"No, no," she whispered. "Not any more ... never any more."
"Alix," I whispered low, and I held her closer. She gave a little cry.
For answer her head lay quiet on my shoulder, and the stars looked down upon a pale sweet face. She had fainted. Now the hand which clasped her arm felt warm and wet, and I shifted it hastily and bent down to her. It was blood. She was wounded. Tenderly I bound my handkerchief about the arm and waited in distress for her to revive. If we had only some of the mutineers' brandy! But presently she opened her eyes.
"Dearest ... dearest," she murmured faintly.
"You are wounded, darling," I said. "Oh, why did you not tell me?"
"It was the first shot," she said in a drowsy voice. "When--when I had my arm about you."
I kissed that fair white arm, and then for the first time I kissed her lips.
We reached Legrand's cave after Alix had rested, and I related the tragedy that had passed under my eyes on the beach below. Legrand listened silently, and then:
"He was a black scoundrel. He died as he should," he said shortly, and said no more.
Wearied with our exertions, and exhausted by the anxieties of the day, we gradually sank to sleep, and as I passed off Alix's hand lay in mine. She slept sweetly, for all the profound miseries of those past days.
I awoke to the sound of a bird that twittered in the bushes, and, emerging from the cavern, looked around. The sun was bright on the water, the foam sparkled, and the blue tossed and danced as if Nature were revisiting happily the scene of pleasant memories. It seemed as if those deeds of the previous night, that long fight against fate, those dismal forebodings, the tragedy of the Prince, were all separated from us by a gulf of years. It was almost impossible to conceive of them as belonging to our immediate precedent past and as colouring our present and our future. And as my gaze swept the horizon for the orient towards the west it landed upon nothing less than the _Sea Queen_!
I could have rubbed my eyes, and I started in amazement. My heart beat heavily. But it was true. There rode the yacht in the offing, idly swinging and plunging on the tide and clearly under no man's control. She must have drifted in upon Hurricane Island again through the stress of some backward tide, and here she bobbed on the broken water safe from the eyes of the mutineers. As soon as I had recovered from the shock of surprise, I reëntered the cavern and woke Legrand, and in less than five minutes all of us were outside our shelter and gazing at the welcome sight.