And so they stood alone in silence, forced into inaction, that most
cruel addition to suspense, by the darkness and the waters which
hemmed them in upon every side. The vision of twenty dangerous places
where one impetuous footfall might have hurled his darling into the
cruel beating waves painted themselves--a hideous phantasmagory--upon
Sir Adrian's brain. Had the merciless waters of the earth that had
murdered the mother, grasped at the child's life also? He raised his
voice in a wild cry, it seemed as if the wind caught it from him and
tore it into shreds.

"Hark!" whispered Rene, and clasped his master's icy hand. Like an
echo of Sir Adrian's cry, the far-off ring of a human voice had risen
from the sea.

Again it came.

"_C'est de la mer, Monseigneur!_" panted the man; even as he spoke the
darkness began to lift. Above their heads, unnoticed, the clouds had
been rifted apart beneath the breath of the north wind; the horizon
widened, a misty wing-like shape was suddenly visible against the
receding gloom.

The captain's ship! The _Peregrine_!

As master and man peered outward as if awaiting unconsciously some
imminent solution from the gliding spectre, it seemed as if the night
suddenly opened on the left to shoot forth a burst of red fire. A few
seconds later, the hollow boom of cannon shook the air around them.
Sir Adrian's nails were driven into Rene's hands.

The flaming messenger had carried to both minds an instant knowledge
of the new danger.

"Great Heavens!" muttered Adrian. "He will surrender; he must
surrender! He could not be so base, so wicked, as to fight and
endanger _her_!"

But the servant's keener sight, trained by long stormy nights of
watching, was following in its dwindling, mysterious course that misty
vision in which he thought to recognize the _Peregrine_.

"_Elle file, elle file joliment la goelette!_ Mother of Heaven, there
goes the gun again! I never thought my blood would turn to water only
to hear the sound of one like this. But your honour must not be
discouraged; he can surely trust the captain. Ah, the clouds--I can
see no more."

The wild blast gathering fresh droves of vapour from the huddled
masses on the horizon was now, in truth, herding them fiercely across
the spaces it had cleared a few moments before. Confused shouts,
strange clamour seemed to ring out across the waves to the listeners:
or it might have been only the triumphant howlings of the rising
storm.