This reminder sent Billy downstairs almost as rapidly as he had come up. Captain Saulsby had been struggling to leave his couch again, but so firmly had Sally wrapped him up in blankets that he had only just succeeded in getting free of them and so had managed to do himself no harm. He was very querulous in his complaints when they laid him back upon the pillows, but submitted rather more meekly than before.
There followed a wait; it would have been hard for them to tell whether it lasted the half of an hour, or for five whole ones. The black shadows outside turned slowly to grey, the moonlight faded and disappeared, a fresh wind began to blow the fog away in shore. Somewhere out yonder in the woods a bird began to sing, offering them their first hope that the night with its desperate anxieties and terrors was at last giving place to day. Billy went to the window and threw it open so that Sally too, from her place beside Captain Saulsby, might hear the promise of the dawn.
The door pushed open and there came slowly in the bluejacket whom Billy had last seen signalling on the beach, a target for the stranger’s rifle.
