"My boy, rays of light from lighthouses are _parallel_!"
I had forgotten this elementary fact. I cried "Eureka!" and then we faced our task: a race against time.
The men streamed up to us, heard, and set to work immediately. We requisitioned the tarpaulin covers from the bags of cement; even emptied the bags themselves. We stripped hundreds of yards of telephone wires in the galleries. We descended to a still lower level; we were all tailors, sailmakers, anything, everything. Some patched holes, while others sewed cover to cover until a sheet, fifty feet square, grew beneath our hands, sewn together with wire, and impervious to a single ray of light.
As the last hole was stilettoed with the point of a bayonet, Gilbert and I sought the upper level. We found the night had fallen. The cold sea breeze tasted like nectar after the candle-burnt atmosphere in the workshop below. Our eyes sought the lighthouse; a couple of men were in the lantern; one held a candle, and was clumsily striving to light the argand burners.
"Good!" cried Gilbert, "they'll smash some glasses, or I'm an idiot. Now for the launch!"
We descended to our workshop. The flushed, wet faces of the screen makers confronted us, and Gilbert spoke.
"We want a volunteer to cross to the other side and clear the wire, and to signal back when ready for us to haul out the screen. It must be one of you from the village, one who knows every stone in the darkness. And one who is not afraid. Who volunteers?"
There was a silence in which we heard the water dripping in far-deep levels. Gilbert looked from face to face; in vain, it seemed. The villagers were, however, weighing the risk of failure. Chloe stepped quietly from the group, and as quietly said: "This is a woman's business; is it not so, Uncle Henrico? Who knows so well as I the rock paths through the lines of the sentinels? And if I meet them--well, I am a woman and I laugh. If I were a man--well, the end of me and our venture."
"'Tis true," growled Henrico, "Chloe must go."
He had hardly spoken before she had given a swift wave of her hand to us, and vanished up the adit.
We followed, dragging our great screen, and presently we peered out into the night. In that little time they had managed to get some at least of the lamps to burn, and now we saw a glowing circle of light. Henrico, Gilbert, and myself alone crept on to the ledge outside. Everything had to be done by touch. Henrico had been a sailor, and to him fell the delicate task of hooking the screen on to the traveling wire. Foot by foot it disappeared overhead, and presently Henrico swarmed back to us and we crept together, and laid our ears on the wire cable. It sang and hummed in the night wind like a harp string. Little jars and metallic jingles broke the even rise and fall of sound. Was it Chloe? Should we hear the signal clear or confused, loud or soft? On a sudden our doubts were settled. Our ears rang as a clear sharp blow quivered on the wire.