A glance at his face showed that her protests would have been useless and she went below to her own stateroom, the door of which was locked upon her. Through the heavy glass of her port-hole she saw the vessel approach until within hailing distance when a boat dropped from her side into which a boat’s crew and an officer clambered and rowed alongside. The vessel bore no flag, but the girl clearly heard the hail of the boarding officer and realized that the destroyer was an English vessel. Her hopes rose. Perhaps even now the Englishman would find something irregular in the yacht’s papers and would take charge, conveying her back to England. She waited for a long time and then heard the clatter of oars and saw the boat push off from the side of the yacht, while the officer, young, slender and windburned, stood up in the stern sheets of his boat.
“All right,” she heard him say, “sorry to have troubled you. Pleasant voyage. Good-by.”
Never had English sounded so good to her. But it was with a sigh of despair that she saw the boat reach the side of the war vessel and felt the steadily increasing rhythm of the engines of the yacht as she drove once more upon her way.
When the two vessels were at a distance from each other the key turned in the lock of the door and in reply to a knock, she found John Rizzio himself, standing hat in hand in the gangway.
“I seem to be in a continual state of apology. But of course you realize the necessity for my action.”
“I am in your power,” she said helplessly.
“I hope you will believe that I shall not abuse it.”
She shrugged her shoulders and followed him to luncheon, managing to preserve at table a cheerfulness which she was far from feeling. Throughout the morning she had been thinking hard. And the only course that was open to her if her courage did not fail was the one that she was following. If she was to be able in any way to help Cyril, she must try to learn what she could, accept the situation with good grace and perhaps by some turn of good fortune find a way to disarm John Rizzio and profit by an inadvertence or mistake. But as the second day wore on she found her task increasingly difficult. At luncheon Mr. Rizzio was more reserved and during the afternoon as they approached waters in which German warships were more likely to be found he spent much time in the wireless room, where a repetition of the crackling noises advised her that he was again in communication with the land of her enemies.
After dinner, at which Rizzio had been very quiet, he requested politely that she go at once to her cabin, which she did to hear the sound of the key again turned in the lock of her door. Despair came over her and at last she cried herself to sleep, awakening during the night at the glare of a searchlight which pierced her window port. She got up and looked out to see a dark bulk looming alongside, the flashing of lanterns, and heard the sound of voices speaking German. At last all was quiet again, and the steady hammer of the vessel’s propeller told her that the Sylph was again on her way.
She must have slept again, for the silver of dawn was already modifying the gloom of her cabin when there was a knock upon her door and she rose. The stewardess fully dressed was outside.