The Beautiful White Devil Part 35

Keeping Alie and Janet by my side I descended to the boat allotted to us and we took our seats in the stern. By the time we had pulled to a distance of about a hundred yards, the deck of the yacht was level with the water. Five minutes later the gallant but ill-fated _Lone Star_ tipped up on end, gave a sullen plunge, and disappeared beneath the waves to be no more seen by mortal man. I slipped my arm round Alie's waist and drew her closer to my side. She was trembling violently.

"Be brave, dear love," I whispered. "For all our sakes, be brave."

She turned her head in the direction where the poor yacht had disappeared and said, almost under her breath:

"Good-bye, _Lone Star_, good-bye."

Then she stooped forward and buried her face in her hands.

To divert her thoughts, I turned to the boat nearest us, which was commanded by Patterson, and asked what he thought we had better do.

"Sail up the coast as fast as we can," he answered. "My boat will take the lead, the rest had better follow in single file. If this wind holds we shall fetch the settlement, or be somewhere thereabouts, by daybreak."

The wind _did_ hold and we _did_ make the settlement by the time he specified. Then pa.s.sing behind the great doors which, as I have said before, concealed the entrance to the ca.n.a.l so cleverly that even from the close distance of a mile I had not been able to detect where the imitation began and the real cliff ended, we pulled inside. Then, to cheer us, standing before them all, I unbared my head, and cried, perhaps a trifle theatrically:

"Gentlemen! the queen has come back to her own again!"

As the cheers that greeted my announcement died away we left the ca.n.a.l and entered the little landlocked harbour.

L'ENVOI.

Three years have pa.s.sed since the wreck of the schooner _Lone Star_, and to-day is the third anniversary of our return to the settlement.

It is a lovely morning, and I am sitting in the verandah of our bungalow on the hillside, pen in hand, waiting for a step whose music grows every day more welcome to my ears. My patience is rewarded when a woman, to whose beauty Time has but added, turns the corner, closely followed by an enormous white bull-dog, and comes towards me. When she reaches me she sets down the rosy toddling infant she carries in her arms, and, taking a seat beside me, says:

"What news had you by the mail this morning, my husband?"

"Nothing of very much moment, Alie," I answer. "The negotiations in England are still proceeding, and Brandwon confidently hopes, in view of certain considerations, that he will be able to carry out his plans and win a free pardon for a certain beautiful lady of my acquaintance."

"Then it is all as satisfactory as we could wish?" she says. "I am thankful for that! And now I have some news for you!"

"Are you going to tell me that I am the happiest husband in the world?

or that that boy, playing with old Bel yonder, whom we both wors.h.i.+p a good deal more than is good for him, is being spoiled by the entire population of the settlement?"

"Neither of those things! No, it has to do with your sister Janet."

"Ah! then I can guess. She is so enraptured with the settlement that she is willing to prolong her stay indefinitely."

"How did you guess?"

"Have I not eyes, my wife? You don't mean to tell me that you think you alone have seen the outrageous court Walworth has been paying her these six months past?"

"You have no objection, I hope?"

"Not the very slightest. She is a good woman, if ever there was one, and he is certainly a man after my own heart. If they marry and are destined to be as happy as we are, then they'll be lucky people; that's all I can say, my wife."

"Can you truthfully affirm that you have never regretted giving up so much for me?"

"Regretted! How can you ask me such a question? No, my darling; rest a.s.sured, if there is one thing for which I am grateful to Providence it is----"

Here I placed my arm round her neck and drew her lovely head down to me.

"What is it?" she whispered.

"That I was permitted to be the husband of the Beautiful White Devil."

THE END.