He writhed and then suddenly steadied himself. Again his eyes focussed evilly upon Claire.
"Go to him!" he ordered. "Go to him and do your utmost for him! Bring him round and I'll be light with you; I'll save you—the worst of it. Let him slip through your fingers, and by every devil in Hell I'll make you pay double, double, and double that!"
She turned from him silently and in turning made a little stagger. Miller's hand slipped under her elbow; for an instant she found that he was supporting her. She stirred away from him in uncontrollable disgust.
A moment later she had pulled herself together; she murmured a disjointed sentence of thanks, and moved away towards the scuppers where Aylmer still lay motionless, realizing, as she reached it, that the gray man was still at her side. He was looking at her keenly, but with an impassive gaze which told her nothing.
She bent her face to the white lips. Faintly, but still distinct, she felt the breath pass from them. She rose with a little gesture of appeal.
"You must help me," she said. "We must get him below."
For a moment he hesitated. Then he passed his arms behind the other's shoulders and lifted him. She bent and took his knees. Staggering again at first, but with growing steadiness, she helped to half carry, half drag him to the companion, into the cabin, to lay him, at last, on the floor of the lazaret.
She drew off her jacket and arranged it under his head.
She rose and looked at Miller.
"Now, if they will give me food and water, I will do what I can," she said simply. "Quiet is his best chance, absolute quiet."
He gave a little bow of assent.
"We must hope for the best," he answered. "You must rely on me all you can; come into Landon's notice as little as possible. I will use my influences, such as they are, for the best."
The hot throb of repulsion—of hate, even—throbbed up in her, knowing, as she knew, that he was false to her, but she kept her face unmoved. She nodded.
"Yes," she answered quietly, "unless—you think my duty is to let him—die?"
His imperturbable face lost its calm for a moment. He was genuinely startled.
"But no!" he cried quickly. "Things are not as bad as that! The threats he used? Those were the results of shock, of delirium. I would prevent that—I."
She looked at him very steadily.
"Yes?" she said. "You—a prisoner, like myself. How?"
He shrugged his shoulders vaguely.
"He is open to reason," he said. "He could not afford it; I could make that plain to him, I have every assurance that I could."
He was looking at her searchingly—frowning, showing dissatisfaction with himself for his slip. She was content to let it pass.
"Thank you," she answered. "You give me hope," and truly enough a wild, incredulous hope had just arisen in her heart, for her gaze had been still on Aylmer's pallid face at her feet.
The gray man still hesitated and then, with the air of one who has probed an enigma the solution of which still escaped him, turned and passed into the cabin. She heard his footsteps echo along the deck over her head.
Aylmer's eyes opened, and then one of them closed again, in a wink!
She laid her finger warningly upon her lips. She bent till her lips touched his ear.
"I knew it—I knew it!" she breathed joyfully. "Ah, but you nearly spoilt it all. You smiled—I saw the beginning of it—when he made his slip, and he might have seen it, too!"
He smiled again.
"The renegade!" he whispered. "I knew it before this last hour; I saw it in his face when Landon came here, before. They have some understanding, those two. And it was he who betrayed me—with his suggestion about the halliards. I heard him, before they let them go!"
"And I!" she answered. "He is against us; we are alone, against them all!"
"Where does his profit come in?" he asked, wonderingly. "What arguments has Landon used; how can a man like him be the gainer?"
She shook her head.
"One has met him—in Gibraltar—in society," she said. "But do we know anything of him; does any one know?"
He was silent for a moment.
"No," he said, at last. "No one knows. I have heard it spoken of, his unknowableness, but no one has supplied a key to the mystery. I think—I think if we win out of this I must set machinery to work in Gibraltar—to find out."
"If!" she repeated sadly. "If!"
His lips set firmly.
"Not if," he answered resolutely. "When! Do you believe that men like Landon win! You, yourself? Didn't you tell him that he would have to pay, eventually. I'm going to present the bill—I. I know it; I have it as a conviction!"
Her eyes glowed down at him. The dead roots of hope began to sprout in her heart. The down-hearted, thefainéant? Has any natural woman a use for such an one? No! Nature made you the leader, they cry to the male. For God's sake, behave as one!
She offered no protest, no comment. She did not question his faith; her matter-of-factness only asked for detail.
"Meanwhile?" she questioned. "Meanwhile?"
He made a little grimace.
"It is a gray prospect," he admitted. "I lie here, unconscious. I lie physically—and by implication—morally. I feign myself as one on the lip of extinction. I wait!"
She felt vaguely disappointed.
"You wait—till when?" she asked.
He smiled.
"Till a very old friend comes by," he answered. "She has seldom failed me, and then my own laggardness was at fault. They call her Opportunity."
"What is to be the end?" asked Claire, suddenly, wearily. "What is to be the end?"
Aylmer looked up from his pallet on the floor—looked at the girl—looked at the walls of bare masonry—looked at the shaft of sunlight which slanted through the barred window. For eight and forty hours he had lain there, shamming, shamming, shamming. For three days previous to his being brought to that place, he had lain as motionless in the lazaret of theSanta Margarita.
Conceive it—you who walk abroad as you list! Nearly a week of inaction, when all the time your blood is coursing healthily in your veins, your feet itch for the road, and your wrath, above all, is suffering a continual fever for which no remedy is presently available.
The picture, however, had its other side. Could he, in any other circumstances, have advanced so far in intimacy with his companion? When, in the ordinary intercourse of uneventful life, would the barrier which she had raised against him have been flung down? Where else than in this island prison of Salicudi would he have seen the glorious vision of hope over that barrier's crumbling walls? Dwelling on these matters, he was able to answer her pessimism with a genuine smile.
"When I first met you I told myself that I should have to play a waiting game," he said. "Well, it is proving itself so, literally."
She flushed faintly.
"You must forgive me," she sighed. "We women are not taught to wait. And in America we are allowed to be petulant, you know." She smiled. "You Britishers have more sense of discipline. But an end? Surely you yourself must want to see one? How long are you to lie there, paralyzed for action?"
He was silent for a moment, and his eyes were shadowed.
"It is I who must ask forgiveness," he said at last. "Perhaps—I hardly realized what it is—for you."
A throb of compunction stung her. She gave a little cry of protest.
"For me? It is a thousand times worse for you. I have liberty, in a sense. They let me walk abroad, even, at times—I am not interfered with—I can look out to sea and—and hope. I have you to lean on. But you? You lie within these four walls and think, and think. Your only support is within yourself. And I am a drag upon you."
And then she turned her face from the sudden passion in his eyes.
"Claire!" he said. "Claire!"
She did not answer in words. She made a little gesture which seemed to plead for forbearance, for a postponement to an inevitable but far distant morrow. She rose and walked to the window.
"There is a ship passing now," she reported. "Half a mile from land. I can see her flag—the Union Jack. A Newcastle collier, I expect, by her bulk and her grime. I suppose there are a score of unwashed deck hands and heavers in her forecastle who would sweep this island bare of the human vermin who infest it if we could let them know our need, if we could signal—wave—act! Act? But to go on waiting? To have not so much as a plan?"
He rose cautiously.
"There is no one in sight?" he asked.
She looked right and left, keenly suspicious.
"No," she said, at last. "I watched Luigi back to the houses after he left our food. He and half a dozen more are at the landing place. Two or three are on board the felucca, working her with sweeps into the shelter of the little breakwater. Mr. Miller? He is sitting on a boulder, watching—and like us, I suppose—waiting. What are we all doing but that? Fate is to be the arbiter for all of us. We can offer no interference."
He came up beside her, keeping in the shadow and peering cautiously between the bars. His glance was directed at theSanta Margaritaas the toilers at the sweeps slowly worked her to her moorings.
"They are making it the more difficult for us," he said slowly. "While she lay out there in the open, she represented the weapon with which we might have defeated Fate, if Fate is against us. Inside the breakwater the edge of the weapon is blunt. Did Fate read my thoughts?"
She looked at him anxiously.
"You have had a plan?" she asked. "You have not been leaving all to chance?"
"Wind—that is all I asked," he said. "A storm, a moonless night, and a little luck. If I could have got on board the felucca with you and cut her from her moorings, we would have played a deal with Fate then. We would have enlisted her on our side, to take us where she willed."
Her eyes grew vivid with hope and with anxiety.
"But to get on board? We are locked in at night, bolted. And those dogs of theirs are loose."
"That is it—they are loose," he said. "A few handfuls of food saved and we can attract them to the window, and they will be quiet enough when they are fed. It is merely a question of the getting out."
"And how?"
He pointed to a corner of the unmorticed wall.
"Their bars are sound enough, their bolts are out of reach of our tampering. But the building itself? Its foundations date from the days of Augustus, as likely as not. At night, while you slept, I tried its stability, course by course. It was in that corner that I found the weak spot. The lower stone I can remove at will. The one above it will fall when the support of the first is removed. And I put pressure enough on to the outer stones to know that a strong effort will thrust them away. The road is open, when we choose to take it."
She clapped her hands softly. Her face glowed.
"Why not now?" she cried. "Why not choose the passing of a ship and then signal—as you signalled to the torpedo boat?"
He shook his head.
"A warship is one thing," he objected, "a merchant ship another. We should be poising our all on the intelligence of a look-out-man who would be scanning the water, not the land, or of a third officer who might not know the code international."
She sighed.
"So we wait," she said despondently.
"So we wait," he agreed. "But not for long." He was looking westward at the sky.
"You see something?" she said quickly. "What?"
"Wind clouds," he answered. "Cirrus. Fate may be making her preparations for to-night."
"To-night?" She repeated the word faintly, incredulously. "I wonder," she said slowly. "I wonder if, after all my yearning for action, I shall—be brave when it really comes to—to-night?"
He looked down at her.
"And I?" he said. "Have I as good a chance as you to show courage?"
"You?" she answered wonderingly. "You are a man."
"Yes," he answered. "I am a man. And you, a woman, are dependent on me and I am taking you into perils that I can only guess at, dangers that lie absolutely in the hands of chance. For which of us is it easiest to be brave, you or me?"
Her eyes dropped from his.
"What do you hint?" she temporized. "For me—why should it be easier for me? The—the cases are equal, are they not?"
"No," he said quietly. "No, Claire. And you know that they are not. Not because you are a woman, but because you arethewoman; because you are you—and I—am myself—and love you!"
And this time there was a note in his voice which she had not recognized before, vibrant, unrestrained, passionate. The thrill of it pulsed through her; she felt it in her nerves, her very veins. She flinched from it, she gave a tiny pant; the womanly instinct of evasion made her draw back from him a startled pace.
"Isn't that the truth?" he asked, his voice hoarse with its intensity. "Isn't it easy to be brave for oneself alone—easier than to be brave for another?"
She stood looking at him, strangely, doubtfully, the shadow of dumb entreaty in her eyes. But in her heart other shadows were fading to disclose realities hitherto faintly suspected and half defined. Was this the true meaning of the fear which had suddenly been born in the moment of hope? Was it for his sake she paused upon the threshold of danger? The protective instinct which she had recognized in herself with wonder—had that grown into something more? Was it death with him or life without him that she pictured as the worst that Fate could give?
The silence grew in tension but she could not break it. What was only then revealing itself to her—could she reveal it to him? She drew back another pace, she held out her hand as if she warded off the inevitable.
"I cannot tell," she said weakly. "But—but I think I could be brave for myself—alone."
He made an exclamation, his arms went out to possess her, his eyes shone—
"No!" she cried passionately. "No! Is it fair, is it right to take advantage of our position; is it honorable?"
And then she regretted her words in the very speaking of them. The passion faded from his face, a shadow veiled his eyes, he made a gesture of contrition. And she? With feminine inconsistency she opened her lips to undo what she had done, to make her victory defeat.
Again Fate intervened. Aylmer whispered warningly, slipped across the flags, and stretched himself upon the pallet. One look through the barred window explained his action. A hundred yards away a couple of figures were advancing towards the building. She recognized Landon and in his companion, Miller, talking vehemently.
She left the window and waited, sitting on the rough stool which was placed at the pallet foot.
A minute later the sound of bolts withdrawn and a key in a lock echoed under the stone arch. Landon entered alone, debonair, smiling, but with eyes which were ominous of intention.
He looked down at the pallet.
"Our sufferer—our patient? Do we perceive no signs of progress?"
There was danger in his voice; she read it unmistakably.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"He is no different," she said apathetically. "He has spoken, once or twice. I see no change."
"That is the misfortune of it all," said Landon. "You see no change. Can your nursing be at fault—not from want of care, let me say at once, but from want of knowledge? Must we call in further advice in consultation?"
His face was white and haggard below the soiled bandage which crossed his forehead. The sharpness of his jaw, his sunken cheeks, made of his smile a very evil thing. She flinched before it.
"I cannot tell," she answered wearily.
"His movements, now?" grinned Landon. "Do they give no indication of his condition? Has he no conscious interests?"
The eyes below the bandage glittered and fear stabbed her suddenly. Were they betrayed?
She shook her head.
"You see for yourself," she answered, and made a gesture towards the motionless form on the pallet.
Landon laughed.
"No, I do not see," he said. "I am not a physician. I cannot walk to a bedside and deliver sentences of death or reprieves to life like the miracle mongers of Harley Street. Unconsciousness? How is it diagnosed? Sometimes by actual experimentin corpore vile, is it not?" He leaned over the bed. His hand slipped into a pocket and reappeared holding an open penknife. He thrust it suddenly into Aylmer's arm.
She gave a cry of indignation; she seized his hand and dragged him back.
He laughed savagely and tried to fling her off. She threw her whole weight upon his wrist, clinging to it.
And then he laughed again, with malignant enjoyment. He changed his tactics. He no longer evaded her grip. He jerked her towards him. And this time the penknife point found a new sheath. Deliberately he stabbed it against her shoulder and—held it there!
She shrieked.
There was a stirring from the pallet bed. With a mighty leap Aylmer was on his feet! His face was convulsed; his eyes were lightnings.
For the third time Landon laughed, triumphantly. In the same motion he released his prisoner and sent her spinning against Aylmer's outstretched arm. He himself was at the door and outside it, slamming it, locking it, flinging home bolt after bolt before the two inside had recovered from the sudden shock. A moment later he reappeared at the window.
"Well, my early convalescent!" he mocked. "Have you no thanks for such a sudden recovery? And you, sister-in-law, for such a lesson in the healing art? Think of the efforts wasted on that malingerer. Aren't you blushing for the ease with which you were deceived?"
And then the twinkle of wicked laughter faded from his eyes. He drew near the window bars and glowered down at them evilly.
"Or are you blushing for yourself, you wanton!" he cried. "You who deceived me into leaving you with him as a nurse, and knew that he needed none. A little paragraph with hints—or more than hints, the truth—about such a matter, and where do you stand? Are there society rags in London and New York ready to accept that sort of matter? Yes, virtuous cousin and sister-in-law, I think there are, I think there are!"
Neither of them flinched. They looked at him fixedly and, in the girl's case, almost wonderingly. And Landon read the message of her incredulity with a chuckle of enjoyment.
"I keep on presenting surprises to you, do I not?" he grinned. "My versatility, the quickness with which I seize new points of humor impresses you?"
For a moment she was silent. And then, as if a force beyond her control forced her to speak, she answered him.
"I did not believe in the possibility of there being a thing as vile as yourself," she said. "I did not think God allowed such as you to live!"
The satyr-like grin broadened across his haggard cheeks. He leered down at them.
"I revel in it!" he answered. "By the Lord! Till you've tried absolutely unrestrained wickedness, till you've thrown off every sort of control, till you're one with the devil and proud of it, you don't know what enjoyment is!" His eyes glowed; he smote his fist ecstatically on the stones. "It's great!" he cried. "Great!"
A gray figure came suddenly into view behind him. Miller's face showed white against the shadow of the dusk which was heralding its coming by the deepening azure of the sea and sky. And his glance seemed to hold a significance which the prisoners were meant to read, but for which they had no clue.
Landon heard him and wheeled.
He surveyed him slowly and then he laughed.
"I'm beyond you now, teacher!" he derided. "I used to admire you—the callousness, the relentlessness—which you could put into a job! But I'm way up above you. Decency had to be part of your stock-in-trade."
He laughed again, his harsh, cackling merriment, and there was a note in it which struck a new chord of fear in Claire's heart. It was inhuman, unintelligent, this laughter. It fell poignantly, horribly on the ear.
"To-morrow—mañana!" chuckled Landon. "I'm coming back with all my friends. We'll give hours of daylight to the job and, by God! we'll make a good one! Think it over; give it your attention through the night! My terms, every word of them or—well, try and guess the persuasions I'll use. Meditate on them; paint them up in your imaginations and then you'll fall short! And as for restraints, remember that in my particular case there isn't such a thing, not one!"
He stood staring down at them through a moment of leering self-satisfaction, and then slowly, reluctantly, turned away. He took Miller's arm and drew him insistently down the path. His evil laughter came back to them shrill upon the evening breeze.
Inside their prison the two turned and confronted each other. Then Aylmer spoke.
"He has defied God, and the judgment of God has fallen on him. He is insane—that is evident! Insane with malice, with his surrender to the devil and all his works."
Her lips were parched. She whispered.
"And to-morrow?" she questioned, thickly. "To-morrow—we shall have to surrender, too. To him?"
He clenched his fists.
"No!" he said. "No! Not while Fate has given us to-night—to-night!"
The presage of the afternoon sky was amply fulfilled by midnight. The western gale howled through the window bars and the sound of the sea's thunder rolled up from the beach. For the Mediterranean it was a gale beyond the normal, one that had borrowed strength from its Atlantic kin. It lashed the green islands of the archipelago with unaccustomed violence. The vine poles fell in ranks before its blast; the lava dust whirled up in spirals; the pebbles clattered along the face of the shingle. And yet there was something strange, noticeable, almost ominous, about the tempest. It had none of the northern breath of ice. It was a hot wind; in spring or summer, and had it risen in the south, one would have called it sirocco and kept in the shadow throughout its blowing. But this wind blew from the north and the month was December. The islanders mused over the phenomenon debatingly.
Inside the prison the storm muffled sounds which, however, no listener was abroad to detect. A common table fork his only implement, Aylmer was levering the massive corner-stones inch by inch from their seating. The lower one had already been removed, but the upper one, as expected, had not fallen from its place. He panted as he put forth his strength upon it. The ebb and flow of his pulses swelled in the half-healed scar on his temple. Blood was flowing from a few superficial cuts upon his fingers. He ground his teeth and tugged at the stone savagely, worrying it as a terrier might worry a defiant rat. And then, with an unexpected jerk, it fell out upon him bodily. He dropped backwards, the stone's weight upon his leg.
He gave a half-muffled cry, not of pain, but of satisfaction. The rest was easy; the road was open.
Then, as he panted in the relief of accomplished effort, Fate rebuked his satisfaction with a sudden threat. A step sounded coming up the gravel.
His temperamental coolness and presence of mind never stood a test better. He stood up, raised each stone in quick succession, and placed them swiftly, carefully, and silently beneath the coverlet of his companion's bed. She flung herself down beside them. He drew his own pallet into the corner from which the stones had been removed and lay, his face to the wall, the huddle of the bed clothes hiding the opening. A moment later a light shone through the window. The light of a lamp illuminated a wrinkled Italian face.
The watcher blinked at them suspiciously, grunted, and then with a half-articulate expression of satisfaction, turned away. The light bobbed slowly off into the distance, flaring and guttering before the force of the wind. Inside the prison a sigh went up—a chorussed echo of relief.
"Landon is taking no chances," said Aylmer, in a whisper. "We are to be visited, at intervals. That is evident."
He heard something like the sound of a sob in the darkness.
"It means defeat—this?" asked Claire. "Fate is setting her face against us. We are not even to have our chance!"
"No!" he said grimly. "Fate is not against us. I feel it, I have believed it all along. And if she is, then it is our duty to defy her. After all, we can use the chief source of danger to defeat suspicion; that is easy."
He rose cautiously and plucked the remaining stones from the hole. He placed them in his own bed; he arranged matters carefully. And then he made a motion towards the new-made opening.
"Will you lead?" he said quietly. "Will you be the first to confront—Fate?"
She gave a little gasp.
"I?" she said, and hesitated, fear in her eyes.
"You, if you will," he answered simply. "Make your way out and hide yourself in the nearest convenient shadow. Then, if he returns before I can join you, await me. If not—" He shrugged his shoulders. "I shall be at your heels."
She still paused, and her fingers clenched and unclenched.
"I did not expect—to be—separated," she breathed. "My strength—I did not realize it at first—is coming all from you."
His hand went out into the darkness and touched her.
"From now on, it will be used in your service," he said quietly. "For you and you alone." She felt the hand quiver. "Whether you ask it or not, whether I am to be all to you in the future, or nothing. It will be there—for your asking."
And then, because the need of that strength came upon her with a force which she could not control, she gripped the protecting hand between her fingers and—Fate alone knows why—raised it to her lips. The next instant she had slipped past him in the darkness and was drawing herself through the opening. She rose to her knees, to her feet. She stood out upon the wind-swept earth, free. Free of the material prison behind her. Had she not laid upon herself new bonds? It was a thought too new, too indefinite, too strangely sweet. The tumult of her feelings was in accord with the tumult of the night.
She stood, expectant, her ears alert for sounds. There was no grating of pebbles upon the path. But from the hole at her feet the faint rip of clothing torn against the angle of the stone. The next instant Aylmer had emerged, but did not rise. His hands, returning to the opening, still worked at something within. And then she gave a little gasp. A light shone at her feet. It made a tiny, yellow splash in the darkness and fell—on Aylmer's face.
Terror paralyzed her; she stood as if turned to stone; her hands clenched into her clothing upon her breast. And Aylmer lay as motionless, the golden gleam falling directly into his eyes, which did not even blink.
A sound broke the stillness—a sound which came from the far side of their prison—and the light disappeared. She heard footsteps which retreated; she recognized again the grunt which told of another inspection made to the inspector's content. But what had saved them—what?
Aylmer rose and stood beside her. His hand gently gripped her elbow and drew her out into the roar and beat of the tempest. He headed inland; the path which the sentinel had taken was the one which led towards the shore.
A minute later she breathed her question. And he laughed lightly in the darkness. The sound, incongruous as it seemed to her sense of ever-menacing fear, thrilled her strangely. If he could laugh, was not Fate laughing with him? Was there not a smile on the face of Hope?
"I was only just through the hole when he came, when he flashed his lantern at what he supposed was my body, recumbent on the bed. I was holding up the bed clothesfrom outside; I had not had time to shove the stones back into place."
She shuddered at the nearness of the hazard. Supposing the man had come at the very moment of escape—supposing?
"But the light?" she protested. "The light shone upon your face!"
He laughed again.
"The bed clothes had a hole in them!" he said. "I held them up into the form of human shoulders, and through a rent his lantern beat directly on my face! He could not, of course, see me, but I got a good view of him. It was Luigi himself, this time. Has Fate been whispering to him, do you think? Has she made him suspicious?"
She stumbled and caught at him to steady herself. He looked down in sudden, quick compunction.
"It has been too much for you!" he said anxiously. "You are feeling faint?"
"No!" she said quietly. "I am trying to think of it as a nightmare from which I shall wake directly, but it is real! Whenever that comes home to me it—it is a pain. Well, it will not be a long ordeal now, will it? We meet Fate at the landing stage, and she will give her decision. Can we unmoor theSanta Margaritafrom inside the breakwater, or can we not? She will know."
He nodded.
"In five minutes we, too, shall know. We are circling for the Marina now. A couple of hundred yards and we shall be there!"
They strode on into the darkness, with eyes and ears alert. They heard the battling of the waves against the stones of the tiny pier, but what they did not hear was the sound of singing cordage in the felucca's rigging.
Aylmer halted with a sudden, muffled exclamation.
"They have unshipped the mast!" he cried sharply, and this time she recognized, even in his voice, the note of defeat.
She echoed his exclamation; she followed at his heels as he ran out upon the little breakwater. No, there had been no room for mistake. The great mast with its cross spar lay along the stone flags. The hull was snugly berthed alongside it, within the tiny harbor. The dingy? There was none; they had cast it loose when they fled from the torpedo boat through the island channel.
For a moment he did not speak. He stood, looking silently at the dismantled boat, the raging sea, the swinging lights of a passing steamer. Then he turned and shook his head.
"To step that mast into place again is beyond one man's strength," he said. "To fling ourselves out into that whirl on a mastless hull is to court death inevitably. What is the alternative? We could stand in front of the shed here, screened from view inland, and signal some passing vessel with flares, if we had the means of making a light. That would not be a good chance, but it has possibilities."
"And I have matches!" she said eagerly. "I have my chatelaine still. I have even my purse yet. So far they have not robbed me."
He turned as she spoke and without comment ran back across the shingle. He began to pluck handfuls of the dry, bent grass which found a sparse livelihood in the belt of sand between the shore and the vineyards. He returned, rummaged among the litter around the shed, broke up some stray pieces of driftwood into chips, and thrust a lighted match among the bents. A flame shot up, passed from the tinder to the wood, and within a minute was a well-lit fire. He twisted the remaining handfuls of grass into spirals, wetted them slightly in the sea, and held them to the flame.
They burnt slowly with a red glow, as he swung them to and fro in the wind; in dashes, in dots, in circles, he spelled messages into the night, but no answering lantern or rocket came from the sea. And she watched apathetically. For her hope was dead again, the hand of Fate had closed. This was action; this helped them to avoid thinking, to avert anticipation, but success was a matter outside her calculations. The sense of nightmare closed down upon her again. The storm, the red flashes against the purple darkness, the wild unaccustomedness of everything heightened the illusion. But when would she wake? Ah, when would she wake?
And then—she rubbed her eyes. A light—surely this was no freak of her fevered eyesight?—danced into view within a couple of hundred yards of the shore. For a moment it swung to the lift and surge of the waves alone, but a moment later it rose half a dozen feet into the air, and flashed and circled as the charred torch in Aylmer's hand was circling—an answer to their message of despair. She gasped with eagerness; she cried aloud.
Was it fancy or did another cry reach them through the thunder of the waves?
The light stayed motionless for an instant, and then swung towards them. Whatever vessel was bearing it had turned its prow towards the shore. Aylmer caught up another glowing handful of bents and ran out to the breakwater's end. Claire's heart beat in suffocating throbs as she followed.
Again a cry reached them, and Aylmer waved his beacon vigorously. A sudden shaft of moonlight sank through a rift in the flying clouds.
They saw it then—a dark mass which plunged and heaved among the white crests, and drifted nearer and nearer. There was no sail set, but they could see the rise and fall of a couple of great oars which steadied the boat as it advanced by drifting only. It was less than a cable length distant now, passing through the ring of rocks which guarded the harbor entrance.
They held their breath. Ten seconds would do it, but ten seconds held an infinitude of possibilities. If the boat broached to, if its prow, indeed, deflected a couple of yards from the course, would not that give Fate a chance to fling her scorn upon their rising hopes? Their eyes were strained. Claire's hand was clenched till her nails seemed to sink into the flesh of her palm. And then she gave a sigh of relief. The boat had passed the outer rock, was heading straight for the inner harbor and the calm.
Fate laughed harshly.
A gust stormed in from the sea, caught the boat's prow, swung it, caused the port side rower to meet its strength too swiftly with his own. They heard a crack—heard it distinctly above the uproars of the gale. The oar had broken between the thole-pins; the rower was down.
There was another crashing sound, louder this time, and menacing. A great sea raced beneath the laboring keel, lifted it, shook it, and flung it aside, full upon the rock. The white gleam of the new-made splinters reached them through the smother of the foam fifty yards away.
Aylmer cried out and raced back along the stones. His hands plucked at the cordage which was folded about the felucca's mast, and drew out a rope. He came back at speed, unwinding the coils as he came. He thrust the loose end into her hands.
"Get a purchase against a stone and then hold on—hold on!" he ordered. He flung off his coat.
She cried out in protest; she clung to him.
"No!" she cried. "No!"
Very gently, very firmly, her hand was drawn aside. He bent over her; something touched faintly—very faintly—her lips. The next instant she was alone. He had leaped—far out into the grip of the tide.
She caught her breath and clutched the rope; she flung herself down and wedged her limbs behind a boulder. Fate was relentless, she told herself, was cruel beyond even her darkest anticipations. For now her one support was to be denied her; she was to be left alone. She set her lips grimly. No, she would never see Aylmer again, but she would defy Fate! She was to be crushed, but she would go down fighting; she would be worthy of herself—and of him.
The vagrant shaft of moonlight was gone again; the darkness was well-nigh impenetrable. The rope swung between her fingers unstraining. The minutes passed one by one; the tension of expectancy plucked at her nerves; she shivered, but not with cold. Even if it was the worst that was to come upon her she wanted to know—to know.
The rope grew taut.
It was as if an electric shock thrilled her. She braced herself against the stone, and her muscles tightened; slowly, using her strength to its utmost but with steady effort, she began to haul it in foot by foot. It came heavily but unceasingly, the coils unwinding fathom after fathom at her side.
And then the strain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. A voice hailed her out of the darkness, almost at her feet. A dark bulk rose at the breakwater's edge.
Aylmer staggered towards her and laid something on the stones—something which stirred uneasily but unavailingly, clogged, as it seemed, by the weight of its sodden clothing.
She knelt beside it. She brushed the lank hair from a dripping face.
Aylmer waved her back.
"There is another!" he shouted. "Hold on if you can! Hold on!" and so plunged back into the surf. For the second time she braced herself to endure the strain—to wait—to agonize with expectation. And again Fate played with her, racked her between hope and fear, drew out the strain and then, as suddenly, relaxed it. Aylmer crept out upon the stones, gasping, doggedly clinging to a new burden.
This time it was the bearer who staggered and fell, the burden who rose unsteadily, and peered into his rescuer's face.
She dropped upon her knees beside him. Pale, clean-cut ascetic features were lifted to hers. Two dark brown eyes inspected her with startled incredulity.
And then the man rose and—the act was instinctive, it was obvious—doffed his hat.
"Signora," he said in Italian. "Signora! This is Salicudi, is it not? I am at a loss—I do not understand."
For a moment she hesitated, looking at him. The long black garment which clung about him reached to his feet. Suddenly she recognized it, and, with recognition, a little cry escaped her. It was asoutane. And this was no sailor. She was confronted by a priest.
As she opened her lips to find a reply, something clattered behind her; something rushed, calling upon the names of innumerable saints, out of the darkness, and seized her shoulder. A harsh voice rang into the echoes of the night.
"To me—to me, all of you! They are escaping! Blood of My Lady, the prisoners are loose!"
The man in the soutane whirled fiercely upon the newcomer. And as he turned the moon broke through the scurry of the drift and fell upon the group in cold brilliance.
"Prisoners!" The voice was incredulous, wrathful, and above all full of command. "Prisoners! You speak of—whom?"
The hand upon Claire's shoulder dropped. Her captor fell away as if struck by a physical blow.
"Padre Sigi!" he stammered, and his voice was convincing of his amazement. "Padre Sigi!"
The other nodded imperiously.
"Padre Sigismondi," he agreed. "At your service, my good Luigi. At your service!"
The smuggler's eyes expressed the limits of amazement. He stared at the newcomer. He turned his glance to Aylmer, as if he sought information there. He brought it back and focussed it upon the drippingsoutane. He made inarticulate noises of incredulity; he flung up his hands with gestures of bewilderment.
"You arrive—how, reverend father?" he cried. "What have you used? The wings of a bird, the fins of a fish?"
"The eyes of a God-fearing priest," retorted Padre Sigismondi. "I saw signals being flashed from your island. With Emmanuele here," he pointed to the dripping figure which still lay upon the stones, "I was passing your abode of sin on my way to Stromboli. I had, in fact, no choice—I was being blown there. I saw the signals, I say, but read no meaning in them. Some unconfessed wretch needs extreme unction, say I to myself, and steered among the teeth of your reefs. One of our sweeps broke at a critical moment. This cavalier here leaped in to our rescue. I have not properly thanked him yet because I am awaiting explanation of the words I heard as you thrust yourself upon us. Prisoners, did you say? It must be a cataclysm of morality which has made you a gaoler or a judge, my wonderful Luigi."
The smuggler shivered and blenched.
"This man and this woman are in a sense prisoners," he allowed. "They are not on good terms with our other—guests. We have had to restrain their liberties."
Padre Sigismondi regarded him fixedly. The unfortunate Luigi's tongue protruded with nervousness; his cheek muscles twitched. The priest shrugged his shoulders as he turned to Aylmer.
"I arrive unceremoniously," he smiled, "but not inopportunely, it seems. May I have your version of the extraordinary circumstances in which I find the Signora and yourself, Signor?"
Aylmer smiled back at him.
"They are simple enough, father," he answered. "We are prisoners; there is no need for our friend here to beat about the bush. At the instigation of—of a certain enemy of ours, in whose pay the good Luigi finds himself, we were kidnapped from the port of Melilla and brought here. It was our signals you saw. May I add my profound regrets at the misfortune you experienced in answering them?"
"The Church is a boat to the bad, but possibly a gainer in righteousness," said the other. "I may be the means of preventing some irretrievable sin on the part of these islanders. You were being held to ransom, do I understand?"
The dripping figure at his feet stirred and rose weakly to a standing posture. A cackle of laughter came from between the chattering teeth.
"The gaol-bird as gaoler—eh, but that is a rib-rending jest, Luigi. You have imagination,amico, imagination and, it seems, opportunity. You will go far!"
The sailor turned his wrinkled face on the abashed smuggler; his white teeth flashed a prodigious smile. He seemed to find nothing disconcerting in the situation, but desired to show quickness in seizing its points of humor.
"He will certainly go far, my good Emmanuele," agreed Padre Sigismondi, drily. "As far as the penal station on Procida if I am not hugely mistaken, or unless he shows a most improbable repentance. What have we here? Other warders in this private penitentiary?"
Footsteps clattered along the tiny causeway. With a rush, half a dozen figures swept up to them through the moonlight, Landon at their head. This was the answer to Signor Luigi's frantic shouts.
The rush wavered, hesitated, came to a halt. The islanders recognized the grim, aggressive form in thesoutanewith sharp exclamations of amazement and alarm. Landon, without their experience, felt the impalpable infection of their fear. He, too, halted, staring mistrustfully at the priest and his companions.
He shook Luigi by the elbow.
"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.
The smuggler made a deferential outward movement of his palms.
"It is a visit, an unexpected visit, from our—our vicar," he explained. "It is the Padre Sigi—Sigismondi, I should say."
The padre stepped forward and spoke in crisp, imperturbable tones.
"I am peripatetic confessor to these islands, Signor," he said. "There is a bitter need of six priests to each island, rather than six islands to a priest. It is an abode of wickedness, this. That, perhaps, has not been hidden from you?"
Landon kept a moment's silence. Then he smiled.
"I confess that I have not augmented its morality, in bulk, Signor," he said. "In fact, by adding the two who stand behind you to its population, I have done far otherwise. Instead of being where you find them, they should be under lock and key."
"Why?" demanded the priest, laconically.
"Because they robbed me," answered Landon. "Because, for wicked purposes of their own, they took from me—not gold, but what is beyond the price of gold or buying—my only son."
"You accuse them of—kidnapping?" The good man's voice was coldly incredulous.
Landon made a gesture of assent.
"Of that and of attempted murder. They hired Moorish desperadoes to attack me, to ride me down."
"And you have made of yourself not only prosecutor, but judge, jury, and keeper of their prison?"
"These things happened in Africa, outside civilized jurisdiction. Was I to lack justice when it lay in the hollow of my hand?"
"Are there no consular courts? If not, you cannot bring your private cause to private verdict in the dominions of the King of Italy, however bad his title to the throne."
"Your reverence is a Legitimist?" grinned Landon.
"In every sense of the word, Signor. My sense of legitimacy finds your arguments unsound."
He looked at Claire with an apologetic bow.
"And as a matter of fact, Signora, I have not heard your statement. How does it vary from this gentleman's? Or does it, perhaps, corroborate it?"
She looked at him very steadily.
"The man to whom you have been talking," she said slowly, "is, I think, Signor, the worst man whom God permits to live."
He made a little gesture of protest.
"You have suffered at his hands—is that it? But your sentence is too sweeping a one, is it not? Surely, Signora, surely?"
She shook her head.
"No!" she said determinedly. "Traitor, forger, thief—we know him to be all these. And last, but not least, murderer. A murderer of souls. I do not know if he has taken a fellow creature's life, but for five years he racked into the numbness of despair the soul of my sister, who was his wife."
He made a tiny exclamation of sympathy; he held up his hand as if he put away from him a spectre of evil.
He looked back to Landon.
"You have heard, Signor?" he said.
"I have heard," said Landon, easily. "As a tale it has no originality and therefore little interest for me. I have heard it a hundred times. Your reverence found fault, a moment back, with my self-assumed status of judge. Are you going to borrow the cloak which you do not permit me to wear? You have heard both sides. To what proof can you refer a decision?"
The long, lean figure drew itself up very rigidly.
"I am a sinful man myself, Signor. I make no decisions. But I have been appealed to, as I understand, by those whom I find in your power. I shall not permit your restraint of them to continue. You can refer any grievance you have against them to properly constituted tribunals over there." He lifted his arm and pointed south to where storm and night hid Sicily.
He turned to Luigi.
"Emmanuele and I are, as you see, sodden to the skin. It may reach your great intelligence, by degrees, that we need warmth and refreshment."
The smuggler made an apologetic gesture.
"But certainly, Reverenza. There is in the house a fire. My poor provisions are at your service."
The priest looked towards Claire with another courtly doffing of his hat.
"And you, Signora, and you, Signor, will add to my felicity by sharing both with me?"
She looked at him gravely.
"They have not starved us; we had food a couple of hours ago," she said. "But your company, here and to the mainland, is a boon straight from the hand of God."
He inclined his head in assent.
"I am His servant, Signora," he said. "I thank Him for permitting me to serve Him, in serving you. Shall we make our way to the house? The hour must be close on midnight."
He made a motion towards the path. He looked imperturbably at Landon, who, with Muhammed, still stood astride it.
"You appear to be blocking the lady's way, Signor," he said. "Not intentionally, I dare to hope."
Landon shrugged his shoulders and drew aside.
"On the contrary, your reverence. Not for worlds would I stand between you and refreshment—and sleep."
He looked at Muhammed with a half-sardonic, half-inquiring gaze as he spoke. And there was a faintly emphasized inflection on the last two words.
The Moor looked back at him impassively, and then drew aside with an obsequious droop of the head.
But to Claire and, to a less extent to Aylmer, there was a queer, indefinite sense of something which impended—something which racked them with suspicion in the attitude of those about them. Landon's surrender was too facile; Luigi's deference too pliant; Muhammed's apathetic eyes were never less convincing of guilelessness. When they reached the cottage, and stood with Padre Sigismondi before the blaze in the great open hearth and watched the quick preparations which were being made to improvise a meal, the unreality of their surroundings seemed to grow in significance. No one interfered with them; no one even noticed them. Luigi set the table; Muhammed busied himself with the coffee-pot; Landon held the father's dripping garments to the blaze while their owner assumed a sailor's trousers and jersey in an adjoining room. It was too incredible, this sudden turning of tables. They looked at each other doubtfully.
Their speculations received a sudden interruption. The door opened to admit Miller.
He was half dressed. He blinked—it was apparent that he and sleep had parted company a short half minute before.
"I heard noises," he said, and then his glance fell upon the two who stood near the fireplace, side by side. His usual phlegm seemed to desert him. He gave an exclamation.
"You!" he cried. "You!"
He wheeled towards Landon.
"Will you explain?" he cried harshly. "What is happening?"
"I entertain guests—a small, but select, family party," grinned Landon.
The gray man stared at him with still unappeased surprise. Then, suddenly, his face cleared. He looked at Claire; he looked on beyond her to Aylmer.
"You have met his terms? You see the hopelessness of it all; you have been wise?"
His voice was smooth, now, and had lost its harsh tones of amazement. He purred his approbation.
Aylmer laughed.
"We have been wise, my dear Miller," he agreed. He laughed again as Padre Sigismondi briskly entered the room. He had the aspect of an ascetic but experienced mariner in his new garb. He bowed to Miller courteously but inquiringly. The inquiry, it was to be noticed, was directed in part towards Aylmer and his companion.
But Aylmer offered no introduction. He drew forward a chair, and placed it in front of the fire.
"A good roasting after your immersion? Let me prescribe that," he said.
The priest looked at him and then gave a cry of commiseration.
"But you yourself, Signor—you remain in your sodden clothes?"
"For a very simple reason, father," said Aylmer, smiling. "I was taken prisoner, but not my luggage. I stand up in my belongings."
The house began to resound with the recriminations which the priest addressed to Luigi. Why had he not provided the cavalier with a suitable change of raiment while his own clothes dried? Why had he not done this; why had he not done that?
The smuggler ran to and fro distractedly. A jersey came from one press. A shirt from another. A cupboard supplied trousers; a deplorable collar which had had no recent acquaintance with a laundry was even offered and declined. Aylmer retired into the adjoining room, and Landon, on his return, with imperturbable aplomb received and began to dry the wet clothes he had taken off. Miller reviewed these proceedings with unqualified amazement. Offered no key to the position, he proceeded to probe for one.
"Your reverence has voyaged far?" he hazarded.
"More miles than I care to remember, Signor," said the other, courteously. "But ever, alas, in a circle. My peregrinations have been bounded, ever since my ordination, by Naples on the north and Palermo or Messina in the south. I see much earth and sky and water, especially the latter, but I add nothing to geography. I am amphibious, that is all."
His "ordination"? The gleam of discovery woke in Miller's eyes. A priest, was it? But the presence of Aylmer and Miss Van Arlen—how was that to be explained? And how far had the newcomer gauged the situation.
"Your reverence finds in us unexpected additions to your flock," he said. "The population of Salicudi has increased since you last visited it."
"To my very natural satisfaction," said Sigismondi, imperturbably. He looked at the steaming bowl of polenta and the coffee-pot which Luigi had set upon the table. Emmanuele came in, wrapped in a sheepskin coat and grinning at the food expectantly. His master greeted him with a nod. "It appears that we are to feast and feast alone, my son," he said. "These friends of ours insist on having dined two hours ago. May the Blessed bless to us this refreshment."
He seated himself and began to eat slowly, but with relish.
"Heat is a great tonic," he remarked reflectively. "The contents of this bowl and, above all, of this admirable coffee-pot, will erase the remembrance of the discomforts of the night. And then sleep, but not too much of it. Luigi, my friend, we must be off at dawn."
The smuggler's eyebrows rose into arcs.
"How, Reverence?" he exclaimed. "At dawn, and whither, if you please?"
"By way of Celsa, where an infant awaits baptism—and my friends, I dare to hope, will excuse the short delay—to Messina. Where else, my good Luigi? That surely is the place where your guests can most conveniently adjust their misunderstandings."
The smuggler shrugged his shoulders.
"I am at your service, father," he said, and looked vacantly at the opposite wall. But the tail of his eye, Aylmer noted, was on Landon. Was there a message, or inquiry, in it?
"All of us," said Landon, smoothly, "must find your proposition a very practical one. May I hasten to add my approval of it?"
He looked smilingly at Aylmer, at Claire, lastly at Muhammed. The Moor—was it Aylmer's fancy?—answered with a tiny nod. There was sarcasm in this glance of Landon's; there was menace; there was—so Aylmer told himself—malignant triumph.
Padre Sigismondi nodded absently. He presented his coffee-cup to the Moor to be refilled, and as the brown liquid ran from the spout, watched it with a slow, stolid abstraction. His mental alertness seemed to be relaxing with physical refreshment. He offered no further remarks; he plied his spoon upon the polenta slowly, and yet more slowly.
Suddenly Emmanuele, the sailor, dropped his cup in the act of taking a more than usually copious draught. He looked stupidly at the coarse crockery as it broke upon the floor.
Sigismondi shook a finger at him, a finger which, somehow, he seemed to have under no proper command. "Careless one!" he mumbled. "Careless one! Where are your manners?" And then, suddenly, as if he heaved back a weight, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He threatened Luigi with his clenched fist.
"Traitorous dog!" he cried, and fell senseless to the floor.
His companion stared at him stupidly, plunged forward as if to bring him aid, and then fell, too, at his feet. The pair lay where they had fallen, unmoving.
At the back of the room Landon broke out into pleasant laughter.
Aylmer darted forward and bent to shake Sigismondi fiercely by the shoulder. Claire cried to him warningly.
Too late!
Landon and Luigi had flung themselves upon him from behind. Muhammed had dropped a looped cord across his shoulders. There was a moment's confusion—the corner of the table smashed under a chance blow—and then stillness. Lashed with cords into rigidity, Aylmer lay upon the planks, and Landon, gazing down, spat upon his upturned face.
"You clever fool!" he derided. "To think to have cornered me—me!"
He looked rapidly at his watch and turned to Luigi.
"It is five hours to dawn," he said. "Where is it we are to take them? There is no possibility for delay?"
The smuggler threw out his hands with an air of fatalism.
"The headquarters of the Society—there is no other place!" he said. "With this wind, four hours or less will see us there. They will charge a commission; you will have to bear with that. But we shall have perfect privacy and, if you will, perfected means of dealing with this man's obstinacy. And there will be adepts, who will give you their assistance for the pleasure of the thing."
Landon nodded.
"Do you hear, my friend, do you hear?" he cried, thrusting his foot against Aylmer's cheek. "You have wriggled well in my coils—I grant you that. You have twisted and, for the moment, escape seemed open—wide open—before you. But against me? No one prevails there, no one!"
"One may—yet."
The voice was Claire's. Landon wheeled towards her.
"That shows a very determined optimism, sister-in-law," he said. "And who, if the knowledge is not privileged?"
"God," she said quietly, and met his eyes unflinchingly.
Storm, darkness, despair—these had been the sole comrades for the two who lay bound in their old quarters in theSanta Margarita'slazaret. Within a few minutes of the moment in which Padre Sigismondi had succumbed to the islander's treacherous hospitality, those who had sought his protection had been prisoners once more, and the felucca's mast had been stepped anew. For three hours it had bent before the strength of the northern wind—the hot, oppressive breath which seemed to blow no longer from Nature's lips but in her very face. For it was an unnatural wind—in temperature, in the quarter from which it came, in dampness. The rigging slackened in the humid gusts, but the great sail bellied out magnificently. They had torn across the broad waste of waters at racing speed. Captain Luigi announced with legitimate pride that they had come a matter of five and fifty kilometres. The land loomed up before them mountainously a short five miles away.
Landon peered into the darkness. Lights shone far to the left of their position—lights in rows, lights white, lights dusky orange, and far beyond the main mass of the illumination one red star which winked in solemn intervals.
"Messina," explained Luigi, tersely. "The red beam? That is the Faro."
"And we land where?" asked Landon.
"Here, if the Holy Mother gives us her protection," said the skipper, and pointed straight ahead. "In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred there is no difficulty about it. The port police—there are three of them—are cousins of my own and, it is needless to say, controlled by the Society. In fifteen minutes you will see."
"The hundredth chance?" said Landon. "That is—?"
"The Carbineers, Signor. Or rather one Carbineer—Sergeant Pinale, who has been at the bottom of many an honest contrabandist's misfortune.Brutta bestia!He will not keep to any ordered sequence in his goings and comings. But the men of the Society will know. If they answer our signals, all is well."
Landon looked at him debatingly.
"Who is to answer signals at this hour of the night, my good Luigi? Your colleagues will be in their more or less virtuous beds."
The smuggler smiled a superior smile.
"The Society never sleeps, Signor, and it has trained the men in its ranks to remember as much. High on the blank wall of hill above the port is a watch-tower, though only a private dwelling-house to all seeming. There is a need for the sons of the Mafia to have an open door into Sicily at any moment of the day or night."
He called one of the hands to the tiller as he finished speaking and went forward. He came back, holding a ship's lantern. There were wings of glass on hinges on either side of it—one red, one green.
He knelt and busied himself in lighting it in the shelter of the companion. The breeze had driven them right in under the shadow of the land by now. The steep above the shore seemed almost to overhang them. Here and there a faint oil lamp flickered along the Marina; a larger, nearer, and brighter gleam was evidence of a tiny jetty which was washed by waves which were dwindling under the protection of the land.
Luigi lifted his lamp and held it clear of the companion. Rapidly he shut the green shield over the untinted glass, as rapidly opened it again, shut the red wing twice in quick succession, and finally left the green signal closed.
Landon's eyes probed the darkness. His companion stood silent, his face raised towards the hill. There was no apprehension in his attitude, only expectancy.
Quite suddenly it seemed that the wind had dropped. The shelter of the shore might account for this in part, Landon mused, but surely not altogether. It was weird, in a sense, this abrupt alternation to perfect stillness after the uproars of the outer seas, but it was not unpleasant. It gave one a sense of relaxation; but the heat, untempered by the faintest breath of air, was incredibly oppressive. December was aping the temperatures of August.
Luigi sighed contentedly and spoke.
"All is well, Signor. It remains to get our merchandise ashore."
Landon became aware of a blue speck of light in the darkness—a speck which wavered, grew to a suddenly unexpected point of brightness and disappeared. So quickly did it come and go, so evanescent was its effect, that none but those who searched for it would have been likely to give its appearance a second thought. It might have been caused by the passing of a candle behind one of the many panes of frosted glass which disfigure Italian villas invilleggiatura.
Luigi gave an order. The two deck hands clutched the halliards. The sail was lowered. A moment later the anchor set the ripples herding towards the shore as it plunged into the calm below the jetty. Landon and his companion descended to the cabin.
Stretched on a bunk was Miller, sleeping the sleep of the justly tired. He roused himself at their touch and sat up. He looked about him meditatively.
"The wind has dropped, absolutely?" he said. "Since when?"
"Half an hour ago. We are in port," said Landon. "We are ready to land, when you will."
The gray man smoothed the creases in his gray coat.
"WhenIwill?" he repeated. "I am a prisoner—the captive of your bow and spear." He smiled with sombre sarcasm.
"That position is to be maintained?" asked Landon.
"Naturally. Your cousin may make my continued residence in Gibraltar well-nigh impossible, otherwise."
"My cousin?" Landon repeated the words with a certain doubtfulness. "He is my cousin," he said slowly, "and we sha'n't break one of his blood except in one way. It's the girl, remember, that is our strong suit. There's to be no bleating about that. To win, the trick has to be taken with her alone."
Miller nodded woodenly.
"If I had the inclination to interfere, I have not the power," he said. "Do you forget that I am a prisoner, like herself?"
"Yes," said Landon, and there was more than doubt in his expression this time, there was suspicion. "I forget it all the time. I want your assurance thatyouwon't!"
Miller made a gesture of assent.
"Let's get on," he said. "I understand that it's within a couple of hours of dawn."
For an instant Landon hesitated. Then, with Luigi at his heels, he entered the lazaret. Neither of them spoke. They bent and lifted Aylmer methodically, holding him by his shoulders and his lashed ankles. They bore him on deck. They gagged him with the cork float of a fishing-net and left him, stark and motionless as a log. They turned back to the cabin, and a minute later placed Claire Van Arlen beside him, as helpless as himself.
The dingy—a new one, picked up in the island—was lowered. The prisoners were thrust beneath the seats. A deck hand and Muhammed took their places at the oars. Luigi steered; the child, half asleep and wrapped in a blanket, drowsed at his feet. Miller and Landon sat on the thwarts.
The two rowers dipped their oars without splashing in long, slow strokes. The thole-pins were muffled with rags. The boat stole along in the shadow of the jetty into the darkness which hid the port. It was noiseless, ghost-like, this entry into the little haven. To the two dumb prisoners who lay along the bottom of the boat it was ominous of hope entirely lost.
They stifled under the cloaks which hid them; the perspiration dripped from the rowers, despite the unhurried nature of their work. The weight of a dozen atmospheres seemed to have replaced the exhilarating breath which Sicily flings seaward from her sun-brimmed shores. Luigi, at the helm, gasped and passed his hand across his eyes.
"Thunder in December! Not natural, Signor, but that is what we must expect. I suffocate.Per Dio!The bay is an oven."
He let the prow nose in towards the jetty. Moored boats began to appear dimly, right and left of them. The lamplight from the Marina showed an empty quay. Luigi steered for the shadow cast by a shed, and took the ground silently on a strand of mud and garbage.
The deck hand drew in his oar and skipped nimbly ashore. Muhammed followed him. They both laid their hands upon the painter. They bent their backs to haul.
Two shadows appeared right and left of them, shadows which seemed to have detached themselves from the framework of the shed. Something clicked. A yellow beam flared out, full on Luigi's face.
He gasped, he yelled.
"God's Mother—the Carbineers!"