The wind had freshened, and the _Domain_ was making a good eight knots. Not a cloud was to be seen in the star-spangled sky, nor a sail on the sea line, nor a sign now of the island.
The atoll island does not show up well at night. It is less an island than a kink in the sea over which a vessel may trip just as a man trips over a kink in a carpet, and, looking back now as Cardon was looking, nothing could be seen of the shore they had left.
Till suddenly Cardon drew in his breath, clutched the after rail, and stood motionless and gazing at a pale orange-colored glow marking the sky on the sea line they were leaving.
Even as he watched the glow deepened in color to an angry red.
A great fire was in progress over there. One might have fancied that the whole of Pearl Island had caught alight and was blazing like a torch in the wind. But Cardon knew better. He knew that what he was watching was the destruction of the _Southern Cross_.
When he had seen Schumer going down into the hold with the light he had guessed what was forward. Schumer had fired the vessel, and then, to make sure, he had gone into the fo'c'sle with Luckman to fire her in a fresh place.
The fire had proclaimed itself now, and Schumer and his companion, bottled up in the fo'c'sle, would by this be beyond praying for.
Cardon had said nothing to Floyd of his suspicions, and now as he watched them verified he determined to keep the matter still to himself.
There was no use in troubling the mind of Floyd. As for his own mind, he was not in the least troubled.
What Schumer had prepared for another he was receiving himself, and Cardon was not the man to pity a traitor and a murderer or to quarrel with the justice of fate.
But it was strange beyond imagination to watch that steady, silent, distant glow, knowing what it meant.
He watched it increasing to a certain point and decrease to a certain point. Of a sudden, with a heave and flicker, it went out, and the stars burned clear where the glow had been.
The _Southern Cross_ had sunk at her anchorage, and Cardon, turning away, left the deck and came down to the cabin where Floyd and the girl were seated.
Some three weeks later the _Domain_ cast anchor in Sydney harbor, and Cardon, after the port authorities and the health officer had been on board, took a shore boat for the quay. Floyd and Isbel did not accompany him. He was going to interview Hakluyt, and he judged that he would do the business better if he did it alone.