Meroude rubbed pleadingly against her arm, and, glad of any living companionship, she put out her hand to touch him; but drew it back in dread, for his sur-charged fur sparkled and set her flesh a-tingle, while the whole room grew luminous with an uncanny radiance. Feeling that her own last hour had come, poor Angelique crouched still lower in her corner and began to say her prayers with so much earnestness that she became almost oblivious to the tornado without.
Meanwhile, by stooping and clinging to whatever support offered, Hugh Dutton made his slow way beachward. But the bushes uprooted in his clasp and the bowlders slipped by him on this new torrent rushing to the lake. Then he flung himself face downward and cautiously crawled toward the Point of Rocks whereon he meant to make his beacon fire.
“She will see it and steer by it,” he reflected; for he would not acknowledge how hopeless would be any human steering under such a stress.
Alas! the beacon would not light. The wind had turned icy cold and the rain changed to hail which hurled itself upon the tiny blaze and stifled its first breath. A sort of desperate patience fell on the man, and he began again, with utmost care, to build and shelter his little stock of firewood. Match after match he struck, and with unvarying failure, till all were gone; and realizing at last how chilled and rigid he was growing, he struggled to his feet and set them into motion.
Then there came a momentary lull in the storm and he shouted aloud, as Angelique had done:
“Margot! Little Margot! Margot!”
Another gust swept over the lake and island. He could hear the great trees falling in the forest, the bang, bang, bang, of the deafening thunder, as, blinded by lightning and overcome by exhaustion, he sank down behind the pile of rocks and knew no more.
CHAPTER II
SPIRIT OR MORTAL?
THE end of that great storm was almost as sudden as its beginning.
Aroused by the silence that succeeded the uproar, Angelique stood up and rubbed her limbs, stiff with long kneeling. The fire had gone out. Meroude was asleep on the blankets spread for Margot, who had not returned, nor the master. As for that matter, the house mistress had not expected that they ever would.