"Skaal, then," said both men raising their glasses and looking at Ragna, who half timidly raised hers to her lips, then put it down again—and Prince Mirko added under his breath as he drained his glass,
"And to your conversion, my dear."
On deck, a fresh breeze was blowing, and Ragna bound a long scarf over her head and wrapped her travelling-cloak well about her. Accompanied by the two men she paced briskly up and down the deck inhaling joyfully the strong sea air.
"Let us try the other side," she said presently, and they turned forward of the wheel-house: At the turn the wind caught the long ends of her scarf and wound them about the Prince's neck; they paused to disentangle the soft silken thing, Prince Mirko's hands delaying rather than hastening the process, when a lurch of the vessel flung Ragna against him. He steadied himself with one arm against the deck-house and with the other supported the girl, holding her firm young body close to his. He held her but a moment more than was needful, but in that moment, pressed close to him, his moustache brushing her cheek, she felt a repetition of the same thrill, half attraction, half fear, which had come over her the first time their eyes met. It was over in an instant and they were running down the deck before the wind, but Ragna felt a new and strange constraint upon her which did not wear off as the evening advanced.
She waited up long enough to see Heligoland rising up dark and forbidding on the starboard side in the half-light of the moon. The cloud-wrack behind, seemed like the wings of some monster bird of prey about to swoop down upon the island, crouching to repel the attack. As she watched, a cloud passed over the moon and a jagged line of lightning cleft the darkening mass on the horizon. The flash lasted but the fraction of a second, but she had seen a ship carrying full sail silhouetted against the storm-cloud. The ship stood out for an instant in wonderful relief, every spar and rope clear-cut against the sombre background, then was swallowed up into the night.
"It is Uncle Olaf," thought Ragna. "He has come to warn me—but of what?"
She turned to Angelescu, leaning on the rail beside her.
"Did you see the ship?"
"The ship! What ship? When?"
"Just over there, against that black cloud in the lightning flash."