"You were fool to save me!" cried she. "For I, being dead, might now be in happy circumstance and you with your Joan! You were a fool—"
"Howbeit you have your life," said I.
"Life?" quoth she. "What is life to me but a pain, a grief I shall not fear to lose. Life hath ever brought me so much of evil, so little good, I were well rid of it that I might live again, to find perchance those joys but dim remembered that once were mine in better life than this. And now, if there be aught of food and drink aboard, Resolution, let us eat; then get you to sleep—you will be weary, yes."
And surely never was stranger meal than this, Joanna and Resolution, the compass betwixt them, discussing winds, tides and weather, parallels of latitude and longitude, the best course to steer, etc., and I watching the ever-rising billows and hearkening to the piping of the wind.
Evening found us running through a troubled sea beneath an angry sky and the wind so loud I might hear nothing of my companions where they crouched together in the stern sheets. But suddenly Joanna beckoned me with imperious gesture:
"Look, Martino!" cried she, with hand outflung towards the billows that foamed all about us. "Yonder is a death kinder than death by the fire and yet I do fear this more than the fire by reason of this my hateful woman's body. Now may you triumph over my weakness an you will, yet none can scorn it more than I—"
"God forbid!" said I and would have steadied her against the lurching of the boat, but Resolution, scowling at my effort, clasped her within his arm, shielding her as well as he might against the lashing spray, bidding me let be.
Thereafter and despite her sickness, she must needs stoop to cover me with the boat-cloak where I lay, and looking up at Resolution I saw his bronzed face glinted with moisture that was not of the sea.