In silence he guided the boats back into the outer arcade, where a faint sheen of moonlight glistered on the water. Thence, in a few minutes, he oared that wherein he and Ynys sat, with the other fastened astern, into the open.
When the moonshine lay full on her face, he saw that she was thinking neither of him nor of where she was. Her eyes were heavy with dream.
What wind there was blew against their course, so Alan rowed unceasingly. In silence they passed once again the headland of Aoidhu; in silence they drifted past a single light gleaming in a croft near Aonaig—a red eye staring out into the shadow of the sea, from the room where the woman Marsail lay dying; and in silence their keels grided on the patch of shingle in Caisteal-Rhona haven.
But when, once more, Alan found himself with Ynys in the safe quietudes of the haven, he pressed her eagerly to give him some clear description of the figure she had seen.
Ynys, however, had become strangely reticent. All he could elicit from her was that the man whom she had seen bore no resemblance to him, except in so far as he was fair. He was taller, slimmer, and seemed older.
He thought it wiser not to speak to her on what he himself had seen, or concerning his conviction that it was the same mysterious stranger who had appeared to both.
[CHAPTER XIII]
THE MESSAGE