They were then within a couple of miles of land: a green flat coast with a single great mountain towering in the background. To larboard a tall ship was sweeping past them, steering for the bay ahead, and in her lines and rig Captain Blood read her English nationality. From her furled topsails he assumed that her master, evidently strange to these waters, was cautiously groping his way in. And this was confirmed by the seaman visible on the starboard forechains, leaning far out to take soundings. His chanting voice reached them across the sunlit waters as he told the fathoms.
Madame de Coulevain, who latterly had fallen into a drowsy stupor, roused herself to stare across at the frigate, aglow in the golden glory of the risen sun.
«No need for fear, madame. She is not Spanish.»
«Fear?» She glared at him, blear–eyed from sleeplessness and weeping. She was a handsome woman, golden–headed and built on the generous lines of Hebe. Her full lips writhed into bitterness. «What have I to fear more than the fate you thrust upon me?»
«I, madame? I thrust no fate upon you. You are overtaken by the fate your own actions have invited.»
Fiercely she interrupted him. «Have I invited this? That I should return to my husband?»
Captain Blood sighed in weariness. «Are we to have the argument all over again? Must I remind you that yourself you refused the only alternative, which was to remain at the mercy of those Spanish gallants on that Spanish ship? For the rest, your husband shall be left to suppose that you were carried off against your will.»
«It if had not been for you, you assassin…»
«If it had not been for me, madame, your fate would have been even worse than you tell me that it is going to be.»
«Nothing could be worse! Nothing! This man who has brought me out to these savage lands because, discredited and debt–ridden as he is, there was no longer a place for him at home, is…Oh, but why do I talk to you? Why do I try to explain to one who obstinately refuses to understand, to one who desires only to blame?»