How that last scene stays with me, and will stay to my death!
How I see every detail, every shadow on the sunlit deck! We were
among the islands that dot the course from Genoa to Naples; that
was Elba falling back on our starboard quarter, that purple patch
with the hot sun setting over it. The captain's cabin opened to
starboard, and the starboard promenade deck, sheeted with
sunshine and scored with shadow, was deserted, but for the group
of which I was one, and for the pale, slim, brown figure further
aft with Raffles. Engaged? I could not believe it, cannot to
this day. Yet there they stood together, and we did not hear a
word; there they stood out against the sunset, and the long,
dazzling highway of sunlit sea that sparkled from Elba to the
Uhlan's plates; and their shadows reached almost to our feet.
Suddenly--an instant--and the thing was done--a thing I have
never known whether to admire or to detest. He caught her--he
kissed her before us all--then flung her from him so that she
almost fell. It was that action which foretold the next. The
mate sprang after him, and I sprang after the mate.
Raffles was on the rail, but only just.
"Hold him, Bunny!" he cried. "Hold him tight!"
And, as I obeyed that last behest with all my might, without a
thought of what I was doing, save that he bade me do it, I saw
his hands shoot up and his head bob down, and his lithe, spare
body cut the sunset as cleanly and precisely as though he had
plunged at his leisure from a diver's board!
* * * * * *
Of what followed on deck I can tell you nothing, for I was not
there.
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