But the nearer surface of the sea flashed into a dazzling distinctness, and Coke dragged him down to the launch. The cruiser had rounded Rat Island, and was devoting one sweeping glance eastward ere she sought her prey in creek or tortuous channel. The men were summoned hastily. Watts and Olsen had been warned to crouch behind the rocks on the crest, while those who remained near the launch were told to hide among the trees or crowd into the small cabin. Movement of any kind was forbidden. There was no knowing who might be astir on the hills, and a sharp eye might note the presence of foreigners in Cotton-Tree Bay. Hozier had not forgotten the risk of detection from the shore, and the vessel was plentifully decorated with greenery. The long, large-leafed vines and vigorous castor-oil plants were peculiarly useful at this crisis. Trailing over the low freeboard into the water, they screened the launch so completely that Watts and the Norwegian, perched high above the creek at a distance of three hundred yards, could only guess her whereabouts when the search-light made the Gomez plantation light as day. The cruiser evidently discovered traces of the _Andromeda_ on Grand-pere. She stopped an appreciable time, and created a flutter in many anxious hearts by a loud hoot of her siren. It did not occur to anyone at the moment that she was signaling to the troops bivouacked on South Point. De Sylva was the first to read this riddle aright. He whispered his belief, and it soon won credence, since the warship continued her scrutiny of the coast-line. At last, after a wearying delay, she vanished. Five minutes later, Watts and Olsen brought the welcome news that she was returning to the roadstead. It was then half-past two o'clock, and the sun would rise soon after five. Now or never the launch must make her effort. Ready hands tore away her disguise, she was tilted by crowding in the poop nearly every man on board, the engines throbbed, and she was afloat. At daybreak the thousand-foot peak of Fernando Noronha was a dark blur on the western horizon. No sail or smudge of smoke broke the remainder of the far-flung circle. The fugitives could breathe freely once more. They were not pursued. Iris fell asleep when assured that the dreaded warship was not in sight. Hozier, too, utterly exhausted by all that he had gone through, slept as if he were dead. Coke, whose iron constitution defied fatigue, though it was with the utmost difficulty that he had walked across the narrow breadth of Fernando Noronha, took the first watch in person. He chatted with the men, surprised them by his candor on the question of compensation, and announced his resolve to make for the three-hundred-mile channel between Fernando Noronha and the mainland.