He could see all the cave in which he lay—the height and the length and the breadth of it. The light was so dim that it hardly amounted to more than normal darkness, but after the appalling blind blackness in which he had wandered for so many hours it was as startling a contrast as the rising of the sun after night. Almost sobbing with thankfulness, he dragged himself to his feet and went reeling on. There was another bend about fifty yards ahead, and at that corner it seemed as if the light was a little stronger. He reached the angle of rock and stumbled round it in a torment of apprehension lest after all he should have been deceived. But before him lay a short stretch of widening cave, and at the end of that showed a great rough-hewn opening. And through that opening he saw the blessed sky—an infinitely deep and clean blue evening sky sprinkled with merry, winking stars.
Somehow he reached the opening and saw all the glory of the radiant night, the jewelled heavens above and the quiet sea below. He stood and gazed, supremely happy, marvelling at all these things as a man might do who had seen none of them before and would see none of them again.
“Oh, God!” said the Saint in a breathless whisper.
Then he sagged limply against the wall and slid down to the ground in a dead faint.
It was three hours before he opened his eyes again, though this the Saint did not know. He had fallen in the entrance of the cave, and he was awakened by the light of the rising moon shining across his face. Slowly he opened his eyes and gazed unwinkingly into the round white luminous disc that was heaving itself out of the sea. A memory of the nightmare of blindness through which he had passed seethed horribly across his half-consciousness, and he sprang up with a cry. The movement roused him completely, and he found himself leaning against the wall with his heart thudding like a trip-hammer and his breath coming in short gasps. He smiled crookedly, collecting himself. He must have had it badly! Never before had he passed out like that.
He waited, gathering his wits and trampling the aftermath of the nightmare. It was then that he looked at his watch and found that it was half-past eleven. The rest had revived him—the crazy muzziness had gone from his head, and he felt his strength welling back in great refreshing waves. Elbows and knees were grazed and sore, his knuckles were skinned, tender bumps were coming up all over his skull, and his entire body throbbed like one big bruise, but this was where his strenuous training stood him in good stead: so great were the recuperative powers of his matchless constitution that already he was stretching his limbs experimentally to see whether he could honestly certify himself fit and tuned up for the next round.
And gradually the awareness of a singular noise began to percolate his brain, and that noise was the faint, clanking, chugging noise of machinery. He stiffened, and turned his head. The sound faded away into silence, and he wondered if his ears were playing him tricks and he was hearing nothing but the singing of his own battered cranium. Then that gentle rattling started up again—only the muffled phantom of a bated whisper of a noise, but quite unmistakable to the Saint.
He looked out, and blinked incredulously.
The island called the Old House lay in the quiet sea below. A little further out a long, lean, black shape rode at anchor, picked out in delicately stippled high-lights where the moon touched it—a picture to rejoice the heart of an artist or a seaman. And presently, while Simon watched, the tinkle of the engine stopped again. In a moment a small boat shot out from under the shadow of the ship’s hull and began to pull swiftly over to the island; and at the same time another boat emerged from behind the Old House and worked over towards the motor ship. The boat which came from the island wallowed low in the water and moved sluggishly; the Saint could see a squat pile of crates loaded amidships. The night was so still that his keen hearing could even detect the faint jar of the rowlocks.