Soon afterwards, Ada sends her daughter with a package for Baines, containing a single piano key with an inscribed love declaration reading "Dear George you have my heart Ada McGrath". Flora does not want to deliver the package and brings the piano key instead to Alisdair. After reading the love note burnt onto the piano key, Alisdair furiously returns home with an axe and cuts off Ada's index finger to deprive her of the ability to play the piano. He then sends Flora who witnessed this to Baines with the severed finger wrapped in cloth, with the message that if Baines ever attempts to see Ada again, he will chop off more fingers. Later that night, while touching Ada in her sleep, Alisdair hears what he believes to be Ada's voice inside his head, asking him to let Baines take her away. Deeply shaken, he goes to Baines's house and asks if she has ever spoken words to him. Baines assures him she has not. Ultimately, it is assumed that he decides to send Ada and Flora away with Baines and dissolve their marriage once she has recovered from her injuries. They depart from the same beach on which she first landed in New Zealand. While being rowed to the ship with her baggage and Ada's piano tied onto a Māori longboat, Ada asks Baines to throw the piano overboard. As it sinks, she deliberately tangles her foot in the rope trailing after it. She is pulled overboard but, deep under water, changes her mind and kicks free and is pulled to safety.