“With the wind blowing towards us——” said Jasper, and broke off.
“Yes, yes—what?” asked Eileen, and then as he did not answer, she gripped his arm and repeated importunately. “What? Jasper, what? With the wind blowing towards us?”
“By God it is,” he said in a low voice, disregarding her question. “By God it is,” he repeated, and then a third time, “It is.”
“Oh! what, what? Do answer me! I can’t see!” pleaded Eileen.
But still he did not answer. He stood like a rock and stared without wavering at the growing cloud on the horizon.
And then the cloud began to grow more diffused, to die away, and Eileen could see tiny indentations on the sky line, indentations which pushed up and presently revealed themselves as attached to a little black speck in the remotest distance.
“Oh, Jasper!” she cried, and her eyes filled with inexplicable tears, so that she could see only a misty field of troubled blue.
“It’s a liner,” said Jasper at last, turning to her. He looked puzzled and his eyes stared through her. “And its coming from America. Do you suppose the American women——”
The boat was revealed now. They could see the shape of her, the high deck, the two tall funnels and the three masts. She was passing across, fifteen miles or so to the south of them, making up Channel.
For a moment they felt like shipwrecked sailors on a lonely island, who see a vessel pass beyond hail.