The boat shot onward. Once, twice, three times, the oars dipped with precision. These rowers, who went with their backs turned to what might be instant death, were brave and stanch as he who looked it unflinchingly in the face.
"Heave!" roared Stanhope to the white-visaged second officer standing in the doorway far above him.
The rope whirred through the air, the boat rose still higher to meet it, and the coil struck Stanhope in the face, lashing him savagely in the final spite of the baffled gale which puny man had conquered.
Never was blow taken with such Christian charity.
"Back!" he cried, and the oarsmen, not knowing what had happened, bent against the tough blades. The tug's sailors at the drag, though the engines grinding at half speed were keeping them grandly against the race not more than a hundred and fifty yards in the rear, failed for an instant to understand what was going on. But their captain had seen the cast and read its significance.
"Haul away!" he bellowed in a voice of thunder, and, to cheer them on, added other words which showed that he was no landsman.
Stanhope deftly knotted the lighthouse line to the loop taken off his waist. He cast the joined cords overboard.
"Thank God!" he said, and he looked up at the great pillar already growing less in the distance.
Now, from the kitchen, owing to its height above sea level and the thickness of the wall pierced by the window, as soon as the boat came within fifty yards or so of the lighthouse, the girls could see it no longer.
When it dropped out of sight for the last time Constance could not endure the strain. Though her dry tongue clicked in her mouth she forced a despairing cry.