"Indeed? Why?" asked the Commandant, absently.

"Why, to advertise the Lord Proprietor's disappearance, with a printed description of him!"

"Is that necessary? Surely by this time everyone in the Islands has heard the news; and, as for describing him——"

"It is the proper course to pursue," insisted Mr. Pope, who was something of a formalist; "in such—er—crises one should proceed regularly. Doubtless the Council, when called, will proclaim a reward."

"For what?" asked Doctor Bonaday.

Mr. Pope turned on him impatiently; but the Doctor's eyes, like the simpleton's in Scripture, were fixed on the ends of the earth. "Why, for the discovery of the body," said Mr. Pope.

"You might offer twenty rewards," said the Commandant. "You cannot make men work harder than they have worked to-night. Still, if you desire to summon the Council——"

"I am suggesting that you should do so."

"But I am no longer a member."

"On the contrary, as Governor, you are now its President."

The Commandant reflected for a moment. "True," he murmured, "I keep forgetting." Pulling himself together, with a shake of the shoulders, he turned again to Mr. Rogers.

"Mr. Rogers," said he, "you know better than I of how much fatigue your men are capable. For my part, I am returning to summon the Council of the Islands to meet me in the Court House at twelve o'clock noon, to summon volunteers and organize a general search. Your presence and advice will be of the greatest service to us; and as I see some fresh boats coming up the Sound, I submit that you leave them your instructions and draw off your tired crews to take what rest they need"

Mr. Rogers looked up sharply, surprised by the new ring of authority in the Commandant's voice. "Very well, sir," he answered, after a pause. "I shall be happy to attend the Council and concert measures with you. It occurs to me that the body may just possibly have been carried towards North Island on a back eddy, and with your leave I will tell the new-coming boats to seek in that direction."

"I thank you," said the Commandant, and at once gave the word to his own crew to pull for home. "And on our way," he added, "you shall land me for ten minutes at the East Porth, under Saaron Farm."

* * * * *

At the East Porth, where they found Eli Tregarthen's boat at her moorings off the grass-grown landing-quay, the Commandant stepped ashore. Mr. Pope offered to accompany him, but he declined, and went up the hill alone.

At the yard-gate he caught sight of Jan Nanjulian, faring forth with his pails to milk the cows; and, hailing him, demanded where he might find the farmer. Jan directed him to a line of furze-stacks at the back of the byres, and, turning the corner of these, he came face to face with Eli Tregarthen, who had loaded himself with a couple of faggots for the kitchen fire.

"Good morning!" said the Commandant.

"Ah? Good morning to you, sir," answered Tregarthen, clearly surprised, but showing no sign of guilt or confusion.

"You have heard the news?"

"No, sir."

"The Lord Proprietor is missing."

"Missing?" Tregarthen set down his faggots and stared at the Commandant.

"He has been missing since yesterday at dusk. I understand that you were in his company shortly before then, on Carn Coppa?"

"That is so, sir. I left him and Sam Leggo standing together there at the top of the field."

"A few minutes later he sent Leggo to the farmhouse to fetch a lantern. Leggo declares that on his way back he heard a gun fired."

Tregarthen nodded. "That's right. I heard the shot, too, and reckoned that the man had let fly at a rabbit. He carried a gun."

"You don't speak too respectfully of the Lord Proprietor, my friend."

"I speak as I think," answered Tregarthen, his brow darkening. "He was no friend to me or mine."

"I advise you very strongly to keep that sort of talk to yourself, at any rate for the present. To begin with, Sir Caesar is missing, and we have grave fear he will not be found again alive: so that it is not seemly. But, further, I must caution you that you parted from him using threats, and your threats have been reported."

"Turn me out of Saaron, he would—" began Tregarthen, but checked himself at the moment when passion seemed on the point of over-mastering him. "Well, sir, I didn't shoot him, if that's what they are telling," he added, quietly.

"I should be sorry, indeed, to suspect any such thing. But let me tell you the rest. Hearing the shot, Leggo made good speed back to Carn Coppa. His master had disappeared; but away to the left, near the edge of the cliffs, he saw three children running down the hill, and he declares that those children were yours."

Tregarthen put up a hand and rubbed the side of his head.

"My children?" he repeated. "I can't make this out at all, sir. What could my children be doing anywhere near Carn Coppa?"

"You had best ask them."

"No," said Tregarthen, picking up his faggots, "I never brought them up to be afraid of the truth. Come with me to the house, sir, and they shall tell what they know."

He led the way, and the Commandant followed him indoors to the kitchen, where they found Ruth stooping over the great hearth, already busy with the morning fire. Across the planching overhead sounded the patter of the children's bare feet.

In a couple of minutes they came running down together, laughing on their way, and the Commandant had to wonder again—as he had wondered before, on the afternoon when he had sailed them home from Merryman's Head—at their beautiful manners. They were neither shy, nor embarrassed. Indeed, it was the Commandant who felt embarrassment (and showed it) as he asked them to tell what had taken them to Piper's Hole, and what they had seen there.

"We saw a mermaid," answered Annet. "She was sitting on the rock outside the cove; and first she was singing to a kind of harp, and afterwards she sang as she combed her hair. And then someone fired a gun at her from the cliffs, and she disappeared, and we were frightened and ran away. We did not see who fired the gun, nor if she was wounded. It was not brave of us to run away so quickly, and we have been sorry ever since."

"What nonsense is this?" growled their father. "Annet, my child, we tell the truth—all of us—here on Saaron."

"It may have been a seal," hazarded the Commandant. "I am told that Piper's Hole used to be a famous spot for seals."

But Annet lifted her chin and answered, her eyes steadily raised to her father's face. "No, it was not a seal; it was a mermaid. She sang and combed her hair just as I told you. It was beginning to grow dark, but we could see her quite plainly." She turned for confirmation to Linnet and Matthew Henry, and they both nodded.

Their father growled again that this was nonsense; but the Commandant, lifting a hand, asked what had taken them to the cliffs above Piper's Hole. It could not (he suggested) have been that they expected to catch sight of a mermaid.

"Yes," answered Annet again; "that was just the reason." She was speaking frankly, as a child can speak; but children have their own code of honour, and it forbids them to give away a friend. "Jan was telling us, only the other day," she explained with careful lucidity, "how his father had once caught a mermaid in a pool there. We wanted very much to see one, and so we planned to go. But afterwards, when father rowed us home, we did not like to tell him about it. We were afraid he would laugh at us; and we were frightened, too; afraid that the mermaid had been hurt; and—and we were upset because father had brought the boat for us instead of Jan Nanjulian——"

"But most of all," put in Linnet, "I was upset because I had been saying that there were no such things."

"You silly children, of course there are no such things," said their mother.

But Matthew Henry, ignoring her, and more in pity than in anger, turned on the Commandant. "Are you come," he asked, "because she is hurt?"

"She? Who?"

"The mermaid. We didn't mean to bring ill-luck to her. Jan said there was no good luck ever in spying on a mermaid, but Aunt Vazzy said that was nonsense, and of course we believed Aunt Vazzy——"

But here the child came to a full stop, startled by a swift change in the Commandant's look, and by a sudden sharp exclamation.

"Your Aunt Vazzy?" The Commandant's hand went up to his forehead. It seemed that, under the shadow of it his face grew pale and gray as he gazed from Matthew Henry to the two girls, and from them again to their mother.

"Ma'am," said he, in a shaking voice, "is your sister in the house?"

With his question, it seemed that in turn he had passed on his pallor to Ruth, who, however, drew herself up and answered him with spirit. "Sir," said Ruth Tregarthen, "you are asking too much. Must we be accountable to you for my sister's doings?"

"For God's sake," cried the Commandant, "let us waste no time in misunderstandings! Can you not see that your children are telling only the truth?—that she—your sister—was the mermaid? And if she did not venture home last night——"

"She took her own boat," quavered poor Ruth. "She started yesterday afternoon soon after the children had left for school—and she told me not to worry if she came home late.... My sister, sir, has queer ways of her own.... Maybe she heard the news on her way back, and has been searching all night with the others."

The Commandant had fallen to pacing the room. "She was not among the searchers," he said, impatiently. "And, moreover, she has not returned: her boat is not at the landing-quay."

"A moment, sir!" interposed Tregarthen. "I see what you fear, and it is terrible. But one thing is not plain to me at all. Vashti took her own boat, we hear. Now, suppose that the shot wounded her, or worse, still we have the boat to account for: and the boat, you say, is not to be found."

"Was ever a more hopeless mystery!" cried the Commandant, flinging out his hands.

But Eli Tregarthen turned to his wife, who had dropped into a chair by the fire and lay back, gripping the arms of it.

"Courage, wife!" said he, laying a strong palm over one of her trembling hands. "And you, sir, take my thanks; go you home, and leave the search to me."



CHAPTER XXVII

ENTER THE COMMISSIONER

It was noon, and in the Court House all the Councillors rose as the Commandant entered and took his seat.

In the fewest possible words he opened the business, and leaned back in his chair of state, waiting for the talk to begin. He scarcely knew what he had said, and yet he had spoken well. With his restored authority had come back the old easy habit of it.

At such a moment the Councillors would not have allowed, even to themselves, that they breathed more easily and fell to business almost with a sigh of relief, under the presidency of their old chairman. Yet so it was. The Lord Proprietor had been autocratic in council, impatient of opinions that crossed his own, apt to treat discussion as a tedious preliminary to enforcing his will.

After five years, then, the Councillors enjoyed, without confessing it, a sense of liberty regained; and it was the more to the Commandant's credit that in spite of it he kept a firm rein on the debate, cutting short all prolixities of speculation, and briefly ruling Mr. Pope's theory of foul play to be, for the present, out of order. They were met, he reminded them, for two practical purposes; in the first place, to organise a thorough search for the Lord Proprietor, and, secondly, to determine, as briefly as possible, how the government of the Islands should be continued and carried on during his absence. He would take these two questions only.

Mr. Rogers attended, and was cross-examined at length. With a chart before him, and with the help of Reuben Hicks, the St. Ann's pilot, he traced and described the currents to the northward of Inniscaw, the Chairman meanwhile, with pencil and paper, assigning the search-parties to the various rocks and groups of islets in or around which it was deemed possible for a floating body to be carried—so many boats to North Island, so many to seek along Brefar to W. and S. W. of Merryman's Head, so many to explore the difficult passage between the Outer Dogs. A sheet of foolscap had been pinned on the outside of the Court House door inviting volunteers; and while the Councillors deliberated they could hear the murmur of the crowd surrounding the notice and the scratching of pencils as one man after another painfully wrote his name. At intervals—time being precious—Constable Ward would step out, unpin the paper, replace it with a new one, and bring it indoors to the Commandant who was thus enabled to form his crews with despatch.

It was during one of these intervals (the Court House door being open for a moment) that Councillor Tregaskis, happening to glance out at the crowd from his raised chair, and over the heads of the crowd at the line of distant blue water sparkling in the afternoon sunshine, jumped up from his seat with an exclamation:

"A yacht, by Gorm!"

"Eh? What?" Fully half the Councillors turned towards him, and craned their necks for a view through the doorway. "A yacht?" The Commandant laid down his pen and stood up, raising himself a-tip-toe on his dais in the endeavour to gain a glimpse of the horizon from the window high on his right.

"A steam yacht!"

The Councillors stared one at another, wondering if this new arrival could have any possible connection with the Lord Proprietor's disappearance.

"What's her flag?" demanded Mr. Rogers.

"She carries no ensign," reported Mr. Tregaskis; "but a reddish-coloured square flag—a house-flag, belike. And yet, seemin' to me, she don't look like a private-owned craft."

"She's the Admiralty yacht from Plymouth," announced Mr. Rogers, confidently. He had set a chair close to the window and climbed upon it. "Yes, yes—the old Circe; I could tell her in a thousand.... She's slowing down to anchor; and see, there's the gold anchor on her flag! Listen, now ... there goes!..." Through the open doorway, across the clear water, their ears caught the splash of a dropped anchor, and the music of its chain running through the hawse-pipe.

The Commandant rapped the table.

"Gentlemen," said he, "oblige me by returning to your places and resuming our business. We shall not advance it just now by catching at hopes which may be baseless, though I admit the temptation. That these visitors bring us any news of the Lord Proprietor or any that bears, even remotely, upon his disappearance is—to say the least of it—highly improbable. On the other hand, it is certain that by detaining Mr. Rogers here we hinder him in the discharge of those courtesies which, as Inspecting Commander, he will be eager to pay to the newcomers. I suggest, then, that we briefly conclude the inquiry, in which he has given us so much help, and allow him to put off to the yacht, while we, restraining our curiosity, take further counsel for the interim government of the Islands. If"—he turned to Mr. Rogers—"if, sir, our visitors can throw any light on the mystery, I may trust you to bring them to us with all despatch."

Accordingly Mr. Rogers, having briefly completed his evidence, was allowed to depart, and the councillors fell again to the business of distributing the crews of the searchboats.

Meanwhile, in the Court House, it was agreed that supreme control of the executive reverted naturally to the Commandant, subject only to such power of criticism or restraint as the Council claimed over the action of the Lord Proprietor himself. The twelve shouted "Aye" to this with one voice.

The Commandant, however, reminded them that he had not yet put the resolution, and that it was doubtful—he spoke as one who, some years ago, had made a study of these constitutional niceties—"if the Council of Twelve had really any say in the matter. They could, of course, elect their own President——"

But at this point a noise of women's voices on the quay, followed by a knocking on the door of the Council Chamber, put a period to the impatience of his auditors.

The door was opened, and Mr. Rogers appeared on the threshold with a tall officer, gaunt and white-haired, in military undress—at first glance indisputably a person of distinction—standing close behind his shoulder.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. President, if we interrupt the Council," began Mr. Rogers; "but I have brought a visitor here, Sir Ommaney Ward, who has business with you so soon as the sitting is over."

"—But who has no desire at all to interrupt it," added Sir Ommaney courteously, stepping forward and bowing to the Council. "Good afternoon, gentlemen! Good afternoon, sir!" He stepped forward to the dais holding out his hand. "Hey? my old friend Vigoureux, have you quite forgotten me, in all these years?"

"Ward!" exclaimed the Commandant, his face brightening with sudden recognition. A moment later, even more suddenly, it grew gray and haggard, almost (you might say) with terror. But the visitor did not perceive this.

"My dear fellow, why not give me the name as it rose to your lips? 'Tubby' Ward it used to be in the trenches, eh? Gentlemen"—Sir Ommaney turned to the Council—"your President and I have interrupted each other's work before now—as gunner and sapper—under Sebastopol. But I have no desire to interrupt yours, knowing how serious it is. Mr. Rogers brought off the news—this disquieting, not to say dumbfounding, news—to the yacht just now; and I hardly need to tell you that it puts my own errand into the background. Sir,"—he turned to the Commandant again—"I allowed Mr. Rogers to bring me here only on his surmise that your business would be over. If you will give me, having announced myself, your leave to withdraw——"

"We shall have done in a very few minutes," answered the Commandant. His lips were dry, and he marvelled at the careless sound of his own voice. He had not a doubt of the true meaning of Sir Ommaney's visit. Nay, the very swiftness with which it followed upon his letter of confession proved how serious a view the War Office must take of his case. He pulled himself together desperately. "If you will take a chair, sir, here on my right, I promise that twenty minutes will see us at an end."

So the business of the Council was resumed, and the Commandant, still wondering at his own coolness, took up the thread of his discourse.

It was, on the whole, an admirable discourse. He had the constitutional system of the Islands at his fingers' ends, and to-day, with despair in his heart, but thinking nothing of them nor recking at all, he expounded them lucidly. His words, too, had a real effect upon his hearers; an emotional effect which Sir Ommaney, sitting and listening seriously, could not but note.

At the conclusion, Mr. Pope rose again, and proposed, and Mr. Fossell again seconded, that the supreme government of the islands reverted naturally, for the time being, to the Commandant: so that, for practical purposes, it may be contended he had spoken superfluously. But, to one who looked beneath the surface, this did not matter.

The Court rose, with its ancient formalities. "Reginae et insulis ejus sit Deus propitius," said the President, closing the Bible, which at all meetings of the Council lay open on the table before him. "Ita et laboribus nostris, Amen," duly responded the twelve Councillors, standing in their places while he walked with his guest to the door. On the threshold he faced about, and made them a bow, which they as ceremoniously returned.

Out of doors the afternoon sun shone with a brightness almost dazzling after the shade of the Court House; but the tonic north-west wind, blowing across the Roads from Cromwell's Sound, held an autumnal chill, and the Commandant shivered as he halted a moment to con the Circe in the offing.

"I travel in state," said Sir Ommaney, with a laugh, as he followed this glance; "and with the cabins of half-a-dozen Sea Lords to choose between. In point of fact, our department has no boat at Plymouth capable of performing the passage comfortably: so, my business being partly theirs, I applied to the Admiralty, and the Admiralty placed their yacht at my disposal."

The Commandant did not understand; or perhaps he had not been listening intently. By tacit consent, the pair bent their steps towards the slope of Garrison Hill.

"Also," Sir Ommaney resumed, "the Admiral at Plymouth added a word of advice, to take advantage of this spell of weather and make the passage at once. No doubt he had a professional distrust of a soldier's stomach. Still, he meant it kindly. And that accounts for my arriving some days ahead of scheduled time, and dropping into the midst of this disquieting business. What's the meaning of it, think you?"

"The meaning of it?" echoed the Commandant.

"You don't doubt the man fell over the cliffs and killed himself?"

The Commandant shook his head. "I don't doubt his having met with an accident," he answered. "But I have some hope of finding him yet, and of finding him alive."

"To me, that doesn't seem likely.... But I want to tell you at once that my business can wait. I repeat, I am ahead of time. I can employ myself on board, or get out the steam-launch and explore the Islands; or again (if you will use me), I will gladly make one of a search party."

The Commandant thanked him. "But I have no particular business, at any rate for an hour or two. The boats have gone, and I leave it to Mr. Rogers to direct the search, now that we have laid down the plan of it. On these occasions, one captain is always better than two." Sir Ommaney might talk easily of postponing this or that; but the Commandant, poor man, craved to get the worst over and learn his fate.

"By the bye, Vigoureux—if you'll not mind my saying so—you handled that Council of yours admirably."

The Commandant flushed. "They are old friends of mine, Sir Ommaney."

"Why, and so am I an old friend; at least, as I supposed. Cannot you manage to drop the prefix?... Very well.... And now, if you have nothing better to do, take me over the old fortifications."

They climbed the hill together to the Garrison gate, and thence, bearing away to the left, started to make the round of the batteries. He flinched as they came to the first—the King George's Battery—and stood by the deserted platform. The bitter humiliation to be here, master of a fortress without one single gun! Almost he dreaded to hear his guest break forth with a contemptuous laugh.

Sir Ommaney, however, surveyed the ruin in silence, and when he spoke it was only to ask a question concerning the trajectory of the guns which had once furnished it. The Commandant walked by his side, a man torn by many emotions. For the first time in fifteen years he, an enthusiast in gunnery, had an opportunity to talk with one who really cared for gunnery and understood it. On the other hand, and eagerly as he jumped at every question, he could not help perceiving that these batteries—of which he had been so proud—of which in recollection he was yet so proud—were to Sir Ommaney but obsolete toys. This visitor of his, this friend of his gallant youth, had moved with the times, and the times had carried him to an infinite distance, beyond all understanding. Thus, as he moved on from battery to battery, at times our Commandant talked earnestly, wistfully, and at times fell to a despondent silence; and still between his eagerness and his despondency the personal question awoke—"He is kind, but he is here to pass judgment on me. What can the sentence be but disgrace?" Arrived at the Keg of Butter Battery, Sir Ommaney seated himself on the low wall, hard by the spot where Vashti had dug at the stones with her sunshade.

"My dear Vigoureux," said Sir Ommaney, after a long look seaward, "I haven't a doubt you regret your guns, obsolete though you know that they were. For that matter, your batteries—their build and their very positions—are quite as hopelessly out of date."

"Man," exclaimed the Commandant, with a sudden rush of blood to the face, "do you suppose I cannot guess why you are here? Oh, for God's sake let me hear the worst! If for five years I have been an enforced idler here, do me at least the justice to believe that I know the range of modern artillery and something of what a modern battleship can do. Fifteen years ago when I came to take over the command of the Islands, the old Black Prince was the last word in ships and gunnery. Think of it! Yet, the basis of defence, the simple principle, lies here, and has always lain here. If you had come to discuss this——"

Sir Ommaney lifted a hand. "But that is partly—even chiefly—what I am come to consider."

"Ah!"

"And I have seen a letter about you, addressed to the War Office by the Lord Proprietor: an unfriendly letter, I may say."

The Commandant's cheeks were already warm with excitement, but at this their colour deepened.

"I beg you to believe," said he, heartily, "that if Sir Caesar has written about me, my letter was sent without knowledge of it, and in no desire to anticipate——"

"My dear fellow," Sir Ommaney interrupted; "I have some little sense left in my head, I hope. But will you put constraint upon yourself for a moment to forget these letters, to dismiss the personal question, and simply to resume our talk."

"I will try," agreed the Commandant, after a painful pause. "But it will be hard; harder perhaps than you can understand. Honours have come to you—deservedly, I admit——"

"And too late," Sir Ommaney again took him up. "My dear Vigoureux, when we knew one another in the old days, honours seemed to both of us the most desirable thing in the world. Believe me, they always come too late."

The Commandant looked at him for a moment. "Yes," said he at length, "we have talked enough of ourselves. And what do we matter, after all?"

They walked back to the Barracks together, side by side, discussing, as one soldier with another, the problem which the one had opened, on which the other had brooded in silence for years.

Arrived at his quarters, the Commandant applied the poker to his fire, motioned Sir Ommaney to the worn armchair, excused himself, and hurried off to seek Archelaus and discuss the chances of a cup of tea.

Sir Ommaney, left to himself, took a glance round the poverty-stricken room, and stretched out his long legs to the blaze. The evening air without had been chilly. The sea-coal in the grate, stirred by the Commandant's poker, woke to a warm glow with a small dancing flame on top. Sir Ommaney stared into the glow, lost in thought.... A tapping on the pane awoke him out of his brown study. He sat upright, but almost with the same motion he sprang to his feet as a hand pushed open the window behind him.

There was no light in the room save that afforded by the dancing, uncertain flame. It wavered, as he turned about, upon the figure of a woman entering confidently across the sill, and upon a face at sight of which he drew back almost in terror.

"Pass, friend, and all's well!" said Vashti, with a light laugh, as she effected her entrance. Then, catching sight of the man confronting her, she caught at the curtain, and said, simply, "O-oh!"

"Lord, bless my soul!" exclaimed Sir Ommaney, in a low voice, but fervently.

"I—I thought you were the Commandant," stammered Vashti, for once in this history taken thoroughly aback.

"Mademoiselle Cara!... You? And here, of all places in the world!"

But upon this they both turned, as the door opened and the Commandant stood on the threshold.

"Miss Vashti!" The Commandant stared from one to the other.

Vashti broke the silence with her ready laugh.

"Sir Ommaney Ward and I have met before. He does not know that this is my native home; but"—she dropped them both a curtsey—"the point is that you are both to come with me, and at once."



CHAPTER XXVIII

THE FINDING

The two men followed her out into the darkness and across the turfed slope towards the Keg of Butter. The Commandant, amid much that was bewildering, guessed that her boat lay moored there, and that she meant them to accompany her, either to Saaron or to Inniscaw. There was no danger of meeting anyone by the way, either on the hill or down by the shore; for the search had drawn off all the coastguard. Nevertheless, though he carried a lantern, he did not light it.

The moon would not be up for an hour yet, but the nor'-westerly breeze had blown the sky clear of clouds. The stars—bright as always when the wind sets over the Islands from that quarter—lent a pale radiance by which Sir Ommaney managed to steer his way, and at a fair pace, beside his more expert companion, and the Commandant, when they reached the cliff-path, lent him a hand.

"But you don't tell me you have come over from Saaron in that cockleshell of yours?" asked the Commandant, peering down into the darkness for a glimpse of the boat.

Vashti, who was leading the way down the track, turned with a laugh. "No, and for a very good reason. I could not take you two back in her, for she would not carry you, and I could not borrow yours and leave her here for the coastguard to discover; and again the wind, though it has fallen, is against us—we shall have to pull, and there would be no sense in towing a boat, even a little one, for we are in a hurry. So I sailed across in Eli's. But please do not deride my poor cockleshell, as you call it; for without her I had never such news as I bring you."

"When are we to hear it?"

She laughed again as she stooped and found the shore-line of Tregarthen's boat. "Not yet. No, and you need not light the lantern. We shall want it just before our journey's end; not until then."

The Commandant helped her to draw in the boat, and they clambered on board.

"But surely you don't expect me to steer!" protested Sir Ommaney, gazing blankly around at the darkness, as Vashti directed him to take his seat in the stern sheets.

"No, I have unshipped the rudder, and you will have nothing to do but sit still and wonder." She snugged away the sail. "Now, will you take bow oar or stroke?" she asked the Commandant. "Better perhaps leave me the bow oar and the steering."

"Might one ask whither?"

"For Inniscaw, and for the landing beneath the Great House. It will give us the farther to walk, but towards the north of the Island we shall find ourselves in a press of boats. To be sure, no one is likely to suspect us; it will be supposed that we are joining the search. Still, I would rather run no risks, and the southern landing is almost certainly deserted."

She shipped her oar; and as the Commandant set the stroke she took it up with a will. At the fifth or sixth stroke she began to sing—not a set song, but little trills and snatches of melody, as though health, happiness, the joy of living, the delight of swinging to the oar in the cool night air—these together or something compounded of them all—filled her being and bubbled over.

"You are silent, you two." She said it almost reproachfully, pausing to throw a glance over her shoulder and direct the steering.

"And with excuse." Sir Ommaney answered. "Who is not mute when Mademoiselle Cara sings? And who, an hour ago, could have promised me that I should hear her sing, in this place, beneath the stars?"

"Few will hear her any more," said Vashti, lightly. "She is tired of the stage and thinks of marrying."

"Indeed, mademoiselle? And whom are we to congratulate? Who is it that selfishly appropriates what was meant for mankind?"

"Faith, sir, I cannot tell you," she answered again, still in the same light tone. "But I came, just now, to kidnap the Commandant!"

Without giving a chance of reply, she broke into singing again; the air, Ah, fors e lui. It gushed from her lips like a very fountain of happiness, irrepressible, springing towards the stars in jets and spurts of melody, falling with a ripple in which the music of the stars themselves seemed to echo; almost in the moment of its fall rising again, as though it panted with joy—not with weariness, for the spirit of it called impetuously to life. The two men listened, marvelling. Nor when the song ended was the spell broken; for still, as she pulled towards the looming shadow of Inniscaw, sinking her voice almost to a murmur, she took up the melody as though in echo, caressing, repeating it, loth to let it go.

They came to the dark landing-quay. Sir Ommaney, stepping ashore, stretched out a hand; but she disregarded it, as she disregarded the Commandant's, held out to take the painter and make fast.

"Thank you"—she stooped, apparently groping among the bottom-boards. "I will moor the boat myself. But wait: I have something for each of you to carry."

In the darkness she passed up a double tackle and a coil of rope. "I fetched these from Saaron on my way to you," she explained. "We shall need them. Have you fairly strong heads for a climb? Very well, then"—she sprang ashore with the painter in her hand, made it fast to a ring above the quay steps, and picked up the lantern. "Now forward! And no talking, please, until we are well past the house and out of hearing!"

Sir Ommaney picked up the tackle, the Commandant the coil of rope, and the pair followed her one behind the other. In Indian file they stole up through the plantations, almost to the foot of the glimmering terrace; thence, bearing to the left, along dim paths through the mazes of the gardens, thence again through the north-west plantation, and out upon the path which the Lord Proprietor had taken, on his way to North Inniscaw. Here, on the uplands, the breeze met them, and at his feet Sir Ommaney, for the first time, saw spread the wonderful circle of the great sea lights. Smaller lights twinkled like a thread of gems along the north and north-eastern horizon. They belonged to the boats still prosecuting the search.

From the first Vashti had led the way without faltering or appearing to hesitate for a moment. Even when clear of the woods her companions observed the prohibition she had laid upon them at the start, and exchanged scarcely a word.

"You have followed well," said Vashti, as they reached the foot of Pare Coppa. She pointed to the mass of shadow ahead, and the granite blocks on the summit faintly touched by the starlight. "I know now what it feels like to command soldiers, and it feels good. There, by that high rock to the left, our march ends."

They breasted the slope and arrived at the rock panting, after seven or eight minutes' climb. It was the same on which Sam Leggo had last seen the Lord Proprietor sitting with his gun across his knees. But why she had brought them to this spot the two men were as far as ever from guessing; for almost straight beneath them lay the sea.

After a minute's rest Vashti lowered herself over the western edge of the rock, at the same time warning them to follow with extreme caution; and so all three came to the ledge of the adit. But their business did not lie here. Indeed, in the darkness neither Sir Ommaney nor the Commandant observed the opening, and Vashti had no leisure to call their attention to it. Clambering, still to the left, across a boulder which fairly overhung the sea, she struck a match, lit the candle in her lantern, and held it up before a dark hole—a second adit—pierced in the cliff-side and running west, as the other ran south-by-east.

"Be careful, now!" she warned them again, and ducked her head as she entered the tunnel, which was scarcely more than five feet high. They stooped and followed down the slope of it for about thirty yards, and halted behind her as she waved the lantern over what appeared at first to be a terrific chasm, opening at her feet.

"Eli, ahoy! Ahoy, there!" she called.

"Ahoy!" the voice came up from the depths. "Ahoy, there, Vashti!"

"I have brought the Commandant, with a friend—and the tackle. Shall I fix it here?"

"That's no work for you, my dear," called up Eli. "Let them come down if they've heads for it, and afterwards I can climb up and fix it. Or, stay! Let the one come down, and the other bide aloft, to help me."

"Do you dare?" Vashti asked the Commandant, pointing down to the pit, and then with a wave of her lantern indicating the stairway by which he must descend. It was a ladder of rope, suspended from an iron bar driven into the solid rock about a foot above the floor-level on which they stood. It dangled down into darkness, and the Commandant perceived to his horror that its iron rungs lay close against the cliff.

"Surely you are never going down that way?" he asked.

But Vashti was already stooping to slip off her shoes.

"You need not follow unless you choose."

"Where you go, I go. Let me lead the way."

But while he unlaced and kicked off his boots she had already grasped the iron bar and swung herself out over the abyss, feeling with her toes for a rung and a good foothold.

"For my part," said Sir Ommaney, controlling with some difficulty the tremor of his voice as he saw her anchored safely for the moment, "I am content to smoke a pipe here and wait. For God's sake be careful you two!" he added, as the Commandant also gripped the bar, then a rung, and began to lower himself.

Far below the Commandant could see a light glimmering, drawing faint twinkles from the wet rock around him. Just beneath him he could hear Vashti's hands rhythmically catching at the rungs—down, down.... Once his feet slipped from the staves, and he hung for a moment by his hand-grip only. Twice Vashti spoke up to him, warning him to press a knee against the rock, and so make room for his toes to catch the rungs.... At length they reached a point where the ladder hung clear of the cliff; but here a hand from below caught it and held it steady.

"Nervous work, sir!" said Eli Tregarthen, as the Commandant, with a gasp of relief, felt his feet touch solid rock.

"But where are we?" demanded the Commandant; for close at hand sounded the boom of heavy waves.

"In Piper's Hole."

The Commandant stared aloft. Slowly the explanation dawned on him. The adit, piercing its way from the cliff top, broke through the wall of the cave, high up, close to the roof. He turned, and his eyes followed Vashti, who had caught up Eli's lantern, and was picking her way across the rocky floor. Presently she bent to a kneeling posture, as the rays fell on what at first appeared to be a long bundle. He hurried after her, but stopped short with a cry.

"Sir Caesar!"

"Even so, my friend. Alive, thanks to our friends here; and, but for a shaking and a twisted ankle, sound as well as safe. Yes, and the ankle is mending, thanks to Miss Cara's skill and a plenty of salt-water bandages."

The Lord Proprietor's face was pale as he leaned on his elbow and stared at the Commandant across the lantern. It was scratched, too, and scarred; but it was the face of a sound man.

"But how in the world——?"

"Easily enough. I was leaning over the cliff above here, with my gun beside me, when a piece of earth gave way under my head. I went down the slope head foremost, as I guess, and my coat must have caught in the gun's trigger-guard. At any rate, it went off, and by the mercy of Heaven without wounding me; but either the noise of it stunned me or the fall must have knocked me foolish, for tumbling among the bushes that grow in the hollow above the cave's entrance, I had not the sense to catch hold, but slid through them, and clean over the edge into the sea."

"Eh? But pardon me, how can you possibly remember this?" stammered the Commandant.

"I saw it," said Vashti, quietly.

"Oh!" The Commandant stared at her, and began to understand. "So you were the mermaid!"

She nodded. "I happened to be on the rock, outside the entrance, with my small boat lying in a low spot under its eastern shelter, and so I put off to him at once. There was a strong run of water into the cave; the depth was not above three feet when the waves ran back. So I clutched hold of him—though making sure he was dead—and drew him into the cave, above high-water mark. It was hard work, though not so hard as dragging the boat after us."

"Why should you want to drag the boat so far?... You don't mean to tell me that you have been hiding here, on purpose, while the search has been going on all around you!"

Vashti laughed. "Why, of course we have! I heard you and Mr. Rogers last night. You were standing together on the very spot over which I had hauled the boat: only I had taken the precaution to smooth the sand over the track of her keel. From the ridge of rock there I launched her on the freshwater pool, and paddled her across with the Lord Proprietor safe on board. I was dreadfully afraid, while I listened to your voices, that you would cross the pool and discover her.

"It lies close?"

"About thirty yards from where we stand."

"To confess the truth," put in the Lord Proprietor, "my fall seems to have knocked some daylight into me, or else Miss Vashti is a witch. While she bound up my hurts we had some conversation together——"

"It was I who did the talking," interposed Vashti.

"And that, perhaps, explains why in so short a while I learnt so much. I learnt enough, sir, at any rate, of you and of Eli Tregarthen to make me suspect that I had done you both some injustice. I was willing to hear more; to prolong the adventure which"—he bowed after a fashion towards Vashti, and not ungallantly—"had its—er—romantic side. I decided that if Miss Cara spoke with knowledge, it would do me good to see myself for a brief while as others in the Islands see me, even to hear what they said of me by way of obituary criticism."

He paused at a sound on the far side of the cave. It came from the ladder; the sound of Eli's hobnailed boots, rung upon rung, as he climbed aloft towards the adit, to fasten the tackle there.

"It seems a monstrous height to be swung in air, helpless as a babe. But Tregarthen says it can be done, and I am willing to trust him. If at the top you can rig up some kind of litter for me, and convey me home without noise ... I have a fancy, and it is also Miss Cara's, that we keep the main part of this mystery to ourselves. But who is the helper aloft there?"

"Sir Ommaney Ward."

"Hey?"

"Sir Ommaney Ward."

"The devil! And I sent for him! Forgive me, Commandant——"

"And excuse me, Sir Caesar, but I prefer to believe he is here because my letter brought him."

The Lord Proprietor held out his hand.

"Will you take it, Commandant? Miss Cara has told me of that letter. You are a good man, and I have wronged you."



CHAPTER XXIX

CONCLUSION

Three years and a few months have passed. The date is Easter Monday (Easter falls early this year), and from the Keg of Butter Battery the Commandant, as he stands looking seaward, hears the school-bell ringing in the town at the foot of Garrison Hill, though the school has been closed a week since for the Easter holidays.

He hears it, but for a while pays no attention to it, though it keeps ding-dinging insistently. His eyes are bent on the sea; yet not in the direction of Saaron, where, if they sought carefully, they might detect a trace of smoke coiling up from the fold of the hills which hides Eli Tregarthen's farm; but westward, towards the main, whence the steamer will arrive before nightfall. She is not due for hours, yet the Commandant's gaze searches the horizon.

The Keg of Butter Battery mounts no guns as yet It is no longer the ruined platform above which Vashti sat on the crumbling wall and poked at the wild thyme with her sunshade. The Government contractor has transformed it: the wall has disappeared, and a smooth glacis slopes from the Commandant's feet over hidden chambers, constructed to house those quick-firing guns. The chambers are ready: the guns will arrive within a week. It is not for them, however, that the Commandant scans the horizon so intently.

Although it is holiday-time, the bells in the town below are ringing to the school-house; but the school-house is filled with flowers. Two years ago the Lord Proprietor called his Islanders together, and explained how he hoped to bring back prosperity to the Islands by means of daffodil culture. For an experiment, he offered to present a thousand Dutch bulbs to every cottager who would give them soil and cultivation, and to-day the Islanders celebrate their first daffodil show.

In years to come, as the trade increases, the market will keep them too happily busy to waste time on exhibitions. We see them, and we part with them, on the eve of prosperity. So much, at any rate, has grown of the few bulbs carried by Archelaus for a peace-offering.

* * * * *

The Commandant takes out his watch, discovers that it is close upon time for the opening ceremony, and descends the hill in a hurry. At the school-house door he meets the Lord Proprietor, and they shake hands as they enter the building together. But after going the round of the stalls, the Lord Proprietor looks up.

"She is coming this afternoon, is she not?"

"She is coming," says the Commandant, and looks forth from the open window over the sea.



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POISON ISLAND

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THE MAYOR OF TROY

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SHINING FERRY

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