They had entered the house, and were safe from observation.
He held her apart from him for a moment; then he caught her in his arms.
She clung to him, holding him about the neck with her naked arms, telling him in a broken voice and a half whisper how she had waited and watched always for him; how she had prayed to the sea to bring him back, and the stars to light him on his way. Then holding him from her she told, in short, hot sentences, fierce as stabbing spears, of his danger.
A new ship had come into the lagoon only the day before; a new man had joined Schumer, a terrible man. They had talked last night, and she had listened. No sooner had this strange man shown his face than she suspected danger; he "carried danger with him." So she had listened. They had not talked in the house; they had gone together and sat by the grove edge. She had crawled through the trees and listened. At first she could not make out what they said, they spoke in so low a tone; then, feeling safe and forgetting caution, they spoke louder. Even still she could seize upon nothing definite, as they spoke in a general way as if about some prearranged plot, but she gathered enough to know that Luckman had come to the island to wait for the man she loved, and then, with the help of Schumer, or, more properly speaking, the connivance of Schumer, to do away with him.
As she told this her gaze seemed to turn inward, as though she were looking at some mental picture, and a long shudder ran through her as though from some vibration of the soul. It was not the shudder of fear or cold; it was the shudder of hate, and Floyd, who had never seen it before, felt for a moment almost afraid of Isbel. He recognized, and not for the first time, that this being whom he loved belonged to a world of which he knew little. She was a person from another star, the child of another race. In her love for him a whole unknown world was rushing to meet him. It was this that completed her fascination and made him, now heedless of Schumer's menace, seize her to his heart and cover her face and throat with burning kisses. Taking fire she returned them, and then, holding him apart from her again, and still speaking in those sentences, short and hot like stabbing spears that have already tasted blood, she went on to give him all that she had gathered and all that she suspected. She knew for certain that Luckman and Schumer were expecting Floyd, for they had mentioned him by name, and she knew for certain that they had designs upon the life of the man they were expecting, and here lay her great grief; she could not fathom the nature of their design. She had, however, gathered enough to understand that the Kanaka crew of the _Southern Cross_ was to be brought ashore as soon as possible.