The war maker

“THE Beautiful White Devil,” a woman pirate whom I at first regarded as a purely fanciful being, born of the unreal atmosphere of the East, came into my life, in which she was destined to play a most important part, at Hong Kong in the early days of 1876. I had gone there in search of authentic information concerning the attitude and plans of old Moy Sen, overlord of all the Chinese pirates, who was reported to have declared an intention to bury my harassing ships and all on board of them, in return for our vigorous operations against him. This threat had given a new interest to a game of which I was beginning to tire, for I had then been waging war on the pirates for more than a year, and it was getting monotonous. I landed quietly at night from the “Surprise,” which remained far out in the roadstead, and went to the old Queen’s Hotel, where I clung to my role of a rich English physician, travelling for his health, but assumed a new name, which I cannot recall. My “Chinkie” interpreter, Ah Fen, I sent on up to Canton to secretly gain such information as he could pick up from a relative in the camp of the boss buccaneer of the China Sea.

While waiting for his report I lounged around the hotel and steered my casual conversation with the habitués toward the subject in which I was most interested. Soon I began to hear weird stories of a woman pirate who, while never molesting honest merchantmen, preyed mercilessly and successfully on the Chinese and Malay pirates, just as Norton and I were doing. It was said that she was exquisitely beautiful of face and diabolically black of heart; that she led her band of cut-throats in person and gloried in the shedding of black and yellow blood by the barrel. Her recreation from wholesale butchery was found in the companionship of occasional white men whom she ran across and who gladly accompanied her to her retreat, located no one knew where, only to be killed when she wearied of them. According to these tales, which I at first regarded as purely imaginative, she travelled in a steam yacht of phenomenal speed and had never failed in her desperate exploits. Though she had been in the business for years no one in Hong Kong had ever seen her and she was known only as the “Beautiful White Devil,” which name, from all accounts, was well suited to her. It occurred to me at once that if such a woman really did exist it might have been her ship that came to our assistance on the night of our battle with the Malays on the deck of the British bark, and whose captain I had attended under strange circumstances, and I saw visions of a meeting and perhaps closer acquaintance with her; but they were only fleeting fancies, for I could not make myself believe the tales that were told me. Not but what I wanted to believe them, and tried to, for next to adventure I loved a beautiful woman; if the two could be combined, the result would be an absolutely ideal condition, even though the feminine fancy did run to murder; but my reason told me I was dreaming of the impossible.

However, after I had heard the report of Ah Fen, who returned in about two weeks, bubbling over with information and gossip, I put more confidence in what I had been told, for he repeated the same wild story, with elaborations and variations. It was a well established fact in the minds of Moy Sen and his followers, he said, that there actually was a woman pirate who preyed on and destroyed the regular pirates, and she was as much hated as we were, or more, for she had been following that calling, with much energy, for years. It was said she had inherited an avenging oath against the pirates from some male member of her family, who had been a terror to them before her, and she was carrying it out with fanatical fervor. This was the story brought in by pirates who had escaped from junks and proas she had attacked, and who gave thrilling accounts of her demoniacal fury in leading her men. Moy Sen, my interpreter reported, was swearing renewed vengeance on both of us but, inasmuch as the lady seemed to bear a charmed life, he proposed to go after me first. He attributed to me the destruction of some of his junks that I had never seen, while, to balance accounts, the robbery of some of his ships which I had looted was laid at the door of my woman contemporary. This convinced me that there was a woman pirate, or, which I still believed to be more likely, a man masquerading as a woman, and that the pirate chief had confused our exploits. He was setting some sort of a trap for me, according to the inside gossip picked up by Ah Fen, and was determined to sweep the sea clear of my ships, at least.

I had sent the “Surprise” away as soon as she landed me, with orders to return in a month, ostensibly in search of cargo, and pick me up. She was about due when a man called at my hotel one evening and asked if an English physician was stopping there. I was pointed out to him in the billiard room and as he came toward me I recognized Captain Deverell, but he was as formal as a stranger and I took my cue from that and did not indicate that I knew him. He asked if he could consult with me and I took him to my room, where he assumed a much more cordial air.

“I called,” he said, “to invite you to take a cruise with me so that we may get better acquainted and I can show you my appreciation of your kindness of a few weeks ago.”

“How long will you be out?” I asked.

“A week or a month; whatever time suits your pleasure.”

I did some quick thinking. If there was a woman pirate it was her ship that Deverell commanded, I was sure. If I accepted his invitation I might go the way of other men whom, if the reports I had heard were to be trusted, she had picked up, and who never returned. Whether she was a “Devil” or whether it was her ship from which the invitation came I could not ask without showing some apprehension that would be impolite. Besides, I had previously been requested by Deverell to ask him no questions about himself or his ship and I inferred that this inhibition was still in force; if he had wanted me to know more than he had indicated he would have volunteered the information. It was an uncanny proceeding, yet the very mystery of it attracted me as a magnet does steel. Furthermore, here was a brand new adventure, right within my grasp, and if it was to end my career then it was because my time had come, and that was all there was to it.

With my thoughts running in that channel a decision was quickly reached and I told Deverell I would be glad to go with him. I packed my bag and turned it over to a man whom Deverell summoned from the street. Ah Fen was instructed to watch for the “Surprise,” rejoin the “Leckwith,” and report to Norton what he had told me, and tell him to have me picked up at Hong Kong in a month or six weeks. Late in the evening we went to the Bund where a boat that was waiting at an out-of-the-way landing up near the native quarter took us out to the ship, which was lying fully six miles offshore, well beyond the usual anchorage. It was the same ship I had seen several times before but her rig had been so altered, by taking the rake out of her stack and shortening her spars, and by changing her upper works, that I could not have recognized her if I had seen her under any other conditions. Her sides were discolored and dirty, due to the skilful use of paint, and she looked like an old tramp. But on board of her were all the comforts and conveniences of a yacht, with the discipline of a warship. She was about the size of the “Leckwith,” registering probably five hundred tons net, and with the removal of her dummy superstructure which concealed six carronades, her deck was clear, except for the wheelhouse and the captain’s room behind it. The gun deck below was devoted entirely to living quarters arranged with an eye to comfort. Those for the crew ran back to amidships, for she carried all of a hundred men. Abaft of them were the officers’ quarters and in the stern, cut off from the rest of the ship, were the rooms of the real commander, which were large and sumptuously furnished.

As soon as we were on board it was “Up anchor and full speed to sea.” Appropriately enough, I was given the cabin of the surgeon, who had died recently, to which fact I owed my presence on the ship. Deverell took me into his room and we talked until midnight. Soon after we got under way he satisfied my silent impatience by throwing open a panel and exposing a life-size painting of the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.

“Is that the Beautiful White Devil?” I asked, unable longer to restrain the questions that were choking me.

“That is our Queen,” he replied gravely, “and it is by that name alone that she is known to us and spoken of on this ship.”

“She certainly is entitled to the first part of the name by which she is known ashore, whether or not she deserves the last section of it,” I said, with open admiration.

His answer left no doubt as to whose ship I was on. “That picture may do partial justice to her face but it is impossible that it could portray the beauty of her heart. Instead of being cold-blooded and bloodthirsty, as you seem to have heard, she is tender and sympathetic and she has devoted a great part of her money to the relief of suffering humanity. She deprecates killing even villainous Malays and Chinks, but she will not be defeated, cost what it will. Never since I joined the ship have I seen a wanton act of cruelty.”

“What is her life, and what is the motive of it?” I asked.

“She will have to tell you that herself, but before you see her I want to warn you. Every man who sees the Queen falls in love with her, and if you think you are going to be like the rest you had better go over the side right now.”

“How is one to keep from falling in love with her?” I inquired, with some anxiety, still lost in admiration of the lovely face on the canvas.

“If one philosophizes and keeps his love to himself it is all right, but this lady is not to be won by any man. She has devoted her life to a particular purpose and we have devoted our lives to her.”

“That sounds very romantic and interesting,” I observed, already half suspicious that Deverell himself was in love with her. “What is the special purpose to which you are all pledged?”

A shrug of the shoulders and a smile made up the only answer.

Deverell then closed the panel and made me the subject of conversation. He asked all manner of questions about my life, and when I brought the story down to the China Sea he showed a familiarity with my movements which indicated a system of spies that aroused my admiration, and I was free in expressing it. It was through their elaborate system, he admitted, that they had learned I was in Hong Kong and where I was stopping. He admitted, too, that they had been in touch with me from the day I entered their waters and had come to regard me as a kindred soul, to which fact I owed my invitation from their Queen.

It was considerably after eight bells before I retired but my sleep was not long or heavy, for the strangeness of the situation and its possibilities impressed me, not with fear but with exultant expectancy. At breakfast time Deverell, wearing a smart uniform, escorted me aft to the private quarters of the Queen, which reminded me of those of an officer of flag rank in the American Navy. They had the same private galley and air of exclusiveness of a flagship, but they were much more spacious and were fitted out with a daintiness that bespoke generations of culture. The dining-room was a reproduction in miniature of those one finds in the best homes of England, with nothing about it to suggest the sea. Back of it and separated from it by odd Chinese curtains, was a luxurious lounging room, with large ports cut through the over-hang. On one side of it was the Queen’s sitting-room and library, and on the other her boudoir.

I was ushered into the dining-room and in a moment the Queen appeared. As she parted the curtains and paused for just an instant in the doorway with an air of diffidence, I was transfixed by her marvellous beauty, to which, as Deverell had said, the painted picture had done only partial justice. Tall, and with the figure and the manner of a goddess, I was fascinated by her eyes, deep blue and filled with sentiment and sympathy; eyes that could never be brutal but which must yearn for love and tenderness; not the eyes of a woman born to command, for there was a softness about them that was almost pleading, but of one created with a desire to be herself commanded and dominated by a stronger nature. Through them she looked at me as a child might look, but with more of understanding, yet as much of curiosity. Unconfined, her hair, when I saw it, would have swept the floor, but it was twisted into a great black, glistening crown; a little detail that made her appear more than ever the Queen.

Deverell started to introduce me but she interrupted him. “I already know Dr. Burnet,” she said, as she swept toward me with superb grace and infinite charm of manner and extended her hand, small and soft.

“And I feel that I already know you” was a blunder into which her eyes led me.

Instantly the look of animation which had come into her wonderful eyes gave way to one of sadness. “But I fear,” she said, “that the reports you have heard regarding me are very different from those I have had concerning you, and which caused me to want to meet you, that I might thank you for your kindness to Captain Deverell.”

I stumbled into another tactless reply: “I have only one fault to find with what I have been told. You should be known as ‘The Beautiful White Angel.’” It was not a polite thing to say but I was hopelessly, almost heedlessly, in love, and it always has been my way to go straight at things.

Her answer, only through her eyes, that if I was not, in fact, a very ordinary individual I had made a very commonplace remark, so added to my embarrassment that we had talked about the weather and the sea for some time before I got back to my mooring and felt reasonably secure. Before breakfast was over we were getting along better, though I could not have concealed the admiration I did not express. At the end of the meal the Queen and I retired to the lounging room, Deverell going forward to look after the ship. His attitude toward her was one of devotion that amounted almost to homage, which she accepted as her right, and he spoke of and to her only as “Queen.” Naturally, I addressed her in the same way, as that was the only name Deverell had used when he started to introduce me, and I then knew her by no other.

“We are headed for my retreat,” she explained. “I want you to see it, and your visit there will give us an opportunity to get better acquainted. I should like to have you stay with us as long as you can. I will put you down in Hong Kong or Singapore on three or four days’ notice.”

I assured her the prospect was delightful. With a bow and a smile that encouraged veritable loquacity she asked me to tell her all about myself, and she displayed so much interest in my different filibustering expeditions, and the adventures that grew out of them, that I gradually told her the whole story. When my recital brought me to the China Sea her interest became even more lively, as to details, but she displayed the same intimate knowledge of my movements, in a general way, that Deverell had shown.

In the course of the numerous long talks which followed, I felt that I was regaining some of the ground I had lost by my blunders in my first bewilderment, and though my infatuation grew stronger every time I was in her magnetic presence, which charged my whole being with the electrical energy of life at its best, I said not another word to her about it, on the ship. As we came to understand each other better she asked me to tell her all I had heard about her. I was surprised, but I knew she meant me to be perfectly frank with her, so I repeated, in a general way, the vague and vapory whisperings as to her wonderful beauty, on the one hand, and her alleged bloodthirstiness and wantonness on the other, which latter stories, I told her, could not be tolerated for an instant by any one who had ever seen her. She smiled bitterly.

“I never have cared what people said or thought of me,” she said very slowly, “until recently. Far from enjoying the life I have been compelled to lead, I have suffered from it. It has been hard, and I have had to face and solve its problems alone. Craving friendship as flowers do the sun, and needing it as much, I have had to cut myself off from the world and try to make myself believe that I have neither heart nor conscience. When we get home I will tell you the story of my life, as you have told me yours.”

On the afternoon of the third day out from Hong Kong we ran into a group of islands, off to the eastward of the regular course to Singapore. Just as dinner was announced a flag was waved from the bridge and, following Deverell’s eyes, I made out an answering signal on the steep side of a small island just ahead of us. We were close inshore and I scanned the bank closely but could see no sign of either a landing or an opening. I was anxious to see what was to follow but a messenger brought word that the Queen was waiting dinner for me. Deverell did not dine with us but joined us as we were having coffee. The ship slowed down while we were at dinner and finally the screw stopped. Immediately the Queen led the way to the deck, where she had ordered coffee served.

“This,” she said at the head of the stairway, “is my kingdom—without a king. Isn’t it beautiful?”

I was a little in doubt as to whether her inquiry related to the scenery or the absence of a male ruler, but, without being able to distinguish clearly in the gathering tropic darkness, I assured her that it was the most beautiful place I had ever seen, wherein, when day dawned, I found I had not exaggerated. We were at the head of an oval lake, perhaps a mile and a half long, with mountains, whose ascent began close to the shore, rising crescent-shaped around it. There was a small village, composed of English cottages and native huts, at the end of the lake nearest to us. On three sides of the lake was a narrow beach, which widened at the village; the fourth side, toward the sea, was a perpendicular bluff, sixty feet or more high. I searched it for the passage through which we had entered the lake but nothing could I see but a bare wall of dark rock. The Queen watched me as I studied the situation and smiled at my perplexity. “Wait until to-morrow,” she laughed. “It would never do to let you into all of our secrets at once. You had best retire early, for we will go ashore at sunrise,” and she disappeared.

While we had been talking the topmasts were lowered, which I did not quite understand, and the fires drawn, and soon I was alone on deck, with a solitary watchman forward. There was no moon but under the soft light of the stars, low-hung and with a brilliancy seen only at or near the equator, I sat in silent wonder and admiration for hours. I was up again before it was full daylight and watched the lowering of the Queen’s launch. She appeared with the sun, accompanied by a Dyak woman whom I had not seen before, and we landed at a little stone dock in front of the village. All of the inhabitants, consisting of about fifty English and Scotch men and women, some with silvered locks and bent backs, and some of them crippled by the pirates, and nearly as many natives, crowded the pier to meet her, their manner one of the greatest affection and deference. We walked through the village, which was a model of neatness, and on up a winding path for nearly a mile, when a sharp turn around a flank of the mountain brought us to a large bungalow—the palace of the Queen. It was so situated that it could not be seen from the sea, at any point, but just around the turn and not fifty yards from the house was a deep shadowed bower from which there was a clear view of the ocean for two-thirds of the way around the compass. This was the outside sitting-room of the Queen and here breakfast was served. While it was being prepared she made herself more beautiful by changing her dress of European style for a native costume of flowing silk so becoming that I wondered at her ever wearing anything else.

After breakfast she looked down at the little town and far out to sea in silence for a long time, and then told me the story of her life. Her name, she said, was Katherine Crofton. Her father was one of the younger branches of a family which was headed by a Baron. The family crest was a sheaf of wheat and the motto “God grants the increase.” Her branch of the family had lived in the south of Ireland for several generations. Another branch had long lived at Derry Willow in the County Leitrim. Her father was a lieutenant commander in the British Navy and to prevent an accident he disobeyed the order of an incompetent and arrogant superior officer. In a quarrel that followed her father knocked his superior down and otherwise abused him, for which he was court-martialled and dismissed.

“My father was a high-spirited man,” she continued, “and his disgrace embittered him against England and everything English. He soon left home, without saying where he was going, and when we next heard from him he was in Hong Kong. He corresponded with us regularly after that and in three or four years, when I was about fifteen, he wrote mother and me to take a P & O ship for Singapore, where we would find further instructions. When we got there father was waiting for us on a handsome yacht, the ‘Queen,’ which is the ship that you have heard so much about. I am still using her. He brought us to this island, which he had fitted out as a retreat. He had established a small settlement down on the lake and built a warehouse in which to store his goods, and a machine shop to facilitate repairs to his ship. He had taken great pains and put himself to a large expense to make his rendezvous secure from intrusion or discovery.

“Evidently this lake is in the crater of an old volcano which, when it subsided, left a high, narrow barrier between it and its old enemy, the sea. Down there,” pointing to the end of the lake opposite the village, “was a narrow opening into the lake, with a deep channel leading straight out to sea, though on both sides of it are rocks and shoals. Probably it was a fissure created by the volcano; anyway it served my father’s purpose perfectly. He had the opening closed up with rocks until it was just wide enough to admit the ‘Queen.’ The ridge there, you can see, is not more than thirty-five or forty feet high, so the partial closing of the gap was really not such a difficult task. Then he fitted into the opening that was left, a great double gate, which rolls back and forth, instead of opening outward, and though it weighs many tons its mechanism is so arranged that four men can operate it. The gate is strong enough to stand any storm but to avoid straining it we keep it open in heavy weather, unless ships are hovering about. From a watch tower on top of the mountain behind us we get a clear view of the sea in all directions, and a man is always on duty there. The ridge that cuts off the ocean rises toward the upper end of the lake and the village is entirely hidden behind it, as is the ‘Queen’ when her topmasts are housed. The island, as you can see, is very small and from the sea there is not a sign to indicate that it is inhabited. When the gate at the opening into the lake is closed it cannot be distinguished at a distance of an eighth of a mile, for it exactly resembles the rocks on both sides of it, but the channel which leads to it is known to no one save us and no other ship would dare to venture within a mile and a half of the shore on account of the rocks.

“I did not understand at first the meaning of all of these precautions, or some other things. Father went out on frequent voyages and returned with more or less cargo, which was placed in the warehouse, until it was full. Then father would change the appearance of his ship so that no one would know her and take cargoes out and sell them, until the warehouse was empty again. He always took mother and me along on these trips, though never on the others, and young as I was I learned much about navigation, for I had his love for the sea. On these trips we brought back books and magazines and so were able to keep a little in touch with the outside world.

“When I was not much older than nineteen father and mother were taken desperately ill and, believing that he would not recover, he called me into his room and made a confession. He said that in his hatred of the British he had turned pirate and had been for all those years preying on ships flying the flag he despised. He had also, occasionally, waged war on the native pirates and taken their loot from them, which explained why he had frequently come in with wounded men on board. He told me of how he had suffered from the act of injustice which expelled him from the navy and in the end he made me swear that if he died I would continue the work he had begun. He told me I could rely on Frank Deverell, his chief officer, whom he said he hoped I would some day marry,”—this last with just a trace of sarcasm. “My father died the next week and my mother three months later.

“That was four years ago. I have kept the oath which my love for my father prompted me to take, but the fulfilment of it has brought me increasing misery. My attacks on the British flag have been few—in fact I have given timely assistance to many more English ships than I have robbed, and hundreds of their passengers and sailors owe their lives to me, but I have preyed on the natural pirates of these waters as ardently, perhaps, as did my father. Yet I have no greater moral right to take from them what they have stolen than I have to rob a British or an American ship, nor can I excuse myself for the loss of life that goes with my attacks on them. I am much better armed than they are and it is nothing but cowardice, as well as thievery, for me to make war on them. I am, in fact, no better than they are, for I am in the same class with them—a pirate. My conscience has troubled me more and more until it has sickened me with the whole wretched business. A bad promise is better broken than kept; an oath is no more than a promise; and I am about ready to quit all of this robbery and butchery and try to return to decency and civilization. As to the other stories you have heard about me—they are simply lies.”

Toward the end she spoke rapidly and passionately and when she finished she was all a-quiver, and her eyes filled with tears. After a long pause, during which she regained control of herself, she said:

“Now, Captain, I have told you all. I am partly justified, if such a vow as mine can be pleaded as justification, but why are you in this business?”

Her sudden inquiry, following her bitter denunciation of pirates and those who preyed on them, surprised and embarrassed me. I told her that I was in it only because of the adventure of it; that I had been attracted to the China Sea by Norton’s stories, and that once there I had naturally fallen in with the exciting life and become a part of it; and that all of my fighting blood was aroused and my soul glorified by the fact that the great pirate chief had sworn to crush me.

“That is not a sufficient excuse,” she replied, promptly and decisively. “I had some reason for my actions, but you have none.” A moment later she added, gently: “I did not mean to pass judgment on you, for I have no right to do that. We must all be governed by our own consciences.”

Neither one of us cared to continue the conversation and I was glad when she suggested that she would have a servant show me to a smaller bungalow, a short distance away, where I was to stay, though taking my meals at the “palace.” She advised a walk through the village and around the lake during the forenoon, and said we would walk toward the top of the mountain after lunch. I looked over my comfortable quarters and then walked back to the lake and went in a boat, with Deverell and Fennell, the “Queen’s” second officer, to the entrance, in which I was much interested. I found it to be just as it had been described. There were two gates, one on each side, about twenty-five feet high, above low water, and fifteen feet wide. They ran on small wheels in grooves cut in the solid rock and had been put in place, evidently, by building a cofferdam around the entrance. Below the water line they were built of heavy iron lattice work, so as to give the tides free ingress and egress. Above the water they were constructed of thick timbers, covered on the seaward side with iron plates. When they were open they ran back into nests cut into granite rock. When they were closed they came together diagonally, in the shape of a wide V, with the apex facing outward, so that the action of the waves only locked them more firmly. It was possible for two men to operate each gate, though six made quicker work of it. Their construction was as fine a piece of elusive engineering as I have ever seen. Their height was so arranged that there was no break in the coast line and they were, as the Queen had said, indistinguishable at a very short distance. There was just room enough over the sill to admit the “Queen” at low tide, and a larger ship could not have gotten through the gates or over the bar.

I told Deverell enough to make him understand, without my saying so, that the Queen had told me her life story, and, knowing this, he talked quite freely. From what he said I satisfied myself that not only had the elder Crofton been an out-and-out pirate but his bewitching daughter had done honor to his name, for two or three years at least. We visited the machine shop, which was quite elaborately fitted up for the repair of ship and guns, and walked through the village, where he pointed out men who had lost arms or legs in the service of the Queen and her father, and others who had been retired for age and were now pensioners. Deverell was a true pirate and told me with delight of some of their exploits. His reverence for the Queen amounted to idolatry. If his love for her had been returned I would not have been surprised for, though lacking some of the finer instincts of a gentleman, as could well be imagined from his surroundings for years, he was an unusually likable chap and of a type that ordinarily appeals strongly to women. He was about forty years old, two inches less than six feet tall, and had the figure of an Apollo. His steel gray eyes sparkled with friendship or shot sparks, and his brown hair fairly bristled when he was angry. He impressed one as being altogether a man, the soul of loyalty, a perfect friend, and brave to the last drop of his blood.

After luncheon the Queen and I set off toward the mountain top, nearly one thousand feet above us, but we did not reach it, for the heat was intense.

“Well, what do you think of us now?” she asked, on our way down, after I had told her how I had spent the forenoon.

“I think enough of you to devote my whole life to your service,” I quickly replied.

She gave me a long, searching look, that seemed to go right through me and lay my whole soul open before her, then took the lead and, without a word, walked rapidly on to her bungalow, and I walked on to mine.

When I came back to dinner she was waiting for me in her bower. As she came to meet me and extended her hand she said, earnestly and almost sadly, “I believe you were honest and sincere in what you said this afternoon, but I can only say ‘Thank you.’ What you suggested is impossible.”

In the three weeks that followed I urged my love upon her with all of my determination but she refused to change her decision and apparently was as firm in it as at first. It was agreed that we should both give up piracy, in any form, but all of our arguments ended there until finally, one afternoon as we sat looking out over the sea and talking, for once, of the ordinary affairs of life, she said, slowly and emphatically, “Deverell was my father’s right-hand-man. I am going to give this place to him, just as it stands, take the next ship for England, lay my case before the Home Secretary and ask him for a full pardon. I will confess to him that I have taken from the pirates what they had stolen from others. To offset the offence I have hundreds of written statements from people whose lives I have saved from the pirates by coming up in the nick of time, for which service I never accepted payment of any kind. I believe I can secure a pardon and if I do, I will meet you, with a clear conscience, and become your wife.”

In a tumult of joy, which came over me with the force of an electric shock, I sprang to her side and started to take her in my arms, but she stretched out her hand and held me off. I had never seen such a serious look on her exquisite face and there were tears in her eyes.

“Not yet,” she said, tenderly but firmly. “I have said I would marry you only when my name had been cleared of its dishonor, and until that condition has been complied with you cannot regard me as your promised wife. After that you may do with me as you please, but not until then.”

Her accession of conscience had been so great that she considered herself disgraced, and that nothing short of a pardon from the British Government, so bitterly hated by her father, could restore her respectability. With my most persuasive arguments I tried to dissuade her from going to England, but without effect. I urged her to marry me at once and go with me to America or some other country, where we would not be reminded of the past and have nothing to fear from it, but she would not listen. She feared she would be found and arrested later on and bring dishonor on me; she seemed to have no thought of herself in that respect, and, seeing that, I better understood the depth of her great love.

No argument of mine could change her and there was nothing to do but fall in with her plan. She packed up the most treasured of her personal effects, paid a last visit to the graves of her father and mother, and two days later we sailed away. Just before going on board she summoned the villagers to the empty warehouse and told them she had given all of her property to Deverell and was going away, never to return. They wept and showed great distress, but Kate was quietly happy and her glorious eyes were firm and undimmed as they looked for the last time on her beauteous isle.

I knew about where to find the “Florence.” We picked her up in a few days and I boarded her and made sail to meet the “Leckwith” at the rendezvous. Kate went on to Singapore, where she took the next ship for England. Six months later I received word that she had died suddenly there, before she had applied for a pardon, and the course of my life was changed again.