His thoughts leaped to his friend with a pang of remorse.
"You are suffering—you are ill," he said. "Thus do I bring you back to him who last saw you so full of strength.... But you will recover at Pulwick."
"Suffering, ill! Ah, my God!" As if suffocating, she pressed her hand upon her heart, and bowed her head till it rested on the table. And then he heard her murmur in a weary voice:
"Recover at Pulwick! My God, my God! The air at Pulwick will stifle me, I think."
He waited a moment in silence and saw that she was weeping. Then he went out and closed the door behind him with gentle hand.
Nearly all the lights of the ship were now extinguished, and in a gloom as great as that in which they had started upon their unsuccessful venture, the Peregrine and her crew returned to the little island which had already been so fateful to them.
Captain Jack had taken the helm himself, and Curwen stood upon his right hand waiting patiently for his commands. For an hour or so they hung off the shore. The rain fell close and fine around them; it was as if sea and sky were merging by slow imperceptible degrees into one. The beacon light looming, halo encircled, through the mist, seemed, like a monster eye, to watch with unmoved contempt the restlessness of these pigmies in the grand solitude of the night.
Who shall say with what conflict of soul Molly, in her narrow seclusion, saw the light of Scarthey grow out of the dimness till its rays fell across the darkened cabin and glimmered on her wedding ring?
At last the captain drew his watch, and by the faint rays upon the binnacle saw the hour had come.
"Boat loaded, Curwen?" he asked in a low voice.