As for this black, deadly shadow that had darkened her life--already he could see her emerging from it, radiant and wonderful. But it was not to be disregarded or as yet ignored, its baleful record considered closed and relegated to the pages of the past. Its movement had been too rhythmic altogether to lack a reason. His very present task was to read its riddle and exorcise it altogether.
For hours he pondered it there in the sunlit kitchen of the silent house--waiting, wondering, deep in thought. Time stole away without his knowledge. Not until late in the afternoon did the shifted position of the sun catch his attention and arouse him in alarm. Not a sound from above...!
He rose, ascended the stairs, tapped gently on the locked door.
"Mary," he called, with his heart in his mouth--"Mary!"
Her answer was instant, in accents sweet, calm and clear:
"I am all right. I'm resting, dear, and thinking. Don't fret about me. When I feel able, I will come down to you."
"As you will," he assented, unspeakably relieved; and returned to the kitchen.
The diversion of thought reminded him of their helpless and forlorn condition. He went out and swept the horizon with an eager and hopeful gaze that soon drooped in disappointment. The day had worn on in unbroken calm: not a sail stirred within the immense radius of the waters. Ships he saw in plenty--a number of them moving under power east and west beyond the headland with its crowning lighthouse; others--a few--left shining wakes upon the burnished expanse beyond the farthest land visible in the north. Unquestionably main-travelled roads of the sea, these, so clear to the sight, so heartbreakingly unattainable....
And then his conscience turned upon him, reminding him of the promise (completely driven out of his mind by his grim adventure before dawn, together with the emotional crisis of mid-morning) to display some sort of a day-signal of distress.
For something like half an hour he was busy with the task of nailing a turkey-red table-cloth to a pole, and the pole in turn (with the assistance of a ladder) to the peak of the gabled barn. But when this was accomplished, and he stood aside and contemplated the drooping, shapeless flag, realizing that without a wind it was quite meaningless, the thought came to him that the very elements seemed leagued together in a conspiracy to keep them prisoners, and he began to nurse a superstitious notion that, if anything were ever to be done toward winning their freedom, it would be only through his own endeavour, unassisted.