cast out and this
boat is our country now--and the sea is our refuge.' He lingered with
his foot on the shore, and I entreated him to hasten, for I remembered
the strokes of her heart against my breast and thought that two men
cannot withstand a hundred. We left, paddling downstream close to the
bank; and as we passed by the creek where they were fishing, the great
shouting had ceased, but the murmur of voices was loud like the humming
of insects flying at noonday. The boats floated, clustered together, in
the red light of torches, under a black roof of smoke; and men talked of
their sport. Men that boasted, and praised, and jeered--men that would
have been our friends in the morning, but on that night were already our
enemies. We paddled swiftly past. We had no more friends in the country
of our birth. She sat in the middle of the canoe with covered face;
silent as she is now; unseeing as she is now--and I had no regret at
what I was leaving because I could hear her breathing close to me--as I
can hear her now."

He paused, listened with his ear turned to the doorway, then shook his
head and