“Because you would never get the chance,” said Wylie, laughing in spite of himself. “His mother doesn’t let him out of her sight night or day. But I believe there’s something in your notion. Princess Theophanis has driven her husband to his ruin, but she doesn’t really want the family wiped out, though you might think it. When things get very black, I think it will be possible to induce her to escape, so as to save the child. Yes, and I see how it’s to be done. You know a place called Ephestilo, on the other coast—not the Skandalo side? There are two bays close together. One looks like an excellent harbour, but the cliffs rise sheer from the water’s edge, and there’s no path up them. Avoid that, and steer for the next bay, where there are pillars and things, ruins of a temple of some sort, and a fishing village. There’s a reef of rocks which only leaves room for one boat to enter at a time, but still there is room, and there’s a path down from the top of the cliffs. When things get to the worst, we’ll send away the ladies there by by-paths, and you can take them on board. Of course this is supposing that we are not surrounded. If we are, it’s good-bye, unless the monks have any secret passages.”
“Not likely in this part. But I’ll back you for getting the ladies out of the monastery somehow. You manage that, and we do the rest. We shall be patrolling both coasts to keep supplies from reaching you. By the bye, can’t you do anything to show us when we are wanted at Ephestilo? It would be rather bad not to be on the spot, in case the Roumis were after them.”
“We might light a beacon-fire, but it would be difficult to distinguish——”
“It would, with camp-fires all round. No, I know what’s far better—blue lights. I was going to smuggle a few books and papers on shore for the ladies,—to the care of your medical friend at Skandalo, of course,—and I’ll put in half a dozen blue lights in a box addressed to you. Then you can burn them at half-hour intervals on the monastery gateway, which has a clear view down to the sea, the night before your last stand, and we shall be ready the next day.”
“Right; and if we are unfortunately obliged to make our last stand without warning—why, that’s one of the accidents to which adventures of this kind are liable, and you will excuse notice.”
CHAPTER XII.
A BAPTISM OF FIRE.
The day after the visit to the fleet found Eirene a prey to nervous headache, and absolutely unable to leave her bed, the slightest sound, even the voice of her little son, intensifying the pain almost to the point of distraction. Zoe was frightened, fearing fever, and wished to entreat Admiral Essiter to abate his righteous wrath and allow the Magniloquent’s surgeon to come and see her; but Eirene, groaning on her uneasy couch—a mattress from the yacht laid upon a stone divan—forbade her to gratify the oppressor by so abject an appeal.
“It’s only because of yesterday,” she moaned. “The strain was awful.”
“Why? You don’t mean that Lieutenant Cotway tried to escape—when he was a hostage?”
“Of course not. He was telling Con stories and cutting out a boat for him all day—gave me no trouble whatever. But I had to think—if there was treachery—if you were not allowed to come back——”