"Whatever can have happened?" said Estelle helplessly. "I can't think.
Did he have any money?"
"Why, perhaps a few pence, not much anyway," replied Mrs. Thayne. "You think he went into St. Helier's and had to walk back? That's possible. Fran, it's not storming so hard now. Put on your rain-coat and run out to the end of the terrace. Perhaps with the field-glasses you can make out whether he is coming down the beach or is anywhere in sight."
Frances returned with the report that there was practically no beach, owing to the high tide, and no foot-farers on the narrow strip that was visible in the fog.
Neither Estelle nor Mrs. Thayne knew what was best to do. Estelle suggested the police and then the rector, but neither seemed to Mrs. Thayne likely to offer a solution.
"We will wait a while," she said with an anxious glance at the clock just striking two. "Don't do or say anything to let Win think I am worried, Fran. Let me take your coat. I'll go down to the beach myself. I really think that Roger should be punished for causing us such anxiety."
Had his mother only known, Roger was already enduring considerable self-inflicted penance for getting into a predicament which made it impossible for him to return.
Delivering Estelle's message at a cottage by the shore had taken but a few moments and with most of the morning before him, Roger set out along the beach, glorying in the force of wind and rain. True, there were lessons to be prepared for Bill Fish, who would come cheerfully swimming in at the appointed hour, but there was surely time for a stroll toward Noirmont Point.
The tide was far out and wet hard sand stretched in every direction, very pleasing to stamp over, and retaining little trace of any footprint. Only gray gulls and drifting fog banks distinguished the immediate surroundings.
As Roger tramped on, he noticed that the fog grew steadily thicker and that his path included occasional seaweed-covered rocks, but not until a black mass loomed up before him, did he realize that he had left the true beach and was walking straight out to sea. The bulk he had encountered was not the martello tower on Noirmont Point but the old castle of St. Aubin's, at high tide an island in the bay.
No thought of any danger in his position struck Roger. He had always intended to investigate that island but somehow had never yet done so. Here it lay before him.