"It is the risk for you I think of—if I fail," the prisoner exclaimed. "If I had only myself to consider I should hesitate no longer."
"We have come a long, long way to you," Virginia's eyes said; and her lips would have added something had not George's hand fallen suddenly in warning on her shoulder. "Somebody is coming," he whispered. "For all our sakes, don't fail us, Dalahaide. We shall look for you to-night—there," and he nodded toward the water. "Make your way to the beach and hide among the rocks till you see our little boat. Don't take to the water—remember the sharks. If you're not there to-night, we'll hang about till the next."
"We'll wait till you come, if we wait a year," said Virginia.
There was time for no more. The Commandant, with Roger Broom by his side, appeared round the corner of the winding path near by.
"Well, mademoiselle, have we given you time to finish your interview, and has it been satisfactory?" asked the old Frenchman good-naturedly.
"You have given us just enough time, and it has been most satisfactory, thank you," the girl answered. "I hope," she added, "to make the very best use of it later." And again her eyes met those of the statue that she had waked to life.
CHAPTER IX
A CRY ACROSS THE WATER
It was night in the harbour of Noumea; a night of pitiless, white, revealing moonlight which sharpened the black outline of every shadow, and made the whitewashed wall of each low house gleam like mother-o'-pearl. Had there been no secret business on foot, Virginia Beverly's beauty-loving soul would have been on its knees in worship of the scene as she sat on the deck of the yacht, which seemed not to float in water, but to hang suspended in the transparent, mingling azure of sea and sky. To her the moon was an enemy, cruel and terrible. She would have given her right hand for a dark curtain cloud to be drawn across that blazing lamp and the scintillating stars reflected in the water like sequins shining through blue gauze.