The picture of the small brigantine, fighting for existence, had graved itself in her memory.

With its crew so near death, it had been the only thing within sight that suggested human life after Marcello was gone.

The utter impossibility of a man's swimming out through the raging sea that broke upon the bar was nothing compared with Aurora's inward conviction that the little vessel had borne away the secret of his disappearance.

And she had not been wrecked: Aurora knew that, for a wreck anywhere on the Roman shore would have been spoken of at once.

They are unfortunately common enough, and since her childhood Aurora had more than once seen a schooner's masts sticking up out of the treacherous water a cable's length from the shore.