THE BRIDGE AND AFTERWARDS.
_Dr. Fabos Visits Colin Ross._
I was in a situation of grave peril; but it would have been imprudent
beyond measure to have admitted it. Possibly the accident of their
advantage did not occur to the men, nor had they discovered it. There
was no order on the ship, no commander, no person in authority above
others. The agony of wounds forbade any consideration of that which
should be done or of the methods of doing it. I perceived that the men
regarded me in some sense as their good angel, paying me the compliment
of trusting me, and obeying my commands as faithfully as if I had been
their captain. They could even remember that I had gone fasting, and
speak of food and drink.
“Old Valentine knew a good tap when he tasted it, and there’s plenty of
the right sort on board,” the American said to me good-naturedly. “You
only give a name to it and the corks will be flying like rockets. Ask
for what you’re wanting, doctor, and I’ll skin the lubber who doesn’t
run to fetch it. The Lord knows what my mates would have done if you
hadn’t come among them.”
It was honestly said, and as honestly meant. And yet, willingly as I
would have accepted his cordial offer, fear of the consequences held me
back. Who would dare to think of drink amid such a crew as this, or to
remind men that drink was to be had? I could depict a Saturnalia defying
the powers of a Poe to describe, such an orgie as a sane man might dream
of in a horrid sleep, should these ruffians broach the casks or be
reminded of the spirits which the ship carried.
My immediate anxiety was to divert their thoughts from my own situation,
and to lead them to regard me rather as one of themselves than as a
stranger. As for the mystery of my little Joan’s disappearance from the
ship, the excuses which had been made to me, and the obvious sincerity
of them, I knew no more than the dead what these might mean. While at
one time I would doubt if she had ever been on the ship at all—plainly
as I had thought to see her there—there were other moods in which I
could almost believe that these ruffians had killed her, and that she
also must be numbered among the victims of the night. This, however,
would mark a moment of despair, to be forgotten readily when action
called me to some new task. These men had sworn that Joan lived. Why
should I question a sincerity which all my observation declared to be
genuine?
So thus the matter stood when darkness came down and the fog lay thick
about the Diamond Ship. Okyada, my servant, had vanished unaccountably,
nor had I heard a single word concerning him since we came on board
together. The yacht had disappeared from my ken, and the shrewdest eyes
could not detect her situation, or the quickest ears give news of her.
In these trying circumstances I welcomed a request from one of the
seamen that I would visit Colin Ross, the captain of the vessel, and
until lately the representative of Valentine Imroth, aboard her. This
man I found lying grievously wounded by a bullet which had entered the
left lung and penetrated in such an ugly fashion that his life must be a
question of hours. His was not an unpleasant face, nor was his manner in
any way repellent. I told him frankly, when he asked me, that he could
not live, and he answered with a wan smile that was almost a sob.
“Good God! sir,” he said, “how little any man, who makes a beginning on
a crooked road, ever sees the end of it! I was the captain of a Shields
collier two years ago, doing well, and calling my home my own. When Mr.
Imroth found me out, I would no more have done a shabby thing than have
harmed my little baby girl, who’s waiting for me in Newcastle now. Money
bought me—I’ll not deny it. I promised to run this ship to the Brazils
for a thousand guineas, and there’s Imroth’s seal upon it on the table
yonder. You may not believe me, but what the story of this business is,
how these men came here, or why they have come, I know no better than
the Pope of Rome—and that’s the truth, if my life’s the price of it.
And yet, sir, that it’s a bad business I’d be a fool to deny. He who
touches pitch gets plenty on his fingers. I knew that Val Imroth was a
bad lot the first day I saw him—and bad enough are his companions on
this ship. Why, good God! there’d have been murder done every day if it
hadn’t been for fear of the man and his words. He puts a palsy on you
when you hear his step—his breath’s a flame of hell—this crowd
shivered at his look. It’s fear of him that’s kept them quiet since he
ran for shore; it’s fear of him which will send them all to the dock in
the end; as sure as I lie here telling you so.”
I cannot conceal the fact that this interview affected me greatly. Here
was a robust British sailor, a man perhaps of thirty-five years of age,
brown-haired, blue-eyed, and of an open cast of countenance, about to
give up his life and to pass for ever from the love which awaited him in
England because a monster had breathed a breath upon him, and had cried
in his ears the fables of the gold. Hundreds of men, as innocent as this
man, were exiles from wife and children to-day, outcasts, jail-birds,
suspects, human derelicts, because of this devilish net which had
enmeshed them, of these criminal arms which had embraced them, and this
voice of lust which charmed them. Many a man have I seen die—but not as
this seaman died, with a child’s name upon his lips, and a child’s image
before his eyes. Of what avail to speak at such a moment of the Eternal
Hope in the justice of an Almighty and all-Merciful God, or to recite
those platitudes in which pious folk take refuge? Colin Ross was
thinking of the child who nevermore would call him father, or by him to
be called child again.
This, however, is to anticipate the hour. There was much upon which I
would gladly have questioned the man; but little that he had the
strength to answer me. Just as the seamen had sworn that it was all well
with Joan, so did he bear them out with such emphasis as his failing
strength could command.
“We were to make the Brazils and take a passage for Miss Joan to London.
Her father, General Fordibras, is there, doctor. If harm has come to
her, it is since I left the deck. The men worshipped her—there are
rogues enough, I grant you, who would have had their say, but I shot the
first dead with my own hand, and the men answered for the second, God
help him! You’ll find Miss Joan all right, and take her back to her
father. For the rest, I can’t advise you, sir. You are safe enough on
board here while this trouble is new—but when it’s past, save yourself,
for God’s sake; for your life will not be worth a minute’s purchase.
Remember what’s at stake if this ship makes port and you are there to
give an account of her. Hands and passengers alike will prevent that.
No, doctor, get aboard your yacht while you can, and leave these men to
their destiny.”
He spoke with much dignity, though it is hardly necessary for me to say
that I had travelled already upon such lines of thought as he laid down.
When I left him, it was with a promise to see his wife and child in
Newcastle, and to give them what comfort I could—but chiefly to keep
the story of the darker hour away from them; for, as he said, “they hold
my name dear.” He had but a few moments to live then, and that merciful
euthanasia which is frequently the hand-maiden of death, as long
experience has shown to me, rapidly came upon him and left him but the
passing dreams of a sleep which all must know, and from which all must
awake.
Now this befell, I suppose, about eleven o’clock that night. There was
still much mist when I came upon deck, but it had lifted to the
northward, and the atmosphere was everywhere clearing. I had some
expectation of spying out the yacht should the breeze strengthen, and
yet there was no hour of all that emprise which found me in such a
desolation of spirit or so doubtful of the ultimate issue. Why had my
friends made no effort to reach me? What kept them? Why did they leave
me here at the mercy of these cut-throats, my life as a gossamer which
any puff of anger might destroy, my liberty in these ruffians’ keeping?
Sober reason would have replied that they could have done nothing else;
but this was not the time for reason, and, indeed, I came to call it the
darkest hour of them all. Vainly I raged against my own acts and the
judgment which had carried me on board the ship. It had been madness to
come; it would be madness to let the men know as much. Already I was
aware of a disposition to treat me with less respect—it may have been
pure imagination, but the idea came into my head, and a brief
conversation with the American did nothing to displace it.
“I am going aboard my own yacht,” I said to him—that would have been
about the hour of midnight. “I am going aboard my yacht, but I will
return at daybreak and see what more I can do. Mr. Ross says that you
are heading for the Brazils. That is no affair of mine. The man I want
is no longer on the ship. I have no concern with the others nor they
with me. Let us put things as straight as we can—and then talk about
the shore.”
This should not have been said. It occurred to me almost as I uttered
the words that the man had not hitherto thought about the yacht at all;
but no sooner had I spoken than he stepped to the gangway and
immediately realised the situation.
“Guess your people have gone hay-making, doctor,” he said far from
pleasantly. “Well, I don’t suppose it matters much anyway. My mates want
you pretty badly, and while they want you, I guess you’ll have to stop.
Just step down and take another look at Harry Johnson, will you? He’s
raving like a fool-woman in the Doldrums. You can turn in
by-and-by—I’ll see what Williams can do for you—though it’s forward
you must swing your hammock, and no two opinions about that.”
To this I answered, in a tone as decisive as his own, that my comings
and my goings would be ordered by none but myself, and that his friend
must await his turn. A long acquaintance with rogues has convinced me
that any weakness of civility is lost upon them, and that firmness to
the point of brutality is the only weapon. I would have shot this man
dead had he given me an impudent answer, and his surprise when he heard
me speak was something to see.
“No offence, doctor,” he said presently. “I’ll tell Harry you’ll be
along presently. Don’t think as we’re not obliged to you for what you’ve
done. The boys are ready enough to tell you so. You take your own time,
and do what’s best pleasing to you. There’s work enough, God Almighty
knows.”
He spat his filthy tobacco juice into the sea, and turning upon his
heels went forward to join his companions by the fo’castle. A scene so
weird is not within my memory. Depict the grey mists drifting upon the
water, the silvery waves in those lakes of radiance the moonbeams could
create, the stillness of the ship, the prone forms of men whose sobs and
groans marked the intervals of sounds, the lanterns set about the decks,
the great mast looming above, the spars and yards, and the monster bulk
of the funnel. And this ship, remember, was a house of sanctuary to all
the friends of crime who should bow the knee to Valentine Imroth, and
come to him with plunder in their hands!
What stories could not its cabins tell! What crimes had been
committed—murder and lust and shedding of blood—what awful cries had
gone up from its decks, the cries of strong men at the gate of death, of
women in their agony! All these phantoms came to me as I paced the
quarter-deck and asked, almost as a man in despair, what kept my friends
or how long the mists would prevail? I could imagine a day when this
mighty idea had first occurred to the Jew’s cunning intellect, and he
had acclaimed the possibilities of it. What police, and of what nations,
would seek their criminals upon the high seas, or search there for the
jewels which the chief rogues of Europe brought to a sanctuary so sure?
What mind would have read this riddle aright unless accident had
suggested its answer? I claimed nothing for myself; a thousand times an
irony would it have been to do so.
Let me escape these decks, and how much further was I upon the road to
finality? I could tell a plain tale to the Government, certainly, and
could open the doors of this temple of assassins to the world—but who
would crush so vast a conspiracy? What unity of international action,
what initiative would war upon the greater evils of it, hunting the
tigers from their dens or ridding the cities of their allies? All that I
had done, all my planning, all my thinking, had left the Jew a free man
and sent me a prisoner on the deck of his ship. And God alone could give
me freedom, that God in whose immediate Providence I have never ceased
to believe!
This was the outcome of my philosophy as I stood by the gangway and
watched the shifting mists; here opening a little silvered pathway—as
to an arbour of delights; there beating down again in dank clouds of
vapour and shutting all the hither scenes from my view. The men had left
me alone for the time being, but their absence seemed a greater peril. I
could hear a loud argument going on by the fo’castle, and voices raised
in persuasion or in anger. The monster ship herself drifted helplessly,
as a great stricken beast lurching in agony and seeking only a place to
end its woes. Every faculty that I possess told me that I was in great
danger. These rogues would come forward presently and put some
proposition to me. So I argued, nor did the night give me the lie.
Shuffling and hesitating they came, some twenty or more of them, before
another hour had passed, all together in a deputation, and as ready, I
would swear, to cut me down where I stood as to drink the rum which an
obliging purser had served out to them.
The American, I perceived, was to be their chief speaker, and with him
was the man called Bill Evans. Advancing by the promenade deck in a
body, they seemed to find some little difficulty when it came to
expressing themselves in plain English; and had the situation been less
dangerous, it would have been ridiculous enough.
“Well, my men,” I cried, being careful to have the first word at them;
“what is it, now? Speak up, I shall not eat you.”
“Beg pardon, sir, we wish you to know that Will Rayner has been made
captain of this ship, and that he wishes you to go below.”
The man named Evans spoke, and I must say his manner was diverting
enough.
“That is very considerate of Mr. William Rayner,” said I, with a laugh.
“Will he not step forward—am I not to have the pleasure of seeing him?”
“He’s back there by the capstan, sir. We’re a depytashun, if you please.
Will won’t have nobody aft the galley, and that’s his plain words.
You’re to go below and to wait until you’re sent for.”
I looked the speaker full in the face and laughed at him contemptuously.
“My men,” I said, calmly addressing them all together, “do you wish to
be afloat to-morrow morning, or is this ship and all aboard her to be at
the bottom of the Atlantic?”
They were evidently perplexed. The gentleman by the name of Bill Evans
continued to speak.
“Me and my mates, beggin’ your pardon, sir—we don’t fall in with that.
You’re fair marooned, and that’s the end of it. Will says as he means
well by you, but while you’re on this ship, you’ll obey him and nobody
else. Humbly representin’ it, sir, we’ll have to see that you do as Will
says——”
I took a pistol from my pocket, and deliberately cocked it. This was
touch and go for my very life. Had I shot one of those men, I knew that
it would all be over in an instant, and that they would either bow the
knee to me or murder me on the spot.
“Now, see here,” said I. “My yacht’s lying out yonder not a biscuit toss
from this deck. If you give me so much as another word of impudence,
I’ll send you and every ruffian aboard here to blazes as sure as this is
a revolver, and there are cartridges in it. Go and tell Mr. Will Rayner
what I say, for, by heaven above me, I will go myself and fetch him, if
you do not.”
I have said that the moment was critical beyond any through which I have
lived, and a truer word could not be spoken. There we stood, the angry
seamen upon one side, myself upon the other, each party knowing that the
issue was for good and all, and yet neither willing to bring the instant
of it upon us. As for these wretched fellows, I do not believe that they
would have lifted a hand against me had it not been for the American who
incited them. He was the ringleader despite the newly-made captain, and
his mock authority. And he was the dangerous man with whom I had to
deal.
“I guess your yacht may be where you say she is,” he remarked with a
drawl; “but she’s got to hustle if she wants to come up with us this
summer weather. Don’t you be too free with that pistol, sir, or some of
us will have to take it from you. You’re in a clove-hitch, and had
better keep a civil tongue in your head or maybe we’ll cut it out and
see what it’s made of. Now just you come along o’ me and don’t make no
trouble about it. Will Rayner ain’t a goin’ to eat you, and you ain’t a
goin’ to eat him, so step up brisk, doctor, and let’s see you march.”
This impudent harangue was hailed by a salvo of applause. The fellow
himself took two steps toward me and laid a hand upon my shoulder. He
had scarce touched me with his fingers when I struck him full in the
face, and he rolled headlong into the scuppers. The same instant saw me
leaping for my very life up the ladder to the bridge deck and clutching
there at the rope which opened the steamer’s siren. Good God! What an
instant of suspense! Were the fires below damped down, or was there
steam in the boiler? One tremendous pull upon the rope had no answer for
me at all. Again and again I jerked the cord back as though very
desperation would sound the alarm which should summon my friends and, at
the same time, save me from this rabble. The men below watched me
aghast, their curiosity overpowering them, their mouths agape, so that
when the siren’s blast went echoing over the still sea at last, you
could have heard a footfall on the decks, or caught the meaning of a
whispered message.
The men were dumbfounded, I say, and without idea. This I have ever
observed to be a habit among seamen when the news of any great disaster
comes upon them or they are taken unawares in an instant of emergency.
No clown could look more childish then, or any Master Boldface laugh as
foolishly. There they were in a group below me, some with their hands
thrust deep into their pockets, some smoking idly, some looking into the
faces of their neighbours as though a glance would answer the riddle of
the night. And while they stood, the siren roared a blast of defiance,
again and again, as the voice of a Minotaur of the deep, warning and
terrifying, and not to be resisted. Had I doubted the vigilance of my
good comrades upon the yacht, I could have doubted it no longer. _White
Wings_ answered my signal almost instantly in a higher note of defiance,
in a shrill assent to that wild roll-call, the orator mechanical of
honest friendship. And, while she answered, her siren seemed to put a
reproach upon me, saying, “The yacht is here—all is well—why have you
doubted us?”
A deep silence fell upon the Diamond Ship when this signal came
reverberating over the waters. None of the amazed seamen spoke a word or
made a movement for many minutes. I had already put my pistol into my
pocket and taken a cigarette from my case. If I wished the men to
believe that the hour of crisis had passed, I was under no delusion at
all myself. For remember that I had gone up to the bridge and stood
there during this supreme instant of danger; and that, if I would regain
the deck of the yacht, I must descend the ladder, down through these
serried ranks of men; must pass them as one who was going from them to
the house of an avenger, to his comrades who would judge the story and
help him to decide upon the punishment. The rogues’ very salvation
depended upon my captivity; I was their hostage, and by me would
reprieve come if reprieve were to be hoped for at all. This I perceived
long before it had dawned upon the witless rabble; but it occurred even
to them at last, and crowding about the ladder’s foot they told me
bluntly that they were aware of it.
“Guess it’s your turn,” said the American, venturing a step upward but
no more. His manner had become sheepish, I observed, and he spoke with
less truculence.
“My turn, as you say, sir,” I rejoined with what composure I could. “I
am now going aboard my yacht, and there I will decide what is to be done
with you. That will depend upon your behaviour, I advise you to remember
as much.”
I lit my cigarette and waited for him to go on. _White Wings_ was
evidently quite near to us now—I could hear the throb of her turbines;
her siren hooted repeatedly. The night was mine but for an accident. And
yet, heaven knows, it appeared to me then that an accident must befall
me unless a miracle intervened.
“That’s your yacht right enough,” the Yankee went on immediately. “And
so far as it’s her, we’re in a clove-hitch ourselves. The question is,
who’s to put you aboard her, and what shall we be about when he’s doing
of it? Now, see here, as between man and man—you give us your solemn
affidavit not to do anything against this ship’s crew and you’re free to
come and go as you choose. That’s my first condition—the second is as
you sign the paper Will Rayner has drawed up and abide by its terms. Do
as much as that and your friends shan’t be more willing to help you. But
if you don’t do it—why, then, look out for yourself, for, by the Lord
above me, you ain’t got ten minutes to live.”
He came another step up the ladder, cheered, as it seemed, by his own
eloquence. As for the men, they opened their lips for the first time
since my yacht had answered me, and their hoarse roar of defiance,
uttered in that unpleasant timbre to which the sea attunes the human
voice, backed the threat and made it their own. Had it been left to me
in circumstances less dangerous, I might have given them my word to let
me go free, and signed the paper their leader spoke about; but just in
the same measure that they threatened me, so did my anger against them
rise—and stepping briskly to the topmost rung of the ladder, I answered
them in a sentence that even their dull intellects could understand.
“Not a word or a line, by God! That is my answer, sir. You may take it
or leave it; but if you leave it, some of you shall as certainly hang
for this night’s work as this is a pistol I hold in my hand. Now stand
back, for I am coming down amongst you. Yonder, you see, is the boat I
am expecting.”
Lifting my hand, I pointed with dramatic intent to the port quarter of
the ship. The sea was void upon that quarter—what need to tell it? But
my eyes had already detected the black outline of a ship’s boat upon the
starboard bow, and my very life depended upon the ruse which should
divert the men’s attention from it. Never shall I doubt the ruffians
would have made an end of it there and then, and have murdered me as
they had murdered the criminals upon the ship, if the argument had been
carried but another sentence. I had seen knives unsheathed at my words,
had heard the promptings of rogue to rogue, that low muttering of the
human beast who has scented prey, and whose nostrils are distended by
the lust of it. Let the talk run on, and they would be up the ladder and
upon me, cost what it might—up and on me, and their knives at my
throat. This I understood when I pointed to the port quarter and sent
them gaping there in a body—as children who are not content to hear,
but with their own eyes would see.
My freedom, nay, my life depended upon the ruse. Such a fact was clear
above all others. It had been no lie when I said that my friends were
coming to me. Athwart the great ship, not fifty yards from the starboard
bow, lay the long boat which had been sent out to me. I took one last
look at the huddled forms below me, debated the possibilities in one of
those swift mental surveys to which long habit has trained me, and
staking all upon the venture, risking every peril both of the men and
the sea, I leaped boldly from the bridge and left the issue to the God
of my destinies.
So the tragic hour began for me, and such were its circumstances! The
rushing waters booming as a dirge in my ears, my clothes dragging me
down as a burden insupportable; darkness and the dread sea all about me;
a black sky meeting my vision as I rose gasping to the surface—no
knowledge now of where the boat lay or in what direction to strike out;
no certainty that my friends had seen me or were alive to my
situation—nothing but silence and the long rollers carrying me, and far
away a distant shouting, an echo of pistol shots, a rejoinder of strong
voices and then a silence, so deep, so profound that the very wavelets
were as cataracts beating at my brain. This, surely, was the moment when
a man might have told himself that he was cast out utterly from man and
the world, a true derelict of the vast ocean, a voice crying in a
monstrous silence, a sacrifice to wind and wave and the gaping sea. The
deepest dungeon ashore could not have inflicted a wound of desolation so
terrible.
I was there within a cable’s length of those who would have given their
very lives for me, and yet as far away from them as though I had stood
at the foot of Mount Terror and cried to the skies for my salvation. Not
a sound, not a whisper of life did the wind bear to me. A strong
swimmer, I lay deep in the water, the spindrift cold upon my face, the
ripples of the crests soaking my hair, the blue-black sky for my zenith.
And how far had those minutes carried me from humanity and all human
interests!
Calmly, as a man in a reverie of the mind could, I recounted this
adventure from the beginning, and wondered why I had set out upon it at
all. What was it to me that these rogues pitted their wits against their
brother rogues ashore? Who had made me the judge of crime and its
servants, or permitted me to say that one man was a thief and another
man honest? The great ocean laughed at such laws and their makers. Might
and majesty and the throne of winds—were not they a kingdom stupendous
in its grandeur and unsurpassable in its magnitude? No sense of danger,
indeed, went with me to the waters. I heard their dulcet voice and
answered them—I saw the figures I had known and loved, and no sense of
regret attended the vision. An unquenchable fire of confidence burned in
my brain. I believed that I should see little Joan again, though the
waters engulfed me utterly.
Let me claim no merit for a mental attitude so unusual. I have known
many men who have been taken from the water almost upon the point of
death, and in no case does fear seem to have been a part of their
experience. Certainly, in one or two instances, they have spoken of
great pain in the lungs, but their chief recollection has been a supreme
content and of a profound sense of rest as though the peace and
loneliness of the deep had communicated itself to their souls and robbed
them in an instant of that burden of life of which all, with whatever
courage they may bear it, are sensible. Speaking again for myself, I do
not think it is a misrepresentation to say that I had no overmastering
desire to be saved from the peril which had overtaken me. Not a morbid
man, or one who is insensible to the privileges and duties of our common
destiny, I will confess that a certain ironical view of human things
came to me as the good tide carried me, and the surf bathed my face. All
the littleness of the everyday existence, its petty bickerings, its
trumpery ambitions, were so much sport for the rolling waves about me,
so much silvery laughter for the surging swell and the cradle of the
billows. And if this mood changed at all—as I know that ultimately it
did change—the new spirit breathed human love as its chief desire, the
simplest of the human affections, the depth, the truth and the nobility
of them.
I saw then that there is nothing permanent in life but love, nothing to
be so surely desired, no human quality so precious as that habit of
loving. And passing from the more general admission, my own story must
present itself to me again, and bid me ask why I had left Joan Fordibras
at all when I found her at Dieppe; why I had accepted the challenge
there thrown down to me when I might have taken her in my arms and
written the golden page in our lives once and for ever? This reflection
could move me instantly to a great pathos of regret, and inspire in me a
mad striving after some shore of my safety when I could say, “I have not
done well; the blame is mine.” And from this time I thought but of Joan
alone; saw her face looking down to me from the skies above, and heard
but the plaintive music of her voice. No words may tell the sudden
distress of this—there is no measure of human speech which shall convey
to another the depth of that human anguish of loss a man may suffer on
the threshold of death. It is the supremest trial of all, a very agony
of the soul defying all expression.
I have been at some pains to set down these impressions closely, for
they stood to me for the bitter reckoning I must pay for the quest of
Valentine Imroth and the ship he had commanded. Cast out there upon the
black ocean, I had been a fool to believe that I merited any particular
mercy of the Almighty which would repair my mistakes or pass by my
imprudence. That I had escaped into the sea at all now seemed the
greater wonder. I could depict the instant of fierce exclamation which
had followed upon my plunge, the roar of voices, the loud report of vain
pistols. These I had heard with my own ears, and it should have come to
me that my own fellows had heard them also. Little good reasoning,
however, may be looked for from a man cast down from a high deck into
the Atlantic Ocean, and there left to battle with the surges in the
shadows of the night. How long it was before the end came I shall never
know. I recollect that I had the sense not to swim but merely to keep
afloat as near as might be to the scene of my rashness. The intervening
moments, as I say, brought me from a state of content to one of despair,
and from that again almost to a state of insensibility—and I know only
that a great rough hand took me from the sea at last, that white faces
bent over me, and that, kindliest of them all, was the face of Joan
Fordibras—my little Joan of the Valley House—who stooped and kissed my
lips, and with a young girl’s tears expressed the welcome by her heart
unspoken.
And so love was the Avenger after all—love set above the kingdoms of
Death as love shall ever be.