She waved her hand toward the signal-station, and he understood, and turned that way. Another signal had been added.
“Yes,” said Iona. “Pierre has returned home, and Alexander gone to the station, against the rules. Pierre has sometimes severe attacks of sickness, and he feels them coming on. But why did not they call one of the men from inside, and send him to the station?”
She was talking to herself. Tacita glanced up the hill, and saw Dylar standing on his terrace watching intently the signals. They changed again. The strangers were at the Pines, and the men from San Salvador were not there.
Without a word, Iona hastened down and went to the Arcade. Half way across the town she turned to look again. The whole situation was signaled now. The torrent was off, the door unbarred, the men out of sight and hearing, and three strangers were at the Pines.
“Impossible!” she exclaimed, and began to run.
When Dylar reached his house and read the signals, which had been hidden from him as he came down, he looked across and saw Iona coming out on to the mountain path above the Arcade. This road ran for half a mile along the rock in sight of the town. Then it turned backward and out of sight, joining the road from the Pines, and that lower one by which Tacita had come to San Salvador. Near this junction of the roads was the water-gate by which the torrent was turned.
“Impossible!” Dylar also had exclaimed on reading the signals. To escape for almost three hundred years, and fall to-day! So many accidents and incidents, so many items of neglect coinciding to form a crime and a supreme calamity, were incredible! It was impossible that accident could do so much. A vision of treachery rose before his mind.
He ran down to the town where people were gathering on the housetops and in the streets. He called for two of the swiftest runners and climbers to follow Iona to the water-gate; and they sprang out like greyhounds. It was useless for him to go. There was nothing to be done but turn the torrent on again. He stood silent and white, watching with a stern face the signals, and glancing across the town to the mountain path along which moved Iona’s flying feet.
The people gathered about him; but no one spoke. A vague alarm, mingled with, or alternating with incredulity, showed in every face.
The gate was turned by a beam acting as windlass, and two men were always sent to turn it on at the Pines. It was less difficult than to turn it off; for when the beam was once started, and the water got a wedge in, it carried the gate round of itself.