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 the Santa Margarita as 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?"