On the deck of the white yacht the captain rose to his feet. The battle fought on that huddle of blankets for the life of the man so hardly snatched from the sea had been a close one, but it had been won. His smile of satisfaction overran the group of observant faces at one side, the bishop watching with strained anxiety, and the girl, who pillowed in her arms that unconscious head with its drenched, brown curls.

"Don't you be afraid, Miss Fairfax," he said, with bluff heartiness. "He'll be all right now!"

The assurance came to Barbara's heart with an infinite relief that he could not guess. At the first sight of the huge bird-like thing slipping down the sky she had known the man clinging to its framework was Daunt. The stricken moments while the wreck of the great vanes lay outspread on the water—the launch of the yacht's boat, and the lifting of the limp form over its gunwale—the cruelly kind ministrations that had brought breath back to the inert body—these had seemed to her to consume dragging hours of agony. A thunder of guns roared across the water, but she scarcely heard. Her eyes were fixed on the face to which the tide of life was returning.

Again the roar, and now the sound pierced the saturating darkness. It called the numbed senses back to the sphere of feeling—to a consciousness of an immense weariness and a gentle motion. It seemed to Daunt as though his head rested on a pillow which rose and fell to an irregular rhythm. He stirred. His eyes opened.

Memory dawned across them. Haru's story—the windy flight on the Glider—the sick sense of failure—the plunge down, and down, and the water leaping toward him! Had he failed? A third time the detonation rang out. He started, made an effort to rise. His gaze swept the sea. There, flags flying, bands playing, a line of Dreadnaughts was steaming down the harbor.

"The battle-ships!" he said, and there was triumph in his eyes.

He turned his head and saw the bishop, the silent crew, the relieved countenance of the captain. Realization came to him. Soft arms were about him; the pillow that rose and fell was a woman's heaving breast! His gaze lifted, and Barbara's eyes flowed into his. He put out a hand weakly and whispered her name.

She did not speak, but in that look a glory enfolded him. It was not womanly pity in her face—it was far, far more, something wordless, but eloquent, veiled, yet passionately tender. He knew suddenly that after the long night had come the morning, after the pain and the misunderstanding all would be well.

For an instant he closed his eyes, smiling. The darkness was gone for ever. His head was on her heart, and it was her dear arms that were lifting him up, into the sunlight, the sunlight, the sunlight!