It was Rattier who held and shook their hands a hundred times. Rattier, incoherent, swearing, every vestige of his taciturnity ravished from him by emotion, plying them with a thousand questions, raining tears upon little John Aylmer's wondering face. They reached the market square. They looked upon the ruin which covered the devastated earth in the wan light of the slowly coming dawn. Five miles away, swinging at her mooring opposite the ruined port of Messina was a white-hulled boat--a boat which they looked at with wistfully incredulous eyes. They whispered her name. "_The Morning Star?_" they wondered. "_The Morning Star?_" "What else?" cried the commandant, exultantly. "That Spanish torpedo boat--did you think nothing was to be heard from her? You disappeared. Two days later comes the news from Malaga of a felucca, going east with prisoners on board. Would that not induce your father, Mademoiselle, to put two and two together? The Melilla port authorities supplied the name of that felucca and her destination--Sicily. He arrived two days back. I have seen him, we spoke together, and then God knows all our energies and thoughts have been with these poor wretches ashore. Down in Messina your own countrymen and the Russians are doing marvels. The _Diomède_ was the only French ship, alas, in harbor, but we have others coming from Tunis, from Algiers, from Marseilles. We need every worker we can get. What you have suffered thousands are suffering still." Aylmer gave a quick, decided little nod. He looked at Claire. "You will let one of these sailors see you on board?" he said. "Paul will spare one to escort you." She looked at him, startled, a little bewildered, even. "And you?" she asked. "And you?" He made a gesture towards the chaos which covered shore and hill. "Can I leave the work which calls me, knowing what I know?" he asked. "Paul has put my duty into words. What I have suffered, others are suffering yet. Would you think well of me, if I left it?" She looked at him with a smile that told of appreciation, approval, of something (or was hope a lying glass?) more than these. "No!" she said quietly. "No!" She hesitated a moment. "And when I have found my father, eased his mind, delivered to him his grandchild whom he owes to you, rested, made myself strong to work, will you come for me to do my part? Will you come--then?" As the dawn rose over Messina's city of the dead, in John Aylmer's heart rose the dawn of hope fulfilled. Her eyes? What message did they not give? He read it as plainly as he knew he would read it at their next meeting--from her lips. He lifted her hand. His moustache swept it. "Till then, Claire," he whispered. "Till then, Beloved." CHAPTER XXVII SHADOWS GO