Peace after the storm! Ay, in so far that the tempest fiend has vanished, leaving behind him only the low moan of the dying gale. High above the heights which look down on Eilean Fianan, Tiorin’s ruins, and the lovely woods of Shona’s Isle, hover the cloud mists of rising morn, through whose seemingly tissue veil glint and gleam the joyous sparks, fantastic offspring of the new-born sun.
Its light, too, is warming those heights with a rosy glow, and the thick dark woods are pierced with its golden shafts. Like myriad diamonds sparkle the raindrops on the pines, and the dew on the glades and fairy rings, where elfin goblins have held their midnight orgies.
Yet the gale has left its after-birth in the rolling swell, which beats in relentless fury on the rock-girt coast of Shona’s Isle, and lashes the sandy stretch of beach between Ardtoe and Ru Druimnich. High tide is rising on those shores, an inland current has set in, and in its grasp are the trophies of the storm-fiend’s victory over the handiwork of man.
What are these trophies? Why, here and there a spar, a tossing barrel, a broken oar. There is something floating, too, on the heaving swell with which the waves are making merry, for they carry it to the sandy beach and drag it back again, toss it still further inland, and smother it in their spray.
It is a choice plaything; the salt sea waves are battling for it hard, but the tide and the inland current say them nay, and the sandy beach gives it a rugged welcome. There for a time it may rest.
It! But what may it be? A human body, surely?
Out in the bay the yacht Eilean is coasting up and down. Eager eyes are scanning the waste of water, and every sign of wreckage is minutely observed. Ever and anon the voices of the men aloft shout down some new discovery to the anxious watchers on the deck below. There is a look of intense agony in the eyes of the young Duke of Ravensdale as he paces that snow-white deck. His features are drawn and haggard, his cheeks are deathly pale, and the lines of care have seared their mark indelibly across his high and noble brow.
“Wreckage ahoy!” The men on the look out have spied another victim of the gale which the inland current is drawing to Ardnamurchan’s shores. What can it be? It looks like the back of a whale, or a huge porpoise turning over in its course. What can it be?
The Eilean steams towards it, and comes close up alongside it. No, it is no whale. Only the remnant of a fishing smack, part of which appears to have been bodily severed from the whole.
The sharp order to man the lifeboat cutter is given. In a few minutes it is riding the heaving swell. All eyes are occupied with this new discovery; even the look-out men have forgotten their duty aloft. Suddenly, however, Flora Desmond’s voice rings out. She has been keeping silent, faithful watch by Evie Ravensdale.