"Elizabeth, dearest, we have actually escaped!" he said softly, stooping toward her. "I did not think it possible." She released the tiller, took his head in her hands, and kissed him in wild exultation.
"Free! Free!" she murmured, "and together--my own, my own!" Her words, her look, her caress, set his blood bounding again.
"Yes, yes; is it not heavenly, and with you. Oh, my soul, how can I repay you?" he whispered, giving back kiss for kiss, and stretching out his hands toward her. There was a little pause, broken by a rough voice, which its owner evidently tried to render more gentle; in a hoarse whisper the man at the oars asked,--
"Where are ye a-headin' of the boat, yer Leddyship?"
"I know not!" she answered wildly, seizing the tiller again; "only away from that awful ship!"
"Who is this man at the oars?" asked her lover, rising and sitting down by her when he took the tiller from her nervous hands.
"Well, yer Honor," said a low, deep voice, with a smothered laugh in it, "my name ashore, w'ere I was left by Cap'n Jones t'other night to look arter you, mought be Smith, or Brown, or any old name; but yere in this boat it's Price--William P. Price--w'ich is wot my mother told me, at any rate, though I ain't got no evidence but her word fur it, an' she's dead, an' God be thanked I see yer Honor alive."
"Price! You!" exclaimed O'Neill, in great surprise. "How did you find him, dearest?"
"I found her, please yer Honor," replied the man. "I seed her Leddyship a-comin' down to the beach, an' I ups and captures a small boat from the English, w'ich the man'll be awful disappinted like, w'en he don't find her to-morrow, an' then I ups and offers to take her off, an' I tells her I knows you, an' we fixed it up, and here y'are!"
They were not yet so far from the Serapis, even by this time, but that the quick ear of the girl detected the confusion on her decks: the shrill piping of the boatswain and his mates, the sharp commands of the officers, the trampling of many feet, were easily heard; she clutched her lover nervously, all alert at the thought of a possible further danger to him.