"In the far east where Sebastian Cabot first touched," the Kentishman replied. "There I may sight the great ocean, which we islanders love, and scent the good brine and watch for an English sail."
"Here there is nothing we may do," said Hough, removing his eyes from the dreamy lake. "There surely we may look for the ship which Lord Baltimore shall send when Viner comes down to Virginia. I too would be near the sea and smell liberty."
With that they parted, and Hough returned to his hole among the rocks with visions of the sea. Within that cave, where Penfold slept during his guardian's absence, the fires darted, tincturing with red the silver of the moonbeams against the sable wall of cliff. Between the granite and the forest of pines a stream of moonlight spread like a glacier. A figure stole from the black belt, stepped cautiously into the white road, and waded, as it were, through the rippling beams. It was Onawa, who had watched the two men and her sister making west; she knew that one of the men would return after a little interval; and she understood that the work which she had undertaken must be done quickly.
No croaking bird aroused Penfold from his sleep to warn him of the she-wolf. It was one of those ironies which run through life that one sister should have cast the sick man into healthy slumber in order that the other might stab him as he lay.
A cloud of blood-sucking insects trumpeted around Onawa. Their thin noise seemed to her a tumult, and she stopped and looked back along the cold white stream. A lean wolf was slinking in her direction, his muzzle snuffling the dust. She shivered when she remembered that the murderess was doomed to become a werewolf after death to prowl about the scene of her former sin. The creature howled. The pale girl started and ran into the cave.
Her belief remained constant that she might still win the love of La Salle by destroying his enemies. She knew that he had gained renown by her betrayal to him of the English settlement. Now he had gone in the great ship to Acadie. She was about to follow, having neither home nor people, being indeed hunted for her life; but first she might destroy another of his enemies. Then she could learn to say: "I have killed the old Englishman who stirred up my people to attack yours." And she thought that he might welcome her at last for the sake of her good deeds.
A frightened howl broke upon the night. The wolf, disturbed by some enemy of its species, was hurrying for cover. The crisp snapping of twigs, succeeded by a rattling of small stones, were caused, not by the pads of the black loup-garou, but by a body weightier and less cowardly. These sounds were deadened by the walls of rock, and Onawa did not hear them. Swiftly she drew away the coverings from the white-faced sleeper, and old Penfold smiled innocently at her in his drugged sleep. Onawa drew in her breath, unsheathed her knife, and felt its point; then leaned back, measuring the distance by the faint glow, and her arm went up to strike. That next moment she screamed with terror, turned, struck wildly at the air, and was carried back to the granite floor with Hough's iron fingers driven round her throat.
Step by step the grim Puritan dragged the girl back to the mouth of the cave, and there pinned her to the rock with one arm, while reaching with the other to the corner, where he had piled a rope taken from the deck of the privateer. He bound her hand and foot; and thus helpless she stared up, and read her death upon his face.
For over an hour Hough paced the floor of the cave, listening to his captain's gentle breathing, and recalling the violent death of Athaliah, slain by order of Jehoiada, and the fate of Jezebel, cast from an upper window at the command of Jehu; for such a man as the Puritan regulated all the actions of his life by the light revealed to him from the Bible. There was, he reasoned, the highest authority to justify the act which he contemplated; only the manhood in him recoiled from the slaying of a woman. At length his mind became fixed. He bent and drew together the scarlet embers of the fire.
Onawa made no sign of terror, and no appeal for mercy; but her eyes followed every movement of her stern captor, as she sought to learn her sentence without betraying her fear.