No sooner had the final note died out on the gently stirring air than answering cries, no less weird and shrill, arose from out upon the water. The visiting craft had drifted past the headland and was somewhere off on Grenville's right. The cries from its deck were like a response to some spirit of the island. They were rather more awed than exultant, Grenville felt, and he fancied some chanting, that came to him brokenly out of the heavy shades of night, was possibly a prayer. When he came before her shelter again, Elaine was standing in the door. She had heard the cries from the boat. "They haven't landed yet?" she said, in a whisper. "They won't land now till daybreak, and perhaps not then," he answered. "Go back--and go to sleep." "I'll try," said Elaine, and disappeared. For Grenville, however, there could be no sleep, though the darkness rendered up no further sound. Like the outer sentry of a picket-line, with the enemy close, and his whereabouts unknown, he glided silently from one dark edge of the terrace to another, as the hours wore on, alert for the slightest alarm. He finally sat by the head of the trail, convinced that the visitors would give him no trouble till morning, yet guarding the only way by which they could gain the summit of the hill. He was weary and doubtless he nodded, lulled by the softness of the breeze that came up at last, burdened with its ozone from the sea. And, despite the fact he was afterwards positive the nod was the briefest in the world, full daylight was spread to the ends of the world, and the sun was gilding the island's tufa walls, when at length he started to his feet. It seemed to him then some sound from below had played through the fabric of his dream. But nothing disturbed the usual calm, save the morning cry of distant parrots. Stooping, he moved through the scattered rocks, to survey the waters far and wide. There was nothing to be seen, in all that expanse, of the craft that had ridden near at midnight. All the round of the wall he made in this manner of caution. When he came at length above the blackened clearing, where for day after day he had toiled with fire and chisel, he gazed about the open space bewildered and incredulous. His half-finished boat was gone! CHAPTER XXVI AFTER TO-MORROW---- The truth of his loss was hardly to be credited as Grenville continued to stare below where the hollowed log had been. There was not a sign of a living thing in the clearing or near-by jungle. There had been no sounds of unusual movement in the thicket, he was sure, or otherwise he must have wakened. No voices had spoken, since his ears had all but ached to catch the slightest disturbance. On the blue of the sea, so tremendously expanded from this particular point of vantage, there was not a hint of a sail. But the fact remained his boat was gone, with all the work it represented, and all the hope their situation had centered upon it for them both.