"Oh," she said, "won't the oars do? Need we bother with the sail for such a little way?"
But I did not answer her, and went on with what I was doing, while the boat drifted quickly out from land before the gusts of wind which struck us harder and harder as we cleared the point of the Isle. Until then I had not thought about the weather—my mind had been full of the other and bigger thought. The gusts of wind waked me up a little, and as I looked at the sky I began to have doubts that I could do what I wanted to do; for it was plain that a gale was rising which would make ticklish work for me even out on the Gulf of Fos—and would make pretty near impossible my keeping on to Les Saintes over the open sea. And I had about made up my mind that we must go back, and that I must carry out my plan some other time, when there came a hail to us from the shore.
"Where are you going?" called a voice—and as we turned our looks shoreward there was Jan. He had been following us, I suppose—just as I sometimes had followed him.
Before I could answer him, Magali spoke. "We are going out on the water to see the death-fires, Jan," she said. "We are going only a very little way."
Her words angered me. There was something in them that seemed to show that he had the right to question her. That settled me in my purpose. Storm or no storm, on I would go. And I brought the boat up to the wind, so as to lay our course straight down the Étang de Caronte, and called out to him: "We are going where you cannot follow. Good-bye!"
And then a gust of wind heeled us over, and we went on suddenly with a dash—as a horse goes when you spur him—and the water boiled and hissed under our bows. In another half-minute we were clear of the shelter of the point, and then the wind came down on us off the hills in a rush so strong that I had to ease off the sheet sharply—and I had a queer feeling about what was ahead of me out on the Gulf of Fos.
"Marius! Marius! What are you doing?" Magali cried in a shiver of fright: for she knew by that time that something was back of it all in my mind. As she spoke I could see through the dusk that Jan was running up the sail of his boat, and in a minute more would be after us.
"I am doing what I ought to have done long ago," I said. "I am taking you for my own. There is nothing to fear, dear Magali. You shall not be in danger. I had meant to take you to Les Saintes. But a gale is rising and we cannot get to Les Saintes to-night. We will run across the Gulf of Fos and anchor in the Grau de Gloria. There is a shepherd's hut near the Grau. I will make a fire in it and you can sleep there comfortably, while I watch outside. After all, it makes no difference where we go. I shall have carried you off—when we go back you must be my wife."
She did not understand at first. She was too much frightened with the suddenness of it all, and with the coming of Jan, and with the boat flying on through the rushing of the wind. I looked back and saw that Jan had got away after us. Dimly I could make out his sail through the dusk that lay thick upon the water. Beyond it and above it was a broad patch of brightness where all the death-fires were burning together in the graveyard. We had come too far to see any longer those many points of light singly. In a mass, they made against the black hill-side a great bright glow.