Sobered, to some extent at least, he tossed back the black hair dripping in his eyes and glared bitterly at the little group. Agathe had helped Marianne to her bed and after a brief, compassionate glance at the motionless form, Arcadius turned to Jason, shaking his head sadly at the ravaged face where the marks of suffering had bitten deeper than anger.

'I should have made her tell you the truth,' he said quietly, 'but she would not. She was afraid, horribly afraid of what you would say.'

'Was she?'

'Judging by what had just happened, she had every reason to be! But I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, Beaufort, that she was in no way to blame for what occurred. She was raped, appallingly. Will you let me tell you the whole dreadful story?'

'No! I can easily imagine your fertile imagination will have invented a splendid tale, calculated to appease my anger and to make me more her slave than ever. Unfortunately I do not want to hear it.'

Before Jolival could utter another word, Jason had taken the whistle he wore on a chain round his neck and blown three sharp blasts. At once, the boatswain appeared, framed in the broken doorway. Other men were visible behind him so that it seemed probable that half the crew had been listening eagerly.

Jason indicated Jolival and Gracchus.

'Put these men in irons, until further orders.'

'You have no right!'

Marianne had come to her senses and, despite Agathe's efforts to restrain her, had sprung to her friend's side. She was overpowered in a moment.

'I have every right,' the American retorted. 'I am sole master after God aboard this ship!'

'If I were you,' Jolival observed, moving calmly to the door, a seaman on either side of him, 'I should leave God out of this. The real winner here is the devil… and your friend the doctor, of course. Honest, honest Iago – as Shakespeare so aptly puts it.'

'We'll leave Dr Leighton out of this.'

'Indeed? Even though he broke his Hippocratic oath by betraying Marianne's condition?'

'He was not called to attend her. Therefore she was not his patient!'

'A nice, specious bit of reasoning – that did not come from you. Suppose we say he laid a trap, the basest kind of trap, concealing it under charity, and you applaud him for it! It's not like you, Jason.'

'Take him away, I said,' Jason roared. 'What are you waiting for?'

Gracchus fought like a tiger as the crew dragged them away but he was heavily outnumbered. Even so, as he was hustled past Jason, he managed to wrench them to a halt for a moment and looked straight into his eyes, his own hot with indignation.

'To think I once loved and admired you!' he said in a voice in which bitterness and desperation vied with anger. 'Mademoiselle Marianne would 'a' done better to 'ave left you to rot in prison at Brest, for if you didn't deserve it then, you deserve it now!'

Then, having spat on the ground to show his contempt, Gracchus let them take him away. The cabin emptied, leaving Jason and Marianne face to face.

In spite of himself, the privateer's eyes had followed the departing figure of Gracchus. He had paled under that furious outburst, and clenched his fists, but he had made no other move. Yet it seemed to Marianne that his eyes had darkened for a moment with a shade of regret.

The violent scene which had just taken place in her cabin had succeeded in restoring all her courage at a stroke. She was a natural fighter. It was her element and she felt at home in it. In a way, too, however disastrous the consequences, it was a relief to her to be done with the stifling atmosphere of lies and deceit. Jason's blind and jealous rage was after all a kind of loving, even though he might have rejected the idea with loathing, but it was a devouring and, perhaps, an all-consuming fire. In a few moments the love by which she had lived for so long might be reduced to nothing more than ashes – and her own heart with it.

Agathe had remained crouching by the bed. Like an automaton, Jason went to her and taking her by the arm, quite gently, took her to her own cabin and locked her in. Marianne watched him in silence, hugging round her the thick shawl which she had flung over her thin nightgown. He turned and saw her standing facing him, her head held high. There was anguish in her green eyes but they met him squarely.

'Now you can finish what you have begun,' she said steadily, letting the shawl drop just sufficiently to disclose the darkening bruises on her slender neck. 'All I ask is that you get it over quickly. Unless you'd rather hang me from the yard-arm in sight of all the crew?'

'Neither. I meant to kill you just now, I admit. I should have been sorry all my life. One does not kill such women as you. As for hanging you from the yard-arm, I fear I lack the appetite for melodrama which you, no doubt, picked up in treading the boards. In any case, you must be aware that while my crew might well enjoy the sight, it wouldn't please your watchdogs quite as much. I've no wish to be sunk by a brace of Napoleon's frigates.'

'Then what do you propose doing with me and my friends? You might as well put me in irons along with them.'

'Unnecessary. You'll stay here until we drop anchor at Piraeus. I'll put you ashore there, with your friends, and you can find yourself another vessel to take you on to Constantinople.'

Marianne's heart quailed. If he could talk like this, then his love for her must be dead indeed!

'Is that how you keep your promises?' she said. 'Didn't you engage to carry me to a proper port?'

'One port is much like another. Piraeus will do very well. From Athens you will have no difficulty in reaching the Turkish capital – and I shall be well rid of you, once and for all.'

He spoke quite slowly, without apparent anger, but in a heavy, exhausted voice in which to the thickening caused by drink was now added a note of disgust. In spite of all her anger and her grief, Marianne felt her heart moved with a kind of desperate pity. Jason looked like a man wounded to death. Very softly she asked:

'Is that really all you want? Never to see me again… never? For our ways to part… never to meet again?'

He had turned away from her and was looking out of the porthole at the sea, its deep blue struck into a myriad flashing sparks by the sun's fire. Marianne had an odd feeling that her words, penetrating, only served to harden him.

'That is what I want,' he said at last.

'Then, dare to look me in the face and tell me.'

He came to her, slowly and stood looking at her. The sunlight, entering the cabin, bathed her in light. The red shawl clutched about her shoulders was a garment of flame and the heavy masses of dark hair that fell about her pale, strained face, accentuated its almost transparent whiteness. With the bruises on her throat, she was as beautiful and tragic as sin. Beneath the folds of red cashmere, the breasts rose and fell with her emotion.

Jason said nothing but his eyes, as he studied the slender form before him, grew clouded and their expression was transformed slowly to one of impotent rage.

'Yes,' he said at last, reluctantly, 'I do still desire you. In spite of what you are, in spite of the revulsion I feel, I do have the misfortune to desire your body, because you're lovelier than any man could bear. But that, too, I shall overcome. I'll learn how to kill my desire…'

Marianne felt a thrill of joy and hope. Was it possible, after all, to round this tricky point? Was there victory to be won from the impossible?

'Wouldn't it be easier… and more sensible, to let me tell you everything?' she murmured. 'I swear by my hopes of salvation to conceal nothing of what happened to me… not even the worst! But give me a chance… only give me one single chance!'

She was longing now to plead her own cause, to tell him of all the suffocating horror built up in those past weeks. She sensed that she could still win him back to her. It was clear from the tormented, famished look on his face, the agony it revealed. She still possessed enormous power over Jason – if only he would listen.

But he refused to listen. Even now, the words she said did not seem to pierce through the armour he had built around himself. He was looking at her, yes, but with eyes that were strangely devoid of expression. Her voice did not reach him, and when at last he spoke, it was to himself, as though Marianne had been no more than a lovely statue, an effigy standing there.

'Oh yes, she's beautiful,' he said broodingly, 'beautiful and venomous, like the flowers of the Brazilian jungles that feed on insects and whose brilliant hearts smell only of rottenness. Nothing could be brighter than those eyes, or softer than that skin… those lips… nothing purer than that face or more captivating than that form… And yet it is all false… all vile! I know… and even now I cannot bring myself to believe it because I have not seen…'

While he spoke, his trembling hands were touching Marianne's face, her hair, her throat, but there was no light in his eyes, they were like the eyes of a dead man.

'Jason!' Marianne implored him. 'For pity's sake, listen to me! I love you, I have never loved anyone but you! Even if you were to kill me, my soul would not forget to love you. I am still yours, still worthy of you – even though you can't believe it for the present.'

She was wasting her breath. He did not hear her, lost as he was in a waking nightmare, where his dying love fought for survival.

'Perhaps if I had seen her in another's arms, seen her give herself to another man… vile, and contemptible… perhaps then I should be able to believe it.'