Dick took the tankard and drained it; then he began to smile again and to twist the knife through and about his fingers with that peculiar, smooth movement his crew knew so well.
The girl watched him for a second and then looked up at the clock. Why had not Nan come, she wondered?
“’Tis late, Captain, you will miss the tide an you do not hasten,” she said.
Dick’s eyelids dropped a little lower over his dark eyes, but his knife slipped through his fingers with a faster motion than before. Yet still he smiled, and when he spoke Anny thought that she had never heard so beautiful a voice.
“Ah! señora, I would not leave the Island without that jewel which is mine by right,” he said softly.
“Oh! I had forgot,” said Anny, feeling in her apron pocket, “here is the ring, sir, I had it ready for you,” and she drew out a little muslin packet, and unfolding it disclosed the flowered ring which he had given her. She held it out to him.
Sue, who had been watching them, gasped at the sight of such a jewel, and looked at Anny wonderingly.
The girl was over-lucky, she thought.
Dick took the ring and slipped it over the blade of his knife; it slid up to the hilt and there stuck, a band of gold and gems round the blue steel.
“You give it back to me?” he said, half to himself. “You give it back to me? No other woman has done so much,” he added suddenly, looking at her with that peculiar smile playing round his lips. Then his voice dropped, and he said as though he had just realized something: “But to no other woman have I given so much,” and he laughed again, unpleasantly and yet so musically—while the knife fairly sped through his slim, delicate fingers.