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Updated: May 16, 2025
For an hour or more he was engaged alternately writing and carefully reading various papers sealed with vermilion wafers. Then he called Halvard. "I'll get you to witness these signatures," he said, rising. Poul Halvard hesitated; then, with a furrowed brow, clumsily grasped the pen. "Here," Woolfolk indicated. The man wrote slowly, linking fortuitously the unsteady letters of his name.
He laid the glasses back upon the deck. The choked bubble of boiling water sounded from the cabin, mingled with the irregular sputter of cooking fat and the clinking of plates and silver as Halvard set the table. Without, the light was fading swiftly; the wavering cry of an owl quivered from the cypress across the water, and the western sky changed from paler yellow to green.
The Gar rode uneasily on her anchor chains; the wind was shifting. They must get away! Halvard, waiting at the wharf Millie He rose hurriedly to his feet he had deserted Millie; left her, in all her anguish, with her dead parent and Iscah Nicholas. His love for her swept back, infinitely heightened by the knowledge of her suffering.
She dipped sharply and, flattened over by a violent ball of wind, buried her rail in the black, swinging water, and there was a small crash of breaking china from within. The wind appeared to sweep high up in empty space and occasionally descend to deal the yacht a staggering blow. The bar, directly ahead as Halvard had earlier pointed out was now covered with the smother of a lowering tide.
Halvard, in a glistening yellow coat, came close up to him, speaking with the wind whipping the words from his lips. He said: "She's ready, sir." For a moment Woolfolk made no answer; he stood gazing anxiously into the dark that enveloped and hid Millie Stope from him. There was another darkness about her, thicker than the mere night, like a black cerement dropping over her soul.
She pressed her lips, salt and enthralling, against his face, and made her way into the cabin. He locked the wheel momentarily and, following, wrapped her in the blankets, on the new sheets prepared for her coming. Then, putting out the light, he shut the cabin door and returned to the wheel. The body of Poul Halvard struck his feet and rested there.
The sudden thought of a disconcerting possibility banished Woolfolk's annoyance. "Halvard," he demanded, "did Nicholas knife you?" "A scratch," the other stubbornly reiterated. "I'll tie it up later. No time now I stopped him permanent." The jigger, reefed to a mere irregular patch, rose with a jerk, and the ketch rapidly left the protection of the shore.
The wheel turned impotently; and, absent-minded, John Woolfolk locked it. He dropped his long form on a carpet-covered folding chair near by. He was tired. His sailor, Poul Halvard, moved about with a noiseless and swift efficiency; he rolled and cased the jib, and then, with a handful of canvas stops, secured and covered the mainsail and proceeded aft to the jigger.
He knew that she could support no more violence, and he turned to the dim, square-set figure before him. "Halvard, it's that fellow Nicholas. He's insane has a knife. Will you stop him while I get Miss Stope into the tender? She's pretty well through." He laid his hand on the other's shoulder as he started immediately forward.
He stretched out his hand and reached her a red handkerchief with something heavy bound up in a corner. She took it mechanically, held it in her hand for a moment, then flung it far out into the water. A smile of profound contempt and pity passed over her countenance. "Farewell, Halvard," said she, calmly, and pushed the boat into the water.
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