"Gentlemen," he said, "I am grateful. I am damned grateful! If I live I shall try and repay each one of you. I shall try and be a better man. I shall try to be worthy of your kindness."
He went round and shook hands solemnly with every one of them. "Damned grateful!" he repeated.
"Let's be off," said Brady.
"Now, lad, your word of honor," said Winterslea. Jack looked about him helplessly.
"I suppose I've no right to ask such a thing," he said. "I know how good you've been to me already, and all that. But—but, gentlemen, she's my wife. I love her. I shall never see her again. May I not entreat a minute to myself?"
"No," said Brady.
Jack went over to Tehea and took her hand. He put his arms about her, and, unashamed before them all, pressed her comely head against his breast. He tried to explain the inexorable fate he was so powerless to resist; in incoherent whispers he told her he would break his chains and return to her, free in the years to come to devote his life to the woman he loved. He called her the dearest names, and begged her not to forget him. But she, with a perception greater than his own, swept away these despairing protestations with disdain. The daughter of one king, the sister of another, could she not meet force by force? These fierce intruders, with their rough voices and drawn pistols, who were they, to threaten a princess of the royal blood and carry away her lover before her eyes? If they were strong, she was stronger; and what ship cannon, she asked, however murderous or far-ranging, could penetrate those mountain recesses whither she would carry him before the morning? Ah, she said, it was for him to choose between her and them; between Britain and the island; between love and the service of the white Queen beyond the seas.
"I have chosen," he said.
Her eyes flashed as she freed herself from his arms.
"I am hateful in my own sight for having loved you," she said.