it was good to know that she would see no
more of that terrible land of beauty and despair.

She shut her eyes comfortably, and was on the way to the more welcome
land of sleep when the boom of the gun, which had wakened Lady Gardiner,
roused her from her lotus mood of soft forgetfulness--the greatest joy
which she could ever know.

Her brain was dazed with the liquor and the drug she had taken, and she
was utterly unable to comprehend the tumult and confusion which followed.

Kate Gardiner had a clue to the mystery which the Countess de Mattos did
not possess. The Portuguese beauty had no means of guessing what had
brought the _Bella Cuba_ to Noumea. She had never heard any one on board
speak the name of Dalahaide, or that of any convict imprisoned at New
Caledonia, and the firing between the yacht and the French boat suggested
nothing to her but horror.

She, too, was afraid, half-stunned with fear, and she was angry with
herself now for having taken the absinthe and chlorodyne, because they
prevented her from thinking clearly--the very thing which, a short time
ago, she had wished not to do. At first she lay still, burying her head
in the pillows; then she murmured prayers to more than one saint, for she
was an ardent Catholic; and at last, unable to bear the suspense and
isolation any longer, she threw open the stateroom door and ran out into
the cabin.

No one was there; but above the sound of trampling overhead she thought
she could distinguish voices, and Virginia Beverly's was among them. If
Virginia were on deck, the Countess said in her mind, it would be well
for her to be there too.

CHAPTER XI

VIRGINIA'S GREAT MOMENT

She went up on deck, moving dazedly, with a strange sense of unreality
upon her, as if she had somehow wandered into a cold, dim world of
dreams.

The firing had ceased, and the yacht was no longer in motion. The
confused whirlwind of brain-shaking events which revolved in her memory
might now have been a part of the dream in which she was still entangled.
The Countess de Mattos's beautiful eyes swept the moon-drenched scene for
enlightenment, but none came.

They were not now in the harbour, that alone was clear; but land was
close, and black horns of rock stood up out of the shining water as if
they had broken through a great sheet of looking-glass. Across this
bright, mirror-like surface a small boat was being quickly rowed toward
the yacht. It was very near now, and se