"Then make it," he cried, "and go down to it in each other's arms."
For a moment she looked at him in a sort of exaltation. She seemed to hesitate no longer. Her hot hands reached for his, and he felt in her quick and tumultuous breath the first token of her surrender. Herself a child of the sea, brought up from infancy among boats and ships, her hand as true on the tiller, her sparkling eyes as keen to watch the luff of a sail as any man's, she knew as well as Gregory the hell that awaited them outside. To accept so terrible an ordeal seemed like a purification of her dishonor. If she died, she would die unstained; if she lived, it would be after such a bridal that would obliterate her tie to the sot below. Then, on the eve of her giving way, as every line in her body showed her longing, as her head drooped as though to find a resting place on the breast of the man she loved, she suddenly called up all her resolution and tore herself free.
"I'm Joe's wife!" she said.
Gregory faltered as he tried again to plead with her; but in his mind's eye he saw that stiffening corpse below, lying stark and bloody on the cabin floor.
"You gave me to him," she burst out. "I'm his, Greg. I will not betray my husband for any man."
Again he besought her to go with him. But the moment of her madness had passed. She listened unmoved, and when at last he stopped in despair, she bade him take his boat and go.
He sat down on the rail instead, his eyes defying her.
She stepped aft, and his heart stood still as she seemed on the point of descending the companion. But she had another purpose in mind. Throwing aside the gaskets, she stripped the sail covers off the mainsail and began, with practiced hands, to reef down to the third reef. Then she went forward and did the same to the forestaysail. A minute later, hardly knowing why or how, except that he was helping Madge, Gregory, like a man in a dream, was pulling with her on the halyards of both sails. The wind thundered in them as they rose; the main boom jerked violently at the sheet and lashed to and fro the width of the deck; the anchor chain fretted and sawed in the hawse hole; the whole schooner strained and creaked and shook to the keelson. Gregory, in amazement, asked Madge what she was doing.
"Going to sea, Greg," she said.
"Alone?" he cried. "Alone?"