He stood up briskly, then stooped and placed his hand under the inert Spaniard's armpits. Raising the limp body, he dragged it with trailing heels to the stern window, which stood open to the soft, purple, tropical night. He took Don Juan in his arms, and, laden with him, mounted the day–bed. A moment he steadied his heavy burden upon the sill; then he thrust it forth, and, supporting himself by his grip of a stanchion, leaned far out to observe the Spaniard's fall.
The splash he made in the phosphorescent wake of the gently moving ship was merged into the gurgle of water about the vessel. For an instant as it took the sea the body glowed, sharply defined in an incandescence that was as suddenly extinguished. Phosphorescent bubbles arose and broke in the luminous line astern; then all was as it had been.
Captain Blood was still leaning far out, still peering down, when a voice in the cabin behind him came to startle him. It brought him instantly erect, alert; but he did not yet turn round. Indeed, he checked himself in the very act, and remained stiffly poised, his left hand supporting him still upon the stanchion, his back turned squarely upon the speaker.
For the voice was the voice of a woman. Its tone was tender, gentle, inviting. The words it had uttered in French were:
«Juan! Juan! Why do you stay? What do you there? I have been waiting. Juan!»
Speculation treading close upon amazement, he continued to stand there, waiting for more that should help him to understand. The voice came again, more insistently now.
«Juan! Don't you hear me? Juan!»
He swung round at last, and beheld her near the open door of her cabin, from which she had emerged: a tall, handsome woman, in the middle twenties, partly dressed, with a mantle of unbound golden tresses about her white shoulders. He had imagined this lady cowering, terror–stricken, helpless, probably pinioned, in the cabin to which the Spanish ravisher had consigned her. Because of that mental picture, intolerable to his chivalrous nature, he had done what he had done. Yet there she stood, not merely free, nor merely having come forth of her own free will, but summoning Don Juan in accents that are used to a lover.
Horror stunned him: horror of himself and of the dreadful murderous blunder he had committed in his haste to play at knight–errantry: to usurp the place of Providence.
And then another deeper horror welled up to submerge the first: horror of this woman as she stood suddenly revealed to him. That dreadful raid on Basseterre had been no more than a pretext to cloak her elopement, and must have been undertaken at her invitation. The rest, her forcible conveyance aboard, her bestowal in the cabin, had all been part of a loathly comedy she had played — a comedy set against a background of fire and rape and murder, by all of which she remained so soullessly unperturbed that she could come forth to coo her lover's name on that seductive note.
It was for this harpy, who waded complacently through blood and the wreckage of a hundred lives to the fulfilment of her desires, that he had soiled his hands. The situation seemed to transmute his chivalrously–inspired deed into a foulness.
He shivered as he regarded her, and she, confronted by that stern aquiline face and those ice–cold blue eyes, that were certainly not Don Juan's, gasped, recoiled, and clutched her flimsy silken body–garment chosen to her generous breast.
«Who are you?» she demanded. «Where is Don Juan de la Fuente?»
He stepped down from the day–bed, and something bodeful in his countenance changed her surprise to incipient alarm.
«You are Madame de Coulevain?» he asked, using her own language. He must make no mistake.
She nodded. «Yes, yes.» Her tone was impatient, but the fear abode in her eyes. «Who are you? Why do you question me?» She stamped her foot. «Where is Don Juan?»
He knew that truth is commonly the shortest road, and he took it. He jerked a thumb backwards over his shoulder. «I've just thrown him through the window.»
She stared and stared at this cold, calm man about whom she perceived something so remorseless and terrifying that she could not doubt his incredible words.
Suddenly she loosed a scream. It did not disconcert or even move him. He began to speak again, and, dominated by those brilliant intolerable eyes which were like points of steel, she controlled herself to listen.
«You are supposing me one of Don Juan's companions; perhaps even that, covetous of the noble prize he took to–day at Basseterre I have murdered him to possess it. That far indeed from the truth. Deceived like the rest by the comedy of your being brought forcibly aboard, imagining you the unhappy victim of a man I knew for a profligate voluptuary, I was moved to unutterable compassion on your behalf, and to save you from the horror I foresaw for you I killed him. And now,» he added with a bitter smile, «it seems that you were in no need of saving, that I have thwarted you no less than I have thwarted him. This comes of playing Providence.»
«You killed him!» she said. She staggered where she stood, and, ashen–faced, looked as if she would swoon. «You killed him! Killed him! Oh, my God! My God! You've killed my Juan.» Thus far she had spoken dully, as if she were repeating something so that she might force it upon her own understanding. But now she wrought herself to frenzy. «You beast! You assassin!» she screamed. «You shall pay! I'll rouse the ship! You shall answer, as God's in Heaven!»
She was already across the cabin hammering on the door; already her hand was upon the key when he came up with her. She struggled like a wild–cat in his grip, screaming the while for help. At last he wrenched her away, swung her round and hurled her from him. Then he withdrew, and pocketed the key.
She lay on the floor, by the table, where he had flung her, and sent scream after scream to alarm the ship.
Captain Blood surveyed her coldly. «Aye, aye, breathe your lungs, my child,» he bade her. «It will do you good and me no harm.»
He sat down to await the exhaustion of her paroxysm. But his words had already quieted her. Her round eyes asked a question. He smiled sourly as he answered it.
«No man aboard this ship will stir a foot for all your cries, or even heed them, unless it be as a matter for amusement. That is the kind of men they are who follow Don Juan de la Fuente.»
He saw by her stricken expression how well she understood. He nodded with that faint sardonic smile which she found hateful. «Aye, madame. That's the situation. You were best bring yourself to a calm contemplation of it.»
She got to her feet, and stood leaning heavily against the table, surveying him with rage and loathing. «If they do not come to–night, they will come to–morrow. Some time they must come. And when they come it will be very ill for you, whoever you may be.»
«Will it not also be very ill for you?» quoth Blood.
«For me? I did not murder him.»
«You'll not be accused of it. But in him you've lost your only protector aboard this ship. What will betide you, do you suppose, when you are alone and helpless in their power, a prisoner of war, the captive of a raid, in the hands of these merry gentlemen of Spain?»
«God of Heaven!» She clutched her breast in terror.
«Quiet you,» he bade her, almost contemptuously. «I did not rescue you, as I supposed, from one wolf, merely to fling you to the pack. That will not happen — unless you yourself prefer it to returning to your husband.»
She grew hysterical.
«To my husband? Ah, that, no! Never that! Never that!»
«It is that or…» — he pointed to the door — «…The pack. I perceive no choice for you save between those alternatives.»
«Who are you?» she asked abruptly. «What are you, you devil, who have destroyed me and yet torment me?»
«I am your saviour, not your destroyer. Your husband, for his own sake, shall be left to suppose, as all have been led to suppose, that you were violently carried off. He will receive you back with relief of his own anguish and with tenderness, and make amends to you for all that the poor fool will fancy you have suffered.»