Stern shifted his course to southwest by west, and for some minutes held it true, so that the needle hardly trembled on the compass dial.
Then all at once he, too, saw the welcome signal, a tiniest pin-prick of light far on the edge of the world, no different from the sixth-magnitude stars that hung just above it on the horizon, save for its redness.
A gush of gratitude and love welled in the fountains of his heart.
“Home!” he whispered. “Home--for where you are that's home to me! Oh, Beatrice, I'm coming--coming home to you!”
Slowly at first, then with greater and ever greater swiftness, the signal star crept nearer; and now even the flames were visible, and now behind them he caught dim sight of the rock-wall.
On and on, a very vulture of the upper air, planed the Pauillac. Stern shouted with all his strength. The girl might possibly hear him and might come out of their cave. She might even signal--and the nearness of her presence mounted upon him like a heady wine.
He swung the searchlight on the cañon, as they swept above it. He flung the pencil of radiance in a wide sweep up the cliff and down along the terrace.
It gave no sight, no sign of Beatrice.
“Sleeping, of course,” he reflected.
And now, Hope River past, and the cañon swallowed by the dense forest, he flung his light once more ahead. With it he felt out the rocky barrens for a landing-place.