“Once I thought a thing like that the fearfullest thing! Now, though I love life more now than I did then, I do not think so. The old terrors grow smaller. They will come one day, I think, to cause laughter.”
“I understand that,” said Joan. “Nor do they matter to me as they did. Neither the gallows tree, nor words like witch and sorcerer, heretic and atheist!”
The shore before them grew in distinctness, grew and grew as they stood there alone, withdrawn, watching. With that increasing definiteness, that rigour of line and hue and shape, came with a growing form, a growing sharpness of menace, came as it had not come to them before upon this ship, a realizing knowledge that here there was no change; that the hot ploughshares and the sharp swords were yet ready laid for folk like them to move across! England was England still.... They heard upon the wind, “Witch and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer—doubly damned for that you were judged and lay not still under our judgement! Witch and Sorcerer.... Fornicators—for in what church were read your marriage banns, and what priest with lifted hands blessed your union?... Blasphemers, deniers, atheists who pray not to Jehovah! Witch and Sorcerer—Witch and Sorcerer—”
They were not wholly free from fear and shrinking. They looked at each other with whitened faces. But they had said true when they had said that they were freer. They recovered, they smiled into each other’s eyes. “I wonder how much of us they will hang or burn—”
The shores grew plainer, higher. There came, suddenly, a summons to the captain. They found him in the great cabin, papers upon the table. Still short of speech, incurious and literal, he now had duties which he would perform. He had to give account to the proper officers of the Eagle’s voyage and of those whom she brought into England, and he proposed not to lose sight of the castaways, Giles and Ellice Herne, until the right authorities gave him quittance. He could not remember the Needs Must, but there were many who would. Any saved from any lost ship had an importance, for they could give to her owners information where had been guessing. Therefore the captain meant to send the two ashore with a trusted man who would take them before such and such persons in authority. There they would be questioned, and if they answered to satisfaction would doubtless be helped. The captain, with a wave of his hand dismissing them, turned to other business. He left a sharp enough thorn of anxiety with the two who had fled England on the Silver Queen.
Night passed. Morning broke—English summer, soft and sweet. Here was the Thames mouth, here other winged ships and ships at anchor, here the green shores, the waving trees, the clustered houses, here England—England!
As they stood watching with full hearts the agent of the Company came to them from the poop deck. “You have no money?”
“No.”