The shouts had ceased.
'They may be drowned,' she said, with her lips pressed tightly together. 'I hear nothing now. Have you the rope and the lifeboat ready? We must wait for more light.'
At that moment the whole of the tar caught, and the beacon blazed at its fiercest in its iron cage, as it had used to blaze in the ages gone by as a war signal, when the Prelates of Salzburg and Birchtesgaden were marching across the marshes of Pinzgau in quarrel or feud with the lords of the strongest fortress in the Hohe Tauern.
In the struggling light which met the blue glance of the lightning they could see the angry waters of the lake as far as the Holy Isle, and near to land, only his head above the water, was a man drowning, as the pilgrims had drowned.
'For the love of God—the rope!' she cried, and almost before the words had escaped from her her men had thrown a lifebuoy to the exhausted swimmer, and pushed one of the boats into the seething darkness of the lake. But the swimmer had strength enough to catch hold of the buoy as it was hurled to him by the fischermeister's unerring hand, and he clung to it and kept his grasp on it, despite the raging of the wind and waters, until the boat reached him. He was fifty yards off the shore, and he was pulled into the little vessel, which was tossed to and fro upon the black waters like a shell; the fohn was blowing fiercely all the time, and flung the men headlong on the boat's bottom twice ere they could seize the swimmer, who helped himself, for, though mute; and almost breathless, he was not insensible, and had not lost all his strength. If he had not been so near the land he and the boat's crew would all have sunk, and dead bodies would once more have been washed on the shore of the Szalrassee with the dawn of another day.
Drenched, choked with water, and thrown from side to side as the wind played with them as a child with its ball, the men ran their boat at last against the stairs, and landed with their prize.
Dripping from head to foot, and drawing deep breaths of exhaustion, the rescued man stood on the terrace steps bareheaded and in his shirt-sleeves, his brown velvet breeches pulled up to his knees, his fair hair lifted by the wind, and soaked with wet.
She recognised the trespasser of the forest.
'Madame, behold me in your power again!' he said, with a little smile, though he breathed with labour, and his voice was breathless and low.
'You are welcome, sir. Any stranger or friend would be welcome in such a night,' she said, with the red glow of the beacon light shed upon her. 'Pray do not waste breath or time in courtesies. Come up the steps and hurry to the house. You must be faint and bruised.'