“Surely, sir,” the surgeon ventured, “there can be no such question ever. Mistress Rosamund’s word alone should suffice, if indeed so much as that even were required.”
“Ay! His offenses against God and man are too notorious to leave grounds upon which any should ever question my right to deal with him out of hand.”
There was a tap at the door and Sir John’s own body servant entered with the announcement that Mistress Rosamund was asking urgently to see him.
“She will be impatient for news of him,” Sir John concluded, and he groaned. “My God! How am I to tell her? To crush her in the very hour of her deliverance with such news as this! Was ever irony so cruel?” He turned, and stepped heavily to the door. There he paused. “You will remain by him to the end?” he bade the surgeon interrogatively.
Master Tobias bowed. “Of course, Sir John.” And he added, “’Twill not be long.”
Sir John looked across at Lionel again—a glance of valediction. “God rest him!” he said hoarsely, and passed out.
In the waist he paused a moment, turned to a knot of lounging seamen, and bade them throw a halter over the yard-arm, and hale the renegade Oliver Tressilian from his prison. Then with slow heavy step and heavier heart he went up the companion to the vessel’s castellated poop.
The sun, new risen in a faint golden haze, shone over a sea faintly rippled by the fresh clean winds of dawn to which their every stitch of canvas was now spread. Away on the larboard quarter, a faint cloudy outline, was the coast of Spain.
Sir John’s long sallow face was preternaturally grave when he entered the cabin, where Rosamund awaited him. He bowed to her with a grave courtesy, doffing his hat and casting it upon a chair. The last five years had brought some strands of white into his thick black hair, and at the temples in particular it showed very grey, giving him an appearance of age to which the deep lines in his brow contributed.
He advanced towards her, as she rose to receive him. “Rosamund, my dear!” he said gently, and took both her hands. He looked with eyes of sorrow and concern into her white, agitated face.