A moment passed, then came a second flash. And after that another.
Then, of a sudden, the girl started. She had spied a movement in the bushes close to her rock.
“Who—who’s there?” she demanded.
For the space of a second there came no answer. Then a voice said:
“Them is spruce trees. Dey go up in fire like dat—you have been dere—you have seen. Dey is burning yet. And dey will burn. Dey will burn de whole island. Oh, ya. Dese fires dey is bein’ set by somebody. Oh ya, dey iss.”
“Why?” the girl asked, almost in a whisper. “Why would anyone wish to set a forest fire on this beautiful island?”
There came no answer, only a movement in the brush. The speaker, whoever he might have been, was gone. A strange thrill ran up her spine.
But now the sound of distant music reached her ear, and, as she strained her eyes, she caught the gleam of a moving light. It was over the water.
“The yacht,” she thought. “It is coming.” Once again she settled herself comfortably on her rock to watch the boat’s light grow brighter and brighter, to catch the rise and fall of music that appeared to sway with the boat and at last to hear the deep, mysterious sound, the call of a boat in the night.
“How often,” she thought, “that haunting sound has come drifting in out of the night, the voice of a ship lost in the fog, or in distress on the rocks. But tonight,” once again she stood up to fling her arms wide, “Tonight it is a call of pure joy, a call to a grand good time on the deck of a beautiful yacht. But then I wonder,” she dropped back to her rock, to wonder some more.