Even Constance yielded to the common terror once when the men of the watch escorted the bearer of a tray-load of provisions to the occupants of the coal-cellar.
"Enid," she whispered, "did you see the light in their eyes? What is it? Does hunger look that way?"
"It must be so, yet it is almost unbelievable. They are far removed from real starvation."
"One would think so. But it is so hard to realize things beforehand. And they have nothing to do. They are brooding all the time. We are slaves to our imagination. Many a sick person is allowed to eat far less than these men have been given, and the deprivation is not felt at all."
"What will become of us, Constance, if we are detained here for many days."
"Dear one, do not ask me. We must not think of such things."
"But dad is thinking of them. I watched his face when I took him a scrap of food just now, and—"
"Hush, dear. Let us pray—and hope."
There was a clatter of feet down the iron stairs. The men of the watch were hustling to unbar the iron door. A solidly built, circular raft had been lowered from the Trinity tender.
An assistant-keeper, wearing a cork jacket, with a rope about his waist, was clinging to a stumpy mast in the centre. Two stout guide-ropes were manipulated from the deck of the vessel, and the flat, unwieldly mass of timber was slowly drifting nearer to the lighthouse with the tide.