'Alice,' I said very earnestly, 'art thou, indeed, brave enough to endure death itself rather than this last barbarity?'
'Oh! Death!—death!' she cried, clasping her hands. 'What is death to me, who have lost everything?'
'Nay, but consider, my dear. To die at sea—it means to sink down under the cold water out of the light of day; to be choked for want of air; perhaps to be devoured quick by sharks; to lie at the bottom of the water, the seaweed growing over your bones; to be rolled about by the troubled waves——'
'Humphrey, these are old wives' tales. Why, if it had been lawful I would have killed myself long ago. But I must not lose heaven as well as earth. A brief pang it is to die, and then to be happy for ever. What do I care whether the seaweed covers my bones, or the cold clay? Oh, Humphrey, Humphrey, why should I care any longer to live?'
'My dear,' I said, 'if we escape in safety there may yet be happiness in store. No man knoweth the future.' She shook her head. 'Happiness,' I told her, 'doth not commonly come to man in the way which he most desires and prays. For, if he doth obtain the thing for which he hath so ardently prayed, he presently finds that the thing bringeth not the joy he so much expected. Or it comes too late, as is the case often with honours and wealth, when one foot is already in the grave. I mean, my dear, that we must not despair because the thing which most we desired is taken from us. Perhaps we ought not to desire anything at all, except what the Lord shall provide. But that is a hard saying, and if men desired nothing it is certain they would no longer work.' I talked thus at length to divert her mind from her troubles. 'To thee, poor child,' I said, 'have been given afflictions many and great—the loss of godly parents, a husband whom thou must avoid, and the deprivation of earthly love. Yet, since thou art so brave, Alice, I will tell thee—I thought not to tell thee anything of this——'
'What, Humphrey? What?'
'Briefly, Alice, thou shalt not be taken alive.'
'How—unless you kill me?'
'We are agreed, my dear—Barnaby and I—that if we cannot escape any boats which may pursue us the boat shall be sunk, and so we shall all drown together. Indeed, Alice, I confess that I am not myself so much in love with life as to return to that captivity and intolerable oppression from which we have gotten away. Therefore, be assured, we will all drown rather than go back.'