Ten minutes passed while the sea crooned, beat upon slow beat of her everlasting music under the cliffs; and the clock against the wall throbbed out the seconds.
Lancaster answered the doctor's whispered questions, and the woman sat rigid by the table where glowing heaps of fruit, strewn lilies, and cut glass cast their reflections on black polished oak.
The ticking of the clock became so unbearable that at last Mistress Sarah, in feverish irritation, swept across the room, wrenched it down from the wall, and threw it out of the window. The thing fell and fell, but there was no answering from the sea, which still by beat and beat crooned the slow song of times past and present and to come, eternity unto eternity.
"Mistress Brand," said the doctor; "if this man sleeps he will live—if he wakes he dies."
"Would he wake if I moved him?"
"No—nothing would wake him short of an electric battery."
The aerograph began to speak again.
"What shall I do, sir?"
"Destroy the Golden Hind," clicked the slow signals.
"You must be ill, sir," flashed the swift reply. "Remember her power, her size, her speed. The Lion can neither fight nor run."