“God bless you, Olivia. And comfort you.”
Before she left the cabin she turned and spoke again.
“He was married, Charles,” she said. “You never told me that.”
“Yes, Olivia, he was married.”
“I knew that, Charles. I saw him so clearly. With a woman with a cruel face. Oh, I knew it. It was generous of you not to tell me. But I knew all the time.”
Late that night, in the darkened cabin, Olivia leaned upon the port-sill, looking out over the rudder eddies, as they spun away in fire rings, brightening and dying. She propped the cushions at her back, so that she might rest her head. The nightmare of the past was ashes to her. That evil fire had burned out, as Tolu had burned out. The past and Tolu lay smouldering together somewhere, beyond Fuerte there, beyond the Mestizos. The embers lay red there, crusted in ash.
She had come to see clearly in the pain of her sorrow. She saw her life laid bare and judged. She saw the moral values of things. Great emotions are our high tides. They brim our natures, as a tide brims the flood-marks, bringing strangeness out of the sea, wild birds and amber. She had relics in her hand; rosebuds and a pebble, “feathers and dust.” The rosebuds had spilled their petals. She looked at them there, turning them over with her fingers, holding them to the open port to see them. There was no moon; but the great stars gave the night a kind of glimmering clearness. The sea heaved silvery with star-tracks. Fish broke the water to flame. The scutter of a settling sea-bird made a path of bright scales a few yards from her. She laid the relics on the port-sill, near the open window. Very gently she pushed the pebble into the water, leaning forward to see the gleam of its fall. One by one she pushed the rosebuds over, till they were all gone too. She watched the petals float away into the wake, chased by the sea-birds. They were out of sight in a moment, but the gulls mewed as they quarrelled over them, voices in the darkness, crying in the air aloft. Olivia leaned there, looking after them, for many minutes. Then she drew close the window and covered her eyes with her hands.
It took them five days to win back to the Samballoes. They entered Springer’s Drive a little before noon, eagerly looking out towards the anchorage. No ships lay there, no guns greeted them from the fort. Margaret and Cammock, walking the poop together, knew that Pain had been before them. A thin expanse of smoke wavered and drifted in films among the trees. When it drove down into the palms, after rising above their level, it scattered the macaws, making them cry out. The flagstaff lay prone, like a painted finger, pointing down the spit to the sea. Tucket’s sloop was fifty yards ahead of the ship, plunging in a smother. There was a cockling sea that morning, the reefs were running white, they gleamed milky for fifty yards about them. There was no other sign of life about the island. The smoke was so thin that it was like mist. The beach, which had so lately been thronged, was busy now with crabs, which scuttled and sidled, tearing at the manchineel trees. A wounded man limped down the sand and waved to them. Margaret, going in in his boat, saw that it was the seaman West.
“I been here two days, sir,” he said, “waiting for you. I been living on sapadillies. There been awful times, sir.”
“What has happened, man?”