"Let us try the other side," she said presently, and they turned forward of the wheel-house: At the turn the wind caught the long ends of her scarf and wound them about the Prince's neck; they paused to disentangle the soft silken thing, Prince Mirko's hands delaying rather than hastening the process, when a lurch of the vessel flung Ragna against him. He steadied himself with one arm against the deck-house and with the other supported the girl, holding her firm young body close to his. He held her but a moment more than was needful, but in that moment, pressed close to him, his moustache brushing her cheek, she felt a repetition of the same thrill, half attraction, half fear, which had come over her the first time their eyes met. It was over in an instant and they were running down the deck before the wind, but Ragna felt a new and strange constraint upon her which did not wear off as the evening advanced. She waited up long enough to see Heligoland rising up dark and forbidding on the starboard side in the half-light of the moon. The cloud-wrack behind, seemed like the wings of some monster bird of prey about to swoop down upon the island, crouching to repel the attack. As she watched, a cloud passed over the moon and a jagged line of lightning cleft the darkening mass on the horizon. The flash lasted but the fraction of a second, but she had seen a ship carrying full sail silhouetted against the storm-cloud. The ship stood out for an instant in wonderful relief, every spar and rope clear-cut against the sombre background, then was swallowed up into the night. "It is Uncle Olaf," thought Ragna. "He has come to warn me--but of what?" She turned to Angelescu, leaning on the rail beside her. "Did you see the ship?" "The ship! What ship? When?" "Just over there, against that black cloud in the lightning flash." As she spoke the lightning flared again but revealed nothing. "You see there is no ship, Mademoiselle," said Angelescu, "and landsman though I be, I know that she would show some lights if she were there." "Then," said Ragna in a low voice, "the sign is not for you--it was the ship of my Uncle Olaf." "What are you talking about so earnestly?" asked Prince Mirko, joining them. He had been lighting a cigarette in the shelter of the companion-way. His tone was suspicious, he thought that Angelescu might have been warning the girl against him. The mere fact that he suspected such a contingency and resented it, was proof patent that his good resolution of the afternoon had fallen into abeyance. During the brief moment when he had held her in his arms, had felt her heart beating under his hand and the stray locks of her hair blowing across his face, his pulse had given a leap, and had it not been for Angelescu's restraining presence, he would have kissed her. Angelescu hastened to reassure him: "Mademoiselle has seen the phantom ship of her phantom uncle--I have not, which proves that my spiritual vision is defective."