ach. Somewhere there, above or below her,
behind a boulder or inside a crevice, but still hidden from her longing,
feverish eyes, must be the owner of that voice, which once used to
irritate her, but now would make her the happiest woman in Europe, if
only she could locate it.

"Percy! Percy!" she shrieked hysterically, tortured between doubt and
hope, "I am here! Come to me! Where are you? Percy! Percy! . . ."

"It's all very well calling me, m'dear!" said the same sleepy, drawly
voice, "but odd's life, I cannot come to you: those demmed frog-eaters
have trussed me like a goose on a spit, and I am weak as a mouse . . . I
cannot get away."

And still Marguerite did not understand. She did not realise for at
least another ten seconds whence came that voice, so drawly, so dear,
but alas! with a strange accent of weakness and of suffering. There was
no one within sight . . . except by that rock . . . Great God! . . . the
Jew! . . . Was she mad or dreaming? . . .

His back was against the pale moonlight, he was half crouching, trying
vainly to raise himself with his arms tightly pinioned. Marguerite ran
up to him, took his head in both her hands . . . and look straight into
a pair of blue eyes, good-natured, even a trifle amused--shining out of
the weird and distorted mask of the Jew.

"Percy! . . . Percy! . . . my husband!" she gasped, faint with the fulness
of her joy. "Thank God! Thank God!"

"La! m'dear," he rejoined good-humouredly, "we will both do that anon,
an you think you can loosen these demmed ropes, and release me from my
inelegant attitude."

She had no knife, her fingers were numb and weak, but she worked away
with her teeth, while great welcome tears poured from her eyes, onto
those poor, pinioned hands.

"Odd's life!" he said, when at last, after frantic efforts on her part,
the ropes seemed at last to be giving way, "but I marvel whether it has
ever happened before, that an English gentleman allowed himself to be
licked by a demmed foreigner, and made no attempt to give as good as he
got."

It was very obvious that he was exhausted from sheer physical pain, and
when at last the rope gave way, he fell in a heap against the rock.

Marguerite looked helplessly round her.

"Oh! for a drop of water on this awful beach!" she cried in agony,
seeing that he was ready to faint again.

"Nay, m'dear," he murmured with his good-humoured smile, "personally I
should prefer a drop of good French brandy! an