"They must have gone straight out," she thought, "straight out. And they would not go far. Only to where the water is deep enough for the yawl to sink, or to encounter one of the many reefs--those jagged crested reefs which would make a hole in her far worse than fifty awls could do."
Then still bending her supple frame over the oars, while her little hands clenched them tightly, she rowed and rowed for dear life--as in actual truth it was!--her breath coming faster and faster with her exertions, her bosom heaving, but her courage indomitable.
"I may not be too late," she whispered again and again; "the boat may not yet have filled. I may not be too late."
Suddenly she paused affrighted, startled; her heart seemed to cease to beat, her hands were idle as they clutched the oars. Startled, and despairing!
For out here the water was calmer, there being on it only the long Atlantic roll that is so common beneath the roughness of the winds; except for the slapping and crashing of those waves against the bows of the boat with each rise and fall it made, there was scarcely any noise; certainly none such as those waves had made, and would make against the boathouse and the long line of the shore. So little noise that what she had heard before she heard again now, as she sat listening and terrified in her place. She caught the beat of oars in another boat, a boat that was drawing nearer to her with each fresh stroke--that was, also, drawing nearer to the boathouse.
The Indians were returning. Their work was done!
"I am too late," she moaned. "I am too late. God help us both!"
Then, too, she heard something else.
Over the waters, over the rolling waves, there came to her ears the clear sounds of a man singing in a high tenor--it was almost a high treble--a man singing a song in Maya which she, who was of their race, knew was one that, in bygone days the Caribs and natives had sung in triumph over the downfall of their enemies. A song which, when it was concluded, was followed by a little bleating laugh, one which she knew well enough, a laugh which only one man in all that neighbourhood could give. Then she heard words called out in a half-chuckling, half-gloating tone, still in Maya.
"'Sink him beneath the sea forever,' she say, 'forever beneath the sea.' And Paz he never for get, oh, never, never! Now he sunk," and again she heard the bleating laugh, and again the beginning of that wild Carib song of triumph.