Aylmer rose and stood beside her. His hand gently gripped her elbow and drew her out into the roar and beat of the tempest. He headed inland; the path which the sentinel had taken was the one which led towards the shore. A minute later she breathed her question. And he laughed lightly in the darkness. The sound, incongruous as it seemed to her sense of ever-menacing fear, thrilled her strangely. If he could laugh, was not Fate laughing with him? Was there not a smile on the face of Hope? "I was only just through the hole when he came, when he flashed his lantern at what he supposed was my body, recumbent on the bed. I was holding up the bed clothes _from outside_; I had not had time to shove the stones back into place." She shuddered at the nearness of the hazard. Supposing the man had come at the very moment of escape--supposing? "But the light?" she protested. "The light shone upon your face!" He laughed again. "The bed clothes had a hole in them!" he said. "I held them up into the form of human shoulders, and through a rent his lantern beat directly on my face! He could not, of course, see me, but I got a good view of him. It was Luigi himself, this time. Has Fate been whispering to him, do you think? Has she made him suspicious?" She stumbled and caught at him to steady herself. He looked down in sudden, quick compunction. "It has been too much for you!" he said anxiously. "You are feeling faint?" "No!" she said quietly. "I am trying to think of it as a nightmare from which I shall wake directly, but it is real! Whenever that comes home to me it--it is a pain. Well, it will not be a long ordeal now, will it? We meet Fate at the landing stage, and she will give her decision. Can we unmoor the _Santa Margarita_ from inside the breakwater, or can we not? She will know." He nodded. "In five minutes we, too, shall know. We are circling for the Marina now. A couple of hundred yards and we shall be there!" They strode on into the darkness, with eyes and ears alert. They heard the battling of the waves against the stones of the tiny pier, but what they did not hear was the sound of singing cordage in the felucca's rigging. Aylmer halted with a sudden, muffled exclamation. "They have unshipped the mast!" he cried sharply, and this time she recognized, even in his voice, the note of defeat. She echoed his exclamation; she followed at his heels as he ran out upon the little breakwater. No, there had been no room for mistake. The great mast with its cross spar lay along the stone flags. The hull was snugly berthed alongside it, within the tiny harbor. The dingy? There was none; they had cast it loose when they fled from the torpedo boat through the island channel. For a moment he did not speak. He stood, looking silently at the dismantled boat, the raging sea, the swinging lights of a passing steamer. Then he turned and shook his head.