And as I gazed, in place of my raging fury of last night was a hopeless despondency and a great bitterness against that perverse fate that seemed to mock my every endeavour.
As I stood thus deject and bitterly cast down, I heard the step of this woman Joanna and presently she cometh beside me.
"You will be hating me for this, hating me—yes?" she questioned; then, finding me all regardless of her, she plucked me by the sleeve. "Ah—and will you not speak to me?" cried she. Turning from her, I began to pace aimlessly along beside the lagoon but she, overtaking, halted suddenly in my path. "Your boat would have leaked and swamped with you, Martino!" said she, but heeding her no whit I turned and plodded back again, and she ever beside me. "I tell you the cursed thing would ha' gone to pieces at the first gust of wind!" she cried. But I paced on with neither word nor look until, finding me thus blind and deaf to her, she cursed me bitterly and so left me alone and I, following a haphazard course, presently found myself in a grove of palmetto trees and sat me down in this pleasant shade where I might behold the sea, that boundless, that impassable barrier. But in a while, espying the woman coming thitherwards, I rose and tramped on again with no thought but to save myself from her companionship.
All the morning then I rambled aimlessly to and fro, keeping ever amid the woods and thickets, staying my hunger with such fruit as I fell in with, as grapes and plantains; or sitting listlessly, my hands idle before me, I stared out across these empty, sun-smitten waters, until, dazzled by their glare, I would rise and wander on again, my mind ever and always troubled of a great perplexity, namely: How might I (having regard to the devilish nature of this woman Joanna) keep myself from slaying her in some fit of madness, thereby staining my soul with her murder.
So came I at last to my habitation in Skeleton Cove and chancing to espy my great powderhorn where it hung, I reached it down and going without the cave, scattered its contents broadcast, this being all the powder I had brought hither.
It being now late noon and very hot, I cast myself down in the shade of a rock, and lying there, I presently came to the following resolution, viz: To shun the woman Joanna's company henceforth as well as I might; moreover (and let her haunt me how she would) to heed her neither by word or look, bearing all her scorns and revilings patiently, making no answer, and enduring all her tyranny to the uttermost. All of which fine conceits were but the most arrant folly and quickly brought to nothing, as you shall hear. For even now as I sat with these high-flown notions buzzing in my head, I started to her sudden call:
"Martino—Martino!"
Glancing up, I beheld her poised upon the rocks above me and a noose of small cord in her hand. As I watched, she began to whirl this around her head, fast and faster, then, uttering a shrill, strange cry, she let fly the noose the which, leaping through the air, took me suddenly about the throat and she, pulling on it, had me half-strangled all in a moment. Then as, choking, I loosed this devilish noose from me (and or ever I could rise) she came running and casting herself down before me, clasped my feet and laid her head upon them.
"Martino!" she cried, "Oh man, beat me an you will, trample on me, kill me; only heed me—heed me a little!"
Now seeing her thus miserably abject and humbled, I grew abashed also and fain would have loosed me from her clasp but she held me only the faster; and thus, my hand coming upon her head, she caught that hand and kissed it passionately, wetting it with her tears.