r stricken, whether
she judged her former lover innocent or not. She might even undergo a
terrible remorse. At such a moment how little likely she would be to
give way to him! Of course she would refuse. Any woman would refuse.
Every restraining influence would be massed against him. No, his only
hope lay in getting her aboard his schooner and out of the lagoon before
the least suspicion could dawn upon her. Once away, and it might be two
years before she might even hear of Horble's death. Once away, and the
empty seas would keep his secret. Once away----

He studied the weather with a new and consuming anxiety. How could he
manage to get out at all, or pick a course through the middle channel!
It was thick with coral rocks, and in a day so overcast the keenest eye
aloft would be at fault. And outside, what then? By God! it was working
up to a hurricane. To run before it would be courting death. Hove to, he
would be cramped for room, with three big islands on his lee. In his
lawless and desperate past he had taken many a fall with fortune; he
was accustomed to weigh the danger of perilous alternatives; he knew
what it was to hazard everything on his own vigilance and skill, and to
bear with a sailor's fatalism the throw of those dread dice on which his
own life had been so often staked. But to stake Madge's life! Madge,
whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom he would have died! And yet
there was something sublime in the thought of taking her in his arms and
driving before the gale, the storm sails treble reefed on the bending
yards, the decks awash from end to end, Madge beside him, the pitchy
night in front, the engulfing seas behind; to swim or sink, to ride or
smother, accepting their fate together, and, if need be, drowning at the
last in each other's arms.

He looked toward the settlement and saw a crowd of natives pushing a
whaleboat into the water; looked again, and saw old Maka taking his
place in the stern sheets and assisting a woman in beside him. The
woman! It needed no second glance to tell him it was Madge. He had never
counted on her coming off in company. Fool that he was, he had taken it
for granted that she would be alone. Everything, in fact, turned on her
being alone. Then, with a start, he remembered his own dinghy, and how
it would betray him. He had made it fast on the schooner's starboard
quarter, near the little accommodation ladder. Going on his hands and
knees, lest his head should be seen