"'See, McCarthy. See, under the moon there, that big turtle. He is uncertain where to go.' I look and I see the little black head like a dot on the water and the widening ripple as he swims around. 'See the boatswain bird's rock.' I saw the flat square surface in the cove. 'If he swims to and mounts that rock, then it will be a sign we have been heard and—He has given His consent.'
"'But he will never come to the rock, dear Janssen,' I say. 'He is going out with the tide.'
"'McCarthy,' she says a little scornfully, 'you are the good man, the untarnished one, the one who was brought up to believe, and you do not. And I, the bad woman, the murderess, the worse than Magdalen because I never loved until now, I believe. I believe and know.'
"And then her belief came to me and I turned to see the great turtle. He swam around and around and the moon shot the little ripples in gleaming silk. And at last I could bear it no longer, and I lowered my head; but Janssen still watched with her head high. And I could feel her hands tremble, and then crisp, and then tremble, and suddenly grow firm and fine and powerful.
"'Look, McCarthy, look!' Her voice rang like a bell. 'He is come to—he is on the rock.'"
"And I raised my head, too, and I saw the Miracle of the Turtle....
"And so we were married, and dwelt as happy as we could be, until the brig Angela Scofield put in for water and rescued us, and I brought Janssen back to the bar of justice, as I was bound under oath to do."
Here McCarthy stopped, and all knew he would say no more. Indeed, it seemed as if he could physically say no more, for the man seemed overcome. All the tenseness of him was gone and the prisoner and he looked at each other in a strange, pathetic, and trusting way, smiling with dry mouths and wet eyes. All in the court-room felt suddenly abashed, as a cynic might feel before the eyes of a child.
And suddenly in every one's mind there were translated his simple words, "And so we were married, and dwelt as happy as we could be," into pictures that were not pictures but chords, harmony and counterpoint, not for the mind's eye but for the heart's feeling. There they had been by a cove on Paradise Island, loving each other not joyously but simply and sincerely and with great strength.
They could see them, strong and fine, by the translucent water of the cove, under the golden sun on the golden sands, in a place as beautiful as the garden the Lord God planted in Eden. And as over that first garden, so over this one did a storm brood like an owl.