For a moment he stared without seeing anything, and then a slight rustling in a far corner diverted his attention. He looked sharply and saw a woman rise from a lounge and come toward him with outstretched hands.
She was Elsa Mallaby!
CHAPTER XXIV
THE SIREN
He saw the glad smile on her lips, the light in her great, lustrous, dark eyes, and the beauty of her faultless body, and yet they all faded to nothing beside the astounding and inexplicable fact that she was in the mystery schooner.
“You here!” he gasped, taking her hands in his big rough ones and gripping them tight. The impulse to draw her to him in an embrace was almost irresistible, for not only was she lovely in the extreme, but she was from Freekirk Head and home, and his soul had been starved with loneliness and the ceaseless repetition of his own thoughts.
“Yes,” she replied in her gentle voice, “I am here. You are surprised?”
“That hardly expresses it,” he returned. “So many things have happened to-day that I expect anything now.”