Why should I have thought of that now? Thoughts were beginning to stir in my mind and I was too tired to consider them now. You have come very close to death, I reminded myself. It has made you fanciful and... suspicious.

Suspicious I was, for I rose from my bed and went to the window, taking the glass with me. I tipped the liquid out of the window and watched it trickle down the castle walls.

I climbed back into my bed and lay there thinking.

The Island Necklace

The next day I felt fully recovered and the strange ideas which had beset me on the previous night receded. The first thing I wanted to do was to go to the dovecotes and thank Slack for coming to my rescue.

He was there as though expecting me.

"Thank you, Slack," I said, "for coming to my rescue."

"I could have brought you in on my own," he said.

"I'm sure you could, but Mr. Jago happened to be there."

"I may not be big but I have the Power. I could have saved 'ee, Miss Ellen, like I save the little birds."

"Thank you, Slack. I know."

"It bothers me... what happened."

"Boats do spring leaks sometimes, I suppose."

He shook his head and said: "What did 'ee see, Miss Ellen?"

"See? Well, I suddenly noticed that the water was coming in. I thought there was something sticky there... like sugar... and then I didn't have time to think of anything but how I was going to get to the land."

"Sticky." His brows were wrinkled. "Like sugar, did 'ee say? I wonder what sugar could have been doing at the bottom of the Ellen?"               

"I expect I was wrong. I was frightened, I suppose."

"Little bits of seaweed, perhaps."

"Perhaps. But I'm safe and I can tell you, Slack, how pleased I was to hear your voice calling me."

" 'Twas the Power. I had this feeling. Go along down to the shore. I heard the voice telling me. You be needed there. Tis sometimes so when some little bird or some animal do need me."

"Well then, I have to thank the Power as well as you, Slack."

"Aye, Miss Ellen. Don't ever forget the Power. Miss Ellen, you say you did see sugar then?"

"Well, that's what it looked like to me then ... a few grains of sugar."

" 'Tis a strange thing. Don't 'ee fret though. I be going to look after you, Miss Ellen. If you do need me, I'll know."

The pale eyes had changed. There was a look about them which was almost fanatical.

The servants tapped their heads significantly when they spoke of Slack. I had heard the whispered comment: "Not all there."

But there was something there, I was sure. Dear Slack. I was glad he was my friend.

The incident of the boat had brought me closer to Slack. Understandably for a week or so after the accident I had no desire to go to sea, certainly not alone. There had been no need for Jago to warn me against that. So I stayed on the Island and I took to going to the dovecotes when Slack was feeding the pigeons.

He would give me a bowl filled with maize and we'd stand together with the birds fluttering round us.

Once he said: "Did 'ee say sugar, Miss Ellen?"

I wondered what he meant for a moment, then I said: "Oh, you mean when the boat started to sink. I didn't have time to consider very much. I thought I saw what looked like a few grains of it on the bottom of the boat where it hadn't, at that time, been touched by the water. And then as the water swelled up there seemed to be some grains floating in it. I was too upset though to think much about it. It just flashed into my mind. You understand. It was a horrible moment, Slack."

His brow was furrowed. "Sugar takes a little time to dissolve in cold water. Now salt would dissolve quicker."

"How could it have been sugar? How could that have got there?"

"Couldn't have got there if it hadn't been put, Miss Ellen."

"Slack, what do you mean!"

"Where be the boat? If we had the boat and her weren't broken up."

"You wouldn't find the sugar now."

"No, but we'd see the hole it come through."

"We know that must have been there."

"But how did it come to be there? That be what I want to know."

"Slack, what are you thinking?"

"What if the hole were put there by someone as filled it with sugar? There's the Demerara kind... brown and coarse grained, the kind that takes time to dissolve... specially in cold salt water. I've heard it said hereabouts more than once that it would hold a leak for a while if you happened to be not too far out to sea and supposing you had a packet of such with you... which is hardly likely." His eyes shone with the intensity of his feelings. "You wouldn't see it when you started out and when it did dissolve you have a hole, don't 'ee, what the sugar was bunging up. And the water could get in, couldn't it, where it couldn't when you started out."

"You're suggesting that someone ..."

"I don't rightly know what I mean, but terrible things can happen. I do know that. It don't do to forget it. I reckon we don't want to laugh at it and say ..." He floundered and tapped his head, implying that I might be thinking as others did that he was "not all there."

What he was suggesting seemed absurd. Did he really think that someone had tampered with the boat—my boat, which no one took out but me—knowing that sooner or later I should be at sea in it... and almost certainly alone!

It was too farfetched. Who would possibly do such a thing!

Gwennol was jealous because Michael Hydrock had been friendly towards me. Jenifry was angry on her daughter's account. I had always felt uneasy about Jenifry since that first night. I had often laughed at myself about that. Just because her reflection in an old mirror had looked momentarily malevolent I had started to endow her with all sorts of sinister motives. And now of course there was this aspect of my friendship with Michael Hydrock. But no. It was too flimsy. It was not as though Michael had asked me to marry him and I had accepted. I could understand that there would have been acute jealousy then. But it was not so. I liked him and it was quite obvious that he liked me. He was just a very courteous and kindly gentleman who had been helpful and hospitable. Gwennol had no reason to be jealous on my account.

And yet our relationship had changed since she had discovered that I had met him before I came to the Island. She had been prepared to be very friendly before that discovery; now she was cautious as though she were trying to trap me into admissions. I imagined that every time I went out she wondered whether I was going to meet Michael Hydrock. As for Jenifry, she had no doubt set her heart on Michael as a son-in-law and indeed he was undoubtedly the most desirable party in the neighborhood—a man any mother might have been expected to want for her daughter.

So this matter of the sugar was the wildest conjecture and I wished I hadn't mentioned it to Slack.

"You must be careful, Miss Ellen," he said very seriously.

"I shall. I shall examine any boat thoroughly before I attempt to go out in it."

"Mightn't be a boat next time."

"Next time?"

"I don't know what put that in me mouth, Miss Ellen. I want to look after 'ee, you see ... like I looked after Miss Silva."

"How did you look after her?"

He smiled slowly. "She always come to me. She used to get fits, Miss Ellen. Oh, not so she'd lie down and do damage to herself... not they sort of fits. Fits of sadness and fits of wildness when she wanted to do things that would hurt herself. Then she'd come and talk to me and the Powers would show me how to soothe her."

"You must have known as much about her as anybody did."

"Reckon so."

"And that night when she went away. ... It was a stormy night and yet she took a boat and tried to cross to the mainland."

I saw the shutter come down.

" Tis something all marveled at," he agreed.

"Did you know she was going?"

He hesitated, then he said: "Yes, I knew she were going."

"Why didn't you try to stop her? You must have known the chances were against her reaching land safely."

" 'Tweren't no good trying to stop Miss Silva when she were set on doing something. Her were like a wild pony. There were no reasoning with her."

"Something must have happened to make her want to leave so hurriedly."

"Twere so."

"What, Slack? You must know."

He was silent for a moment.

"She was my sister," I went on. "Just think of that. We had the same father, though different mothers. We should have been brought up together."

"Her weren't like you, Miss Ellen. There couldn't have been two ladies who was so different."

"I certainly wouldn't have gone out to sea on a stormy night."

"Her came to me afore her left. She fed the pigeons with me just as you be doing now. Fluttering round us they were, making their lovely cooing noises, and she said to me: 'Slack, I be going away. I be going to some place where I'll be happy as I never could be here.'"

"Oh Slack, do you think that she was so unhappy that she deliberately went out like that?"

He was thoughtful. "Her gave me something, Miss Ellen. Her said: 'Keep these, Slack. Someone might want them someday. Perhaps I will myself if it don't all go according to plan.'"

"What did she give you?"

"I'll show 'ee."

He took me into the outhouse and in the cupboard there was a box. He took a key from his pocket and opened it. Inside were two notebooks—exercise books like the one I had found in the desk.