His eyes were on the distant yacht, fast fading once more from their vision. The bomb must have failed. The fuse was deficient, he was sure. He started back to recover the thing and make it certain of explosion. Then it burst, and flung shattered fragments along all the face of the wall. Grenville was watching the distant yacht with fixed, almost frenzied, expression. "They haven't heard!" he groaned, despairingly. "They're going faster than before!" It certainly seemed as if the hurried stranger would no more halt than would a fiery meteor overdue at some cosmic appointment. Then of a sudden, from its bow, broke a pure-white cloud of smoke. She had answered with the small brass piece employed to fire a salute. Her prow was turned before the sound came dully across the waters. Sobbing and laughing together, in sudden relief, Elaine sank down on her knees, among the bowlders, to watch this deliverance come. CHAPTER XLVI A GIFT REFUSED The yacht was the "Petrel," luxurious hobby of Sir Myles Kemp, diverted from her homeward course by the merest whim of her owner to run up northward for a day while Sir Myles should inspect the rubber plantation and estate of his old fellow-officer, Captain Williams, who was not even present at the place. The inspection was never made. The utter amazement occasioned by the chance discovery of the exiles of Three-Hill Island, plus their story of its fateful occupation, completely overshadowed all else in the minds of the "Petrel's" commander and crew, whose one idea was to assist the castaways home with the greatest speed of which steel and steam were capable. The picture the pair presented as they came aboard--Elaine amazingly tattered, a supple, tanned, incredibly sweet and womanly little figure--Grenville, a bearded, active master of the wild, clad in the skin of a cheeta for a coat, and bearing a richly colored tiger-skin, rolled up to contain a hundredweight of treasure--was one that Sir Myles was destined never to forget. He was likewise always destined to misunderstand the emotions with which, as they steamed away at last, Elaine looked back, with tears in her eyes, at the unpeopled Isle of Shalimar, so green in its purple setting, presenting its headland to the sea with that lone tree reared above its summit. Grenville, too, had seen her eyes--and he more nearly comprehended. By great good-fortune much of Lady Kemp's wardrobe had been left aboard the yacht. She and Elaine must have been of a size, to judge from the manner in which her yachting apparel and her dainty boudoir adjusted themselves to the form of the girl whom Sir Myles began forthwith to treat as he might a daughter.