As La Mouette drifted with the tide a curlew rose with a whistle and sped away up river, and then, the ship losing way with the lack of wind as they came to the creek, the boats were lowered, and the warps made fast, and the ship was brought to her secret anchorage as the first shadows fell upon the water.
The chain rattled with a hollow sound in the deep pool beneath the trees, and the ship swung round to meet the last of the flood tide, and suddenly from nowhere came a swan and his mate, like two white barges sailing in company, and following them three cygnets, soft and brown.
They went away down the creek, leaving a wake behind them as a vessel would, and presently when all was snugged down for the night and the decks deserted, the smell of cooking came from the galley forward, and the low murmur of voices as the men talked in the fo'c'sle.
The captain's boat waited beneath the ladder, and coming up from the cabin he called to Dona, who was leaning against the rail on the poop-deck watching the first star above a dark tree, and they pulled away down the creek where the swans had gone, the little boat lapping against the water.
Soon the fire glowed in the clearing, the dried sticks snapping and breaking, and this night they cooked bacon, curling and streaky and crisp, with bread that was burnt also by the fire and was toasted and black. They broke the bacon in their hands, and then brewed coffee, strong and bitter, in a saucepan with a bent handle, and afterwards he reached for his pipe and his tobacco, and Dona leant against his knee, her hands behind her head.
"And this," she said, watching the fire, "could be forever, if we wished. Could be tomorrow, and the next day, and a year ahead.
And not only here, but in other countries, on other rivers, in lands of our own choosing."
"Yes," he said, "if we so wished.
But Dona St. Columb is not Dona the cabin-boy.
She is someone who has a life in another world, and even at this moment she is waking in the bedroom at Navron, with her fever gone, remembering only very faintly the dream she had.
And she rises, and dresses, and sees to her household and her children."
"No," she said, "she has not woken yet, and the fever is still heavy upon her, and her dreams are of a loveliness that she never knew in her life before."
"For all that," he told her, "they are still dreams. And in the morning she will wake."
"No," she said. "No, no.
Always this. Always the fire, and the dark night, and the supper we have cooked, and your hand here against my heart."
"You forget," he said, "that women are more primitive than men.
For a time they will wander, yes, and play at love, and play at adventure.
And then, like the birds do, they must make their nest. Instinct is too strong for them. Birds build the home they crave, and settle down into it, warm and safe, and have their babies."
"But the babies grow up," she said, "and fly away, and then the parent birds fly away too, and are free once more."
He laughed at her, staring into the fire, watching the flames.
"There is no answer, Dona," he said, "for I could sail away now in La Mouette and come back to you in twenty years' time, and what should I find but a placid, comfortable woman in place of my cabin-boy, with her dreams long forgotten, and I myself a weather-beaten mariner, stiff in the joints, with bearded face, and my taste for piracy gone with the spent years."
"My Frenchman paints a dismal picture of the future," she said.
"Your Frenchman is a realist," he answered.
"And if I sailed with you now, and never returned to Navron?" she asked.
"Who can tell? Regret perhaps, and disillusion, and a looking back over your shoulder."
"Not with you," she said, "never with you."
"Well then, perhaps no regrets.
But more building of nests, and more rearing of broods, and I having to sail alone again, and so a losing once more of adventure.
So you see, my Dona, there is no escape for a woman, only for a night and for a day."
"No, you are right," she said, "there is no escape for a woman.
Therefore if I sail with you again I shall be a cabin-boy, and borrow Pierre Blanc's breeches once and for always, and there will be no complications of a primitive nature, so that our hearts and our minds can be easy, and you can seize ships and make your landings on the coast, and I, the humble cabin-boy, will brew your supper for you in the cabin, and ask no questions, and hold no conversation with you."
"And how long would we endure that, you and I?"
"For as long as we pleased."
"You mean, for as long as I pleased.
Which would be neither for a night nor an hour, and anyway, not this night and not this hour, my Dona."
The fire burnt low, and sank away to nothing, and later she said to him,
"Do you know what day this is?"
"Yes," he said, "midsummer day. The longest in the year."
"Therefore," she said, "tonight we should sleep here, instead of in the ship.
Because it will never happen again. Not for us. Not in this way, in the creek here."
"I know," he said, "that is why I brought the blankets in the boat. And the pillow for your head. Did you not see them?"
She looked up at him, but she could not see his face any longer, for it was in shadow, the fire-light being gone, and then without a word he got up and went down to the boat, and then came back to her with the bedding and pillow in his arms, and he spread them out in the clearing under the trees, close to the water's edge.
The tide was ebbing now, and the mud-flats showing.
The trees shivered in a little wind, and then were still again.
The night-jars were silent and the sea-birds slept.
There was no moon, only the dark sky above their heads, and beside them the black waters of the creek.
"Tomorrow, very early, I shall go to Navron," she told him, "at sunrise, before you are awake."
"Yes," he said.
"I will call William before the household is astir, and then if all is well with the children, and there is no need for me to stay, I will return to the creek."
"And then?"