“What do you say, Dominic?” I asked, moving nothing but my lips.
And the whisper within the hood repeated mysteriously, “She must be
killed.”
My heart began to beat violently.
“That’s it,” I faltered out. “But how?”
“You love her well?”
“I do.”
“Then you must find the heart for that work too. You must steer her
yourself, and I shall see to it that she dies quickly, without leaving as
much as a chip behind.”
“Can you?” I murmured, fascinated by the black hood turned immovably over
the stern, as if in unlawful communion with that old sea of magicians,
slave-dealers, exiles and warriors, the sea of legends and terrors, where
the mariners of remote antiquity used to hear the restless shade of an
old wanderer weep aloud in the dark.
“I know a rock,” whispered the initiated voice within the hood secretly.
“But—caution! It must be done before our men perceive what we are about.
Whom can we trust now? A knife drawn across the fore halyards would
bring the foresail down, and put an end to our liberty in twenty minutes.
And the best of our men may be afraid of drowning. There is our little
boat, but in an affair like this no one can be sure of being saved.”
The voice ceased. We had started from Barcelona with our dinghy in tow;
afterwards it was too risky to try to get her in, so we let her take her
chance of the seas at the end of a comfortable scope of rope. Many times
she had seemed to us completely overwhelmed, but soon we would see her
bob up again on a wave, apparently as buoyant and whole as ever.
“I understand,” I said softly. “Very well, Dominic. When?”
“Not yet. We must get a little more in first,” answered the voice from
the hood in a ghostly murmur.