They strode on into the darkness, with eyes and ears alert. They heard the battling of the waves against the stones of the tiny pier, but what they did not hear was the sound of singing cordage in the felucca's rigging.
Aylmer halted with a sudden, muffled exclamation.
"They have unshipped the mast!" he cried sharply, and this time she recognized, even in his voice, the note of defeat.
She echoed his exclamation; she followed at his heels as he ran out upon the little breakwater. No, there had been no room for mistake. The great mast with its cross spar lay along the stone flags. The hull was snugly berthed alongside it, within the tiny harbor. The dingy? There was none; they had cast it loose when they fled from the torpedo boat through the island channel.
For a moment he did not speak. He stood, looking silently at the dismantled boat, the raging sea, the swinging lights of a passing steamer. Then he turned and shook his head.
"To step that mast into place again is beyond one man's strength," he said. "To fling ourselves out into that whirl on a mastless hull is to court death inevitably. What is the alternative? We could stand in front of the shed here, screened from view inland, and signal some passing vessel with flares, if we had the means of making a light. That would not be a good chance, but it has possibilities."
"And I have matches!" she said eagerly. "I have my chatelaine still. I have even my purse yet. So far they have not robbed me."
He turned as she spoke and without comment ran back across the shingle. He began to pluck handfuls of the dry, bent grass which found a sparse livelihood in the belt of sand between the shore and the vineyards. He returned, rummaged among the litter around the shed, broke up some stray pieces of driftwood into chips, and thrust a lighted match among the bents. A flame shot up, passed from the tinder to the wood, and within a minute was a well-lit fire. He twisted the remaining handfuls of grass into spirals, wetted them slightly in the sea, and held them to the flame.
They burnt slowly with a red glow, as he swung them to and fro in the wind; in dashes, in dots, in circles, he spelled messages into the night, but no answering lantern or rocket came from the sea. And she watched apathetically. For her hope was dead again, the hand of Fate had closed. This was action; this helped them to avoid thinking, to avert anticipation, but success was a matter outside her calculations. The sense of nightmare closed down upon her again. The storm, the red flashes against the purple darkness, the wild unaccustomedness of everything heightened the illusion. But when would she wake? Ah, when would she wake?
And then—she rubbed her eyes. A light—surely this was no freak of her fevered eyesight?—danced into view within a couple of hundred yards of the shore. For a moment it swung to the lift and surge of the waves alone, but a moment later it rose half a dozen feet into the air, and flashed and circled as the charred torch in Aylmer's hand was circling—an answer to their message of despair. She gasped with eagerness; she cried aloud.