The night was still and ominously dark. She had never known a night since she came to Japat when the birds and insects were so mute. A sombre, supernatural calm hung over the island like a pall. Far off, over the black sea, pulsed the fitful glow of an occasional gleam of lightning, faint with the distance which it traversed. There was no moon; the stars were gone; the sky was inky and the air somnolent. The smell of smoke hung about her. She could not help wondering if his fine, strong body was lying up there, burnt to a crisp. It was far past midnight; she was alone in the garden. Sixty feet below her was the ground; above, the black dome of heaven. She was not to know till long afterward that one of her faithful Thorberg men stood guard in the passage leading up from the garden, armed and willing to die. One or the other slept in front of her door through all those nights on the island. Something hot trickled down her cheeks from the wide, pitying eyes that stared so hard. She was wondering now if he had a mother--sisters. How their hearts would be wrenched by this! A mute prayer that he might have died in the storm of bullets before the fire swept over him struggled against the hope that he might have escaped altogether. She was thinking of him with pity and horror in her heart, not love. A question was beginning to form itself vaguely in her troubled mind. Were all of them to die as Chase had died? Suddenly there came to her ears the sound of something swishing through the air. An instant later, a solid object fell almost at her feet. She started back with a cry of alarm. A broad shaft of light crossed the garden, thrown by the lamps in the upper hall of the château. Her eyes fell upon a wriggling, snakelike thing that lay in this path of light. Fascinated, almost paralysed, she watched it for a full minute before realising that it was the end of a thick rope, which lost itself in the heavy shadows at the cliff end of the garden. Looking about in terror, as if expecting to see murderous forms emerge from the shadows, she turned to flee. At the head of the steps which led downward into the corridor, she paused for a moment, glancing over her shoulder at the mysterious, wriggling thing. She was standing directly in the shaft of light. To her surprise, the wriggling ceased. The next moment, a faint, subdued shout was borne to her ears. Her flight was checked by that shout, for her startled, bewildered ears caught the sound of her own name. Again the shout, from where she knew not, except that it was distant; it seemed to come from the clouds. At last, far above, she saw the glimmer of a light. It was too large to be a star, and it moved back and forth.