ys came and went with monotonous regularity.
According to the notches on Grace's shell calendar, which she had made
carefully with each rising and setting of the sun, they were now well on
toward the end of September. Three long months had gone by since that
terrible night when the hurricane drove the ill-fated _Atlanta_ on the
reef.

Would a ship never come? This question Grace had asked herself almost
hourly until gradually the belief came firmly rooted in her mind that
they would never be rescued, that she was doomed to spend the rest of
her life in this unknown, out of the way island, her grief-stricken
parents believing that she had been drowned when the _Atlanta_ went
down. If any of the survivors reached land, as she supposed some of them
did, the news would have been instantly cabled to America, and her name
would be listed among the missing. No doubt her father had long given
her up for dead. It would never occur for him to come in search of her.
Nor was there much chance of a passing vessel ever seeing the smoke from
the signal-fire. As Armitage had said, they were probably hundreds of
miles out of the shipping track. In all probability no human being had
ever set foot on that islet before.

Yet she never quite lost courage. Each day she made her weary pilgrimage
to the summit of Mount Hope and eagerly scanned the horizon. Only
disappointment awaited her. There was never anything in sight to bring
joy to her heart.

They kept the big signal-fire going just the same. Night and day it
burned, sending its flaming message of distress over the vast waste of
heaving waters. It was never permitted to die down. Fresh fuel was piled
on until the flames leaped high in the air or the thick black smoke went
curling up in a long, straight column to the sky. Either the smoke or
the blaze must be seen miles away at sea. Any moment some ship might
turn out of her course and come to investigate.

Otherwise they seldom discussed the chances of rescue. By mutual consent
it seemed to be a tabooed topic. Armitage never failed in his
self-appointed task; he kept the fire going with a plentiful supply of
driftwood, but that was all. He never voluntarily mentioned the
signal-fire or the prospects of getting away, and intuitively she knew
that it was a subject that was distasteful to him. If he took the pains
to keep up the fire, he did it for her sake. She understood that, and
she was mutely grateful to him for it. In return, she