ou have a chance to be a free man--even if not a happy man--to stay
here, and let your enemy, who sent you to this place, laugh and think how
his plot against you has succeeded?"

The dreamy look of weary resignation on Maxime Dalahaide's face changed
to alertness. "Why do you speak of an enemy, and a plot against me?" he
asked. "That poor girl was murdered; but I have never thought that she
was killed because her murderer wished to involve me. That part was an
accident. Liane Devereux----"

"Is not dead," broke in Virginia. "She is on our yacht now, in the
harbour of Noumea. When you come, and she sees you, she will confess the
whole plot."

"But I saw her lying dead--a thousand times that sight has been before my
eyes."

"It was not she. If you want to know all, to fathom the whole mystery,
and learn how to prove your own innocence, you will not refuse to do what
we ask."

Maxime's thin face no longer looked like a carving in old ivory. The
statue had come to life. The spring of hope had begun to stir in his
veins. "If it were possible to prove it--at this late day!" he exclaimed.
"But even if it were--you forget the tremendous difficulties in the way
of escape. How could I reach your yacht? It could not come near enough to
shore here to pick me up; even a small boat would be seen----"

"Not at night," said Virginia.

"Remember, it is moonlight. The night will be like day. Long before a
small boat could reach the yacht from the beach she would be followed,
overtaken, and not only should I be brought back, but I should have the
misery of knowing that I had been the cause of bringing my brave friends
into trouble. They would fire upon us. If I were killed it would matter
little enough; but if you were to be shot----" He spoke to George Trent,
but his eyes moved quickly to Virginia's face.

"My sister would be waiting for us on board the _Bella Cuba_," said
Trent. "Roger Broom and I will take jolly good care of ourselves--and of
you, too, if you'll only give us a chance."

"If you'd come here a month ago," sighed the prisoner, "before I got this
wound in my back! Now I'm afraid it's too late. I've let myself go. I
thought I saw the one door of escape for me opening--death; and instead
of turning my back I walked toward it. I've let my strength down. I
haven't eaten or slept much, and I began to have a pleasant feeling of
slipping easily out with the tide. Now there's an incentive to stop, the
tide's too strong