-what you would call a Spy. It was an
honourable and dangerous service which I had no choice but to accept.
My dreams of love had gone to wreck. I could have deceived the woman
whom I loved, for she would have trusted me and believed any story of
me that I had chosen to tell. But could I, an officer, a gentleman by
birth and I hope by practice, a secret enemy of England and a spy upon
her in the hour of her sorest trial, could I remain the lover of an
English girl without telling her fully and frankly exactly what I was?
Could I have committed this frightful treason to love and remained
other than an object of scorn and loathing to honest men? I could not.
In soul and heart she was mine; I was her man, and she was my woman.
With her there were no reserves in love. She was mine, yet I fled from
her with never a word, even of good-bye. I made my plans, obtained
certificates of my proficiency in the _Vernon_, kissed my dear love
quietly, almost coldly, without a trace of the passion that I felt,
and fled. It was the one thing left me to do. My friend, that was two
years ago. She knows not whether I am alive or am dead; I know not
whether she is alive or is dead. Yet during every hour of the long
days, and during every hour of the still longer nights, she has been
with me. I have done my duty, but I do not think that I wish to live
very much longer. If death comes to me quickly--and to those in my
present trade it comes quickly--will you, my friend, of your bountiful
kindness write to [here followed a name and address] and repeat
exactly what I now say. Do not tell what I was or how I died, but just
write, "He loved you to the last." There is a portrait in a locket
round my neck and a ring on my finger. Send her those, my good friend,
and she will know that your words are true.

* * * * *

I fled as far from Portsmouth, where my dear love dwelt, as I could
go; I fled to Greenock, that dreadful sodden corner of earth where the
rain never ceases to fall, and the sun never shines. At Greenock one
measures the rainfall not by inches, but by yards. Sometimes, not
often, a pale orb struggles through the clouds and glimmers faintly
upon the grimy town--some poor relation of the sun, maybe, but not the
godlike creature himself. For six months, in this cold desolate spot,
among a people strangely unlike the English of Devon, though they are
of kindred race, I laboured for six months in the Torpedo Fac