“Then his voice was raised in song, and I closed my eyes again, the better to listen.
“Poor James, he played and sang for over an hour; no wild, wailing sea-songs this time, however, but verses sweet and plaintive, and far more in harmony with the notes of the sad guitar. The romance of our situation, the stillness of our surroundings, unbroken save in the intervals of song by the flitting of a wild bird among the broom, and the low whisper of the wind through the pine-trees overhead, with the balmy ozonic air from the blue ocean, continued to instil into my soul a feeling of calm and perfect joy to which I had hitherto been a stranger.
“Just as the sun was sinking like a great blood orange through a purple haze that lay along the western horizon, James laughingly handed the guitar to the boy who had carried it. Then laughing still—he was so strange and good this James of mine—he pulled out a silver-mounted flask and poured me out a portion of its contents.
“It was a little rum and treacle.
“‘The dews of night isn’t going to harm you after that,’ said James.
“Lights were glimmering here and there on the hills like glow-worms, and far beneath us in the town, long before we reached the streets of Funchal.
“We went straight to the hotel and discharged both horse and hammock.
“Then we dined.
“I thought I should be allowed to go on board after this. Not that there was the slightest hurry.
“However, I was mistaken for once. James had not yet done with me for the night. I had still another prescription of his to use; and as I knew it was part and parcel of James’s love cure, I could not demur. He had given me so much pleasure on that day already, that when he asked me to get up and follow him I did so as obediently as the little lamb followed Mary.