sir. If I may say so, there's not a better boat sails
the water, not the _Sovereign of the Seas_ itself. Nor a better crew to
handle things, not on board the king's yacht."

"Nor a better mate, Mr. McKinstry."

"Ah, well, sir; we do wir best."

He tumbled on deck again, and Shane could hear him roar from amidships:

"Lay forward, a couple of you damned farmers, and see if you can't get
more out of those jibs. Faster! faster! You're as slow as the grace of
God at a miser's funeral.... If I only had a crew...."

Section 10

She stopped in her swift flight to him through the dusk of the Midi
garden.

"Dearest, why is your face so white? Your hands bruised?"

"The consul said something to me--about you--and I knocked him down."

"Oh!" she said, a shocked little cry, and: "Oh!" a drawn-out wail of
pain. "Why did you strike him?"

"Because he lied about you."

Her face was turned from him, in the dusk of the crickets, toward the
wooded amphitheater, where dead Pontius roved wild-eyed in the dusk,
where Lazarus tossed uneasily in his second sleep, where the Greeks lay
in alien soil, and the shadows of Roman legionaries looked puzzled at
the flat sea, not recognizing busy Tiber--her back was to him, her head
up in pain, her nerve-wrenched hands uneasy, white....

"He didn't lie," she said at last. "Oh, you'd have known it sooner or
later. No! no! He didn't lie."

"Claire-Anne!"

"He didn't lie. I was just a fool to think--oh, well, he didn't lie. No,
no!" she repeated. "He didn't lie." She threw out a hand hopelessly. "He
didn't lie."

He went up to her in the dusk, put his hands gently on her shoulders.
The quivering frame became still suddenly, with a greater nervousness.
She was like a deer ready to bound away....

"I don't see what I could have done, Claire-Anne. But--can I do anything
now?"

She turned toward him suddenly. Her face was a mask of pain--and
surprise.

"Then you haven't grown cold to me, unmerciful, ... or gross?"

"Why, no, Claire-Anne!"

"And you know."

"I--know, but I don't understand...."

She gave a queer, little shuddering cry, half laugh, half sob. She moved
over to the seat by the whispering mulberry-tree, and dropped in it, her
hands covering her face.

"All the wrong," she said, "that people call wrong I've done I didn't
mind. But the one decent thing--of loving you--that's kept me awake all
the time you were away. It's been like a sin, letting you love me. The
re