they knew, the winter moon was walking the untroubled sea. Long
ruled lines of silver showed where a ripple of the rising tide was
turning over the mud-banks. The wind had dropped, and in the intense
stillness they could hear a donkey cropping the frosty grass many yards
away. A faint beating, like that of a muffled drum, came out of the
moon-haze.

'What's that?' said Maisie, quickly. 'It sounds like a heart beating.

Where is it?'

Dick was so angry at this sudden wrench to his pleadings that he could
not trust himself to speak, and in this silence caught the sound. Maisie
from her seat under the gun watched him with a certain amount of fear.

She wished so much that he would be sensible and cease to worry her with
over-sea emotion that she both could and could not understand. She was
not prepared, however, for the change in his face as he listened.

'It's a steamer,' he said,--'a twin-screw steamer, by the beat. I can't
make her out, but she must be standing very close in-shore. Ah!' as the
red of a rocket streaked the haze, 'she's standing in to signal before
she clears the Channel.'

'Is it a wreck?' said Maisie, to whom these words were as Greek.

Dick's eyes were turned to the sea. 'Wreck! What nonsense! She's only
reporting herself. Red rocket forward--there's a green light aft now,
and two red rockets from the bridge.'

'What does that mean?'

'It's the signal of the Cross Keys Line running to Australia. I wonder
which steamer it is.' The note of his voice had changed; he seemed to
be talking to himself, and Maisie did not approve of it. The moonlight
broke the haze for a moment, touching the black sides of a long steamer
working down Channel. 'Four masts and three funnels--she's in deep
draught, too. That must be the Barralong, or the Bhutia. No, the Bhutia
has a clopper bow. It's the Barralong, to Australia. She'll lift the
Southern Cross in a week,--lucky old tub!--oh, lucky old tub!'

He stared intently, and moved up the slope of the fort to get a better
view, but the mist on the sea thickened again, and the beating of the
screws grew fainter. Maisie called to him a little angrily, and he
returned, still keeping his eyes to seaward. 'Have you ever seen the
Southern Cross blazing right over your head?' he asked. 'It's superb!'

'No,' she said shortly, 'and I don't want to. If you think it's so
lovely, why don't you go and see it yourself?'

She raised her face from the soft blackness of the mart