She interrupted him. She had covered her face with her hands while he was speaking, and sat rocking herself and moaning feebly. Now suddenly she uncovered her face again, and he saw that her eyes were fierce.
«No more!» she commanded, and stood up. «I'll hear no more. It's false! False what you say! You distort things to justify your own wicked deed.»
He considered her grimly with those cold, penetrating eyes of his.
«Your kind,» he said slowly, «will always believe what it chooses to believe. I do not think that I need pity you too much. But since I know that I have distorted nothing, I am content that expiation now awaits you. You shall choose the form of it, madame. Shall I leave you to these Spanish gentlemen, or will you come with me to your husband?»
She looked at him, her eyes distraught, her bosom in tumult. She began to plead with him. Awhile he listened; then he cut her short.
«Madame, I am not the arbiter of your fate. You have shaped it for yourself. I but point out the only two roads it leaves you free to tread.»
«How…how can you take me back to Basseterre?» she asked him presently.
He told her, and without waiting for her consent, which he knew could not be withheld, he made swift preparation. He flung some provisions into a napkin, took a skin of wine, and a little cask of water, and by a rope which he fetched from his state–room lowered these things to the pinnace, which was again in tow, and which he drew under the counter of the galleon.
Next he lashed the shortened tow–rope to a cleat on one of the stanchions, then summoned her to make with him the airy passage down that rope.
It appalled her. But he conquered her fears, and when she had come to stand beside him, he seized the rope and swung out on it and slid down a little way to make room for her above him. At his command, although almost sick with terror, she grasped the rope and placed her feet on his shoulders. Then she slid down between the rope and him, until his hold embraced her knees and held her firmly.