immediately astern and some immediately ahead of my own vessel. I looked
anxiously to see if any of the fishermen were on board and stirring. Not
a living being appeared anywhere. The men were on shore with their wives
and their families.

Elfie held out her arms to be lifted on board my boat. Mrs. Van Brandt
stepped between us as I stooped to take her up.

"We will wait here," she said, "while you go into the cabin and get the
money."

Those words placed it beyond all doubt that she had her suspicions of
me--suspicions, probably, which led her to fear not for her life, but
for her freedom. She might dread being kept a prisoner in the boat, and
being carried away by me against her will. More than this she could not
thus far possibly apprehend. The child saved me the trouble of making
any remonstrance. She was determined to go with me. "I must see the
cabin," she cried, holding up the key. "I must open the door myself."

She twisted herself out of her mother's hands, and ran round to the
other side of me. I lifted her over the gunwale of the boat in an
instant. Before I could turn round, her mother had followed her, and was
standing on the deck.

The cabin door, in the position which she now occupied, was on her left
hand. The child was close behind her. I was on her right. Before us
was the open deck, and the low gunwale of the boat overlooking the deep
water. In a moment we might step across; in a moment we might take the
fatal plunge. The bare thought of it brought the mad wickedness in me to
its climax. I became suddenly incapable of restraining myself. I threw
my arm round her waist with a loud laugh. "Come," I said, trying to drag
her across the deck--"come and look at the water."

She released herself by a sudden effort of strength that astonished me.
With a faint cry of horror, she turned to take the child by the hand and
get back to the quay. I placed myself between her and the sides of the
boat, and cut off her retreat in that way. Still laughing, I asked her
what she was frightened about. She drew back, and snatched the key of
the cabin door out of the child's hand. The cabin was the one place of
refuge now left, to which she could escape from the deck of the boat.
In the terror of the moment, she never hesitated. She unlocked the door,
and hurried down the two or three steps which led into the cabin, taking
the child with her. I followed them, conscious that I had betrayed
myself, yet still obstinately