What would to-morrow bring? Shadow Varne! It was literally a death sentence, wasn't it?—unless he could close forever those bawling lips! He felt the grey come creeping into his face. He, who laughed at fear, who had laughed at it all his life, save through that one night on board the ship, was beginning to fight over again his battle for composure. Shadow Varne! Shadow Varne! Hell itself seemed striving to shake his nerve.
Well, neither hell nor anything else could do it! There were those who had learned that to their cost! And, it seemed, there was another now who was yet to learn it! His teeth clamped suddenly together in a vicious snap, and suddenly he was on his feet. Faintly there came the rustle of foliage—it came again. He could not place its direction at first. It might be an animal. No! The rustling ceased. Some one was running now on the road in the direction of the dock—but a long way off.
He lunged and tore his way through trees and undergrowth, and broke into the clear of the road. He raced madly along it. He could see nothing ahead because of those infernal moon-flecked turnings that he had been fool enough to rave over on his way to the house. Nothing! He drew up for a second and listened. Nothing! He spurted on again. A game of blindman's-buff—and he was blindfolded!
He came out into the clearing with the dock in sight. Again he stopped and listened. Still nothing!
His lips tightened. It was futile. He would only be playing the fool to grope further around in the darkness in what now could be but the most aimless fashion, robbed even of a single possible objective. He could not search the island! There was nothing left to do but go on board.
He started out along the dock—and then suddenly, as his eyes narrowed, his stride became nonchalant, debonair. He fell to whistling softly a catchy air from a recent musical comedy. Runnells had not gone to bed. Runnells was stretched out on his back on the deck of the yacht smoking a pipe, his head propped up on a coil of rope.
Captain Francis Newcombe dropped lightly from the wharf to the deck.
"Hello, Runnells," he observed, as he halted in front of the other, "the artistry of the night got you, too? Well, I must say, it's too fine to waste all of it at any rate in sleep."
"You're bloody well right, it is!" said Runnells. "Strike me pink, if it ain't! I've heard of these here places from the time I was born, but I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't laid here smoking my pipe and saying to myself, this here's you, Runnells, and that there's it. London! I can do without London for a bit!"
"Quite so!" said Captain Francis Newcombe. He leaned over and ran his fingers along the sole of Runnells' upturned boot.