"No! no!" interposed another. "Let him be. It's none of your business. She made her bed and must lie on it. She cast you aside, and now you have no right to interfere."
"But she loved me—I know she did. Even at that last meeting, when I like a fool lost my temper, even then I saw the love in her eyes," he whispered softly; then with a deep, bitter groan, "My God! why did she do it? Why did she do it? And that beast, of all men. And now—what now, I wonder?"
The rover sat silent in an unnatural calm. He was hidden from the group of men round the whaleboat by a clump of cocoa-palms, jutting down on to a sort of promontory from the main grove.
Suddenly his ears, sharpened by his blindness, caught the sound of approaching footsteps. With his head on one side in the attitude of listening, he waited, cool without, but a very whirlwind of excitement within; for as they drew nearer he recognised the soft tread of those unknown feet.
Yes, it was! At last she was coming! This one thought filled him and set his heart beating to suffocation. The strangeness of the meeting on this lonely atoll of the two who had separated under such tragic circumstances, he did not realise at the time.
A great, overpowering longing to see her and touch her filled the blind man. How slowly she was approaching! Would she never reach him? What if she did not see him—should he shout? No, that might bring the hated Hawksley from the lagoon, which would never do. Jack desired of all things that this first meeting between the two should be private. Besides, he mistrusted himself with Hawksley; he knew there was murder in his heart crying for accomplishment, and at the very thought his fingers crooked significantly.
No, assuredly it would not do to risk drawing Hawksley's attention.
Should he rise to his feet and stumble forward to meet her? The knowledge of his blindness struck him like a blow. He dreaded the moment when she should find it out. "How would she take it?" he wondered miserably. No, he dared not blunder upon her like a drunken beachcomber. His manhood rose in rebellion. He desired most fervently to hide from her this tragedy which fate had put upon him, this fearful calamity which destroyed his strength and nerve and scourged his pride through his utter helplessness.
So the sorely-tried man waited, crouching on his knees.