"Why was she angry?"
"Because she had not made a success of her life."
"And finding she had not made a success, she tried to escape?"
"Yes."
"And if Lady St. Columb tosses on a bed of fever now, regretting the past, who is this woman sitting on the deck beside me?"
"She is a cabin-boy, the most insignificant member of your crew."
"The cabin-boy has a monstrous appetite, he has eaten up all the cheese, and three-quarters of the loaf."
"I am sorry. I thought you had finished."
"So I have."
He smiled at her, and she looked away, lest he should read her eyes and think her wanton, which she knew herself to be, and did not care.
Then, emptying his pipe on the deck, he said:
"Would you like to sail the ship?"
She looked at him once again, her eyes dancing.
"May I?
Will she not sink?"
He laughed, and rose to his feet, pulling her up beside him, and they went together to the great wheel, where he said a word to the helmsman.
"What do I do?" asked Dona.
"You hold the spokes in your two hands - thus.
You keep the ship steady on her course - thus. Do not let her fall away too much, or you will catch the big foresail aback.
Do you feel the wind on the back of your head?"
"Yes."
"Keep it there then, and do not let it come forward of your right cheek."
Dona stood by the wheel, with the spokes in her hands, and after a moment she felt the lifting of the ship, she sensed the movement of the lively hull, and the surge of the vessel as she swept forward over the long seas.
The wind whistled in the rigging and the spars, and there was a sound of humming, too, in the narrow triangular sails above her head, while the great square foresail pulled and strained upon its ropes like a live thing.
Down in the waist of the ship the men had perceived the change of helmsman, and nudging one another, and pointing, they laughed up at her, calling to one another in the Breton patois she could not understand, while their captain stood beside her, his hands deep in the pockets of his long coat, his lips framed in a whistle, his eyes searching the seas ahead.
"So there is one thing," he said at last, "that my cabin-boy can do by instinct."
"What is it?" she asked, her hair blowing over her face.
"He can sail a ship."
And laughing, he walked away, leaving her alone with La Mouette.
For an hour Dona stood her trick at the wheel, as happy, she thought to herself, as James would be with a new toy, and finally, her arms tiring, she looked over her shoulders to the helmsman she had relieved, who stood by the wheel watching her with a grin on his face, and coming forward he took the wheel from her again, and she went below to the master's cabin and lay down upon his bunk and slept.
Once, opening an eye, she saw him come in and lean over the charts on the table, jotting down calculations on a piece of paper, and then she must have fallen asleep again for when she woke the cabin was empty, and rising and stretching herself she went on deck, aware, with a certain sense of shame, that she was hungry again.
It was seven then, and the ship was drawing near the coast with the Frenchman himself at the wheel.
She said nothing, but went and stood by him, watching the blur of the coast on the horizon.
Presently he called out an order to his men, and they began to climb the rigging, little lithe figures, hand over hand, like monkeys, and then Dona saw the great square topsail sag and fall into folds as they furled it upon the yard.
"When a ship comes in sight of land," he said to her, "the topsail is the first thing that shows to a landsman ashore. It is still two hours to dusk, and we do not wish to be seen."
She looked towards the distant coast, her heart beating with a strange excitement, and she was seized, even as he and his men were seized, with the spirit of superb adventure.
"I believe you are going to do something very mad and very foolish," she said.
"You told me you wanted Godolphin's wig," he answered.
She watched him out of the tail of her eye, intrigued by his coolness, his quiet, steady voice, just the same as it was when he went with her fishing on the river.
"What is going to happen?" she said. "What are you going to do?"
He did not answer immediately.
He called a fresh order to his men, and another sail was furled.
"Do you know Philip Rashleigh?" he said after a while.
"I have heard Harry speak of him."
"He married Godolphin's sister - but that is by the way. Philip Rashleigh is expecting a ship from the Indies, a fact which came to my ears too late, otherwise I should have taken steps to meet her.
As it is, I presume her to have arrived at her destination within the last two days.
My intention is to seize her, as she lies at anchor, put a prize crew on board, and have them sail her to the opposite coast."
"But supposing her men outnumber yours?"
"That is one of the risks I take continuously. The essential thing is the element of surprise, which has never failed me yet."
He looked down at her, amused by her frown of perplexity, and her shrug of the shoulder, as though she considered him crazy indeed.