e said.

Saltash's smile leapt out again. "Oh, it's all right, is it? I am to have
a free pardon then for boosting you over your last fence?"

Again Dick's eyes came to him, and a very faint, remote smile shone in
them for an instant in answer. Then, very steadily, without a word, he
held out his hand.

Saltash's came to meet it. They looked each other again in the eyes--but
with a difference. Then Saltash began to laugh.

"Go to her, my cavalier! You'll find her--waiting--on the _Night Moth_."

"Waiting?" Dick said.

"For Columbus," said Saltash with his most derisive grin, and tossed
Dick's hand away.

CHAPTER X

THE LAST FENCE

A chill breeze sprang up in the dark of the early morning and blew the
drifting fog away. The stars came out one by one till the whole sky shone
and quivered as if it had been pricked by a million glittering
spear-points. The tide turned with a swelling sound that was like a vast
harmony, formless, without melody, immense. And in the state-cabin of the
_Night Moth_, the woman who had knelt for hours by the velvet couch
lifted her face to the open port-hole and shivered.

She had cast her hat down beside her, and the cold night-wind that yet
had a faint hint of the dawn in it ruffled the soft hair about her
temples. Her face was dead-white, drawn with unspeakable weariness, with
piteous lines about the eyes that only long watching can bring. She
looked hopeless, beaten.

The shaded light that gleamed down upon her from the cabin-roof seemed
somehow to hurt her, for after a second or two she leaned to one side
without rising from her knees and switched it off. Then with her hands
tightly clasped, she gazed out over the dim, starlit sea. The mystery of
it, the calm, the purity, closed round her like a dream. She gazed forth
into the great waste of rippling waters, her chin upon her hands.

Softly the yacht lifted and sank again to the gentle swell. The wild
waves of a few hours before had sunk away. It was a world at peace. But
there was no peace in the eyes that dwelt upon that wonderful night
scene. They were still with the stillness of despair.

The cold air blew round her and again she shivered as one chilled to the
heart, but she made no move to pick up the cloak that had fallen from her
shoulders. She only knelt there with her face to the sea, staring out in
dumb misery as one in whom all hope is quenched.

From somewhere on shore there came the sound of a clock str