"We would live on board?"
"Except between journeys."
"What will be her name?"
"The Vindication."
"You're twice my age."
"Yes."
"People find you fearful to look at."
"Maybe they won't, so much, when I come back to life. Anyway, it's how you look at me that matters."
"I think that's true. Sophia, you had a chance to go with him when he was young."
"When we both were young, Eliza."
"Why didn't you do it?"
"Captain Sir Godwine Tarlton—that was his name then—didn't want me to go."
"Couldn't you have gone anyway?"
"Yes."
"Didn't you know he was a madman—driven mad by hate?"
"No, I didn't know it. I don't know it now. I only know that he has great power to do evil. Only if you leave him will it be broken."
"Are you sure?"
"He'll have lost Our Eliza for good. He'll stand on the quarter-deck no more. His flag will be struck."
"Do you want me to go, Sophia?"
"It's my dearest wish. It's your greatest chance for happiness-per-haps your only chance. Go with him, Eliza. What does all the rest matter? Go to the new land, the land of hope. Go where men are free-where soon all will be free. Leave the old, unhappy shores to their shadows of the past. Bear him children who can look all men in the face and know they are brothers in the sight of God. He tried to show me that—I knew it was true—but I lost my chance. Don't lose your chance, Eliza."
"What did he promise you, Sophia, if you would come?"
"He promised me adventure."
"Homer, will you promise me adventure?"
"On land and on the sea."
"There's something I've got to find out before I can answer. I'm a woman, Homer, and can't deny my needs."
I remembered a tall young girl, with an equal beauty, who had to find out something by the Wells of the Rising Moon.
"Very well."
Eliza rose, came in hope and dread, put her arms around my neck, and kissed me on the lips.
"Oh, they're warm!" she burst out, then hid her streaming eyes in her hands.
"Now will you go with me and love me?"
"I will love you and I'll go with you."
Lord Tarlton, who had listened with drawn face and indrawn gleaming eyes, rose like a king from his throne.
"Hell and fire!" he cried. "May they take you all! May the ship that carries my turncoat daughter burn to the waterline with every soul aboard. May this house with all of you in it fall down in flame. I'll not set foot in it again. Harvey, will you leave the whore you call your wife and follow me? She lay with the Yankee Jack before you wedded her, and his tar is on her, and she loves him still. I'll make you a peer o' the realm!"
"No, sir, I will not," Harvey answered.
"Rats desert a sinking ship, but mine will make port yet. You'll see, God damn you all."
He went to the center table and took the ship model from its glass case and put it under his arm. Then he walked with his toes in front of him to one of the fireside couches where leaned a rattan cane he used indoors, and no doubt had left there when, carrying a stick of thorn, he had gone to the paddock. As he leaned to pick it up, his precious charge started to up-end. In trying to hold it level, it slipped out of his grasp and fell to the floor with a crash. It must be that its glue had weakened in long years, for he looked down, his eyes glazed, to see it in utter ruin.
"Devil and damnation," he muttered. "But it serves her right, for she failed me when I needed her most, that cursed Christmas Day. Why, I knew it all the time. I've worshiped a false god. Down to hell with her, I say! I'm done."
He was done and would die soon. I saw death, my familiar adversary, take his small, white hand. He did not pick up the cane, but still like a phoenix risen from the ashes, he walked with high head and princely mien out of our sight and our fives.
And now die time would pass quickly until Jim and I and my beautiful and redeeming one could set sail with our shipmates. Again I would know the winds of heaven, the rolling waves, the deep blue of ocean that is our mysterious mirror of the holy sky. I would foil the conspiracies of the fog. I would live at risk with the reefs of death. I would follow pilot stars through the seven seas, and they would not deny shipway to my gallant prow. I would feel again the flung spray in my face.
In time the clean and stinging drops would wear away the stone and show human flesh beneath. And in my hand, joined with my hand, I would hold the hand of love.