“And you would have killed Thandar,” he shrieked. “Thandar, who saved my life!”
And then he fell to kicking the prostrate man until Thandar himself was forced to intercede in the wretch’s behalf.
With the coming of Tsao Ming the troubles of the prisoners evaporated in thin air, for when he found that the owner of the Priscilla was Thandar’s father he restored the yacht and all the loot that his men had taken from it to their rightful owners. Nor would he have stopped there had they permitted him to have his way, which was no less than to behead half a dozen of his unfortunate lieutenants who had been overzealous in the performance of their piratical duties.
Tsao Ming’s picturesque villains replenished the water casks of the Priscilla and carried aboard her a sufficient stock of provisions to insure her company a plentiful table to Honolulu, the port they had chosen as their first stop.
And when the preparations were completed a dozen piratical prahus escorted the white yacht a hundred miles upon her northward journey, firing a farewell salute with volley after volley from the little, brass six-pounders in their bows.
As the tiny fleet diminished to mere specks astern, disappearing beneath the southern horizon, a white flanneled man with close cropped blonde hair, and a slender, black haired girl in simple shirt waist and duck skirt watched them from the deck of the Priscilla.
An involuntary sigh escaped the lips of each, and they turned and looked into one another’s eyes.
“We are leaving a cruel world that has been kind to us,” said the man, “for with all its cruelties it gave us each other and reunited us when we were separated.”
“Will civilization be more kind?” asked the girl.
Thandar shook his head.
“I do not know,” he replied.
XIII
Homeward Bound
At Honolulu Waldo Emerson Smith-Jones and Nadara were married. Before the ceremony there had been some discussion as to what name should be used in describing Nadara in the formal contract.
“Nadara” alone seemed too brief and meaningless to the precise Mrs. Smith-Jones; but Waldo Emerson and the girl insisted that it was her name and all-sufficient. So, in lieu of another name, it was finally decided by all that “Nadara” could not be legally improved upon.
Prior to the ceremony, which took place on board the Priscilla, Mr. and Mrs. John Alden Smith-Jones, Captain Cecil Burlinghame, several invited guests from amongst officials and friends in Honolulu, and the crew of the Priscilla presented gifts to the bride.
Captain Burlinghame in presenting his proffered a few words in explanation of it.
“To you, Nadara,” he said, “these trinkets will hold a deeper meaning and a greater value than to another, for they come from your own forgotten island, where they lay for twenty years until, by chance, I picked them up close by the sea. The poor lady to whom they once belonged you never knew—it is quite possible that she never was upon your savage coast—and how her jewels came there must always remain a mystery. But two things you hold in common with her, for she was a lady and she was very beautiful.”
He held toward Nadara in his open palm a little worn bag of the skins of small rodents, sewn together with bits of gut. At sight of it both the girl and Waldo Emerson exclaimed in astonishment.
Nadara took the bag wonderingly in her hands and dumped the contents into her palm. Waldo pressed forward.
“Did you know to whom those belonged?” he asked Burlinghame.
“To Eugénie Marie Céleste de la Valois, Countess of Crecy,” replied the captain.
“They belonged to Nadara’s mother,” returned Waldo. “Her foster parents were present at her birth and took these jewels from the poor woman’s body after she had passed away. She was washed ashore in a boat in which there was only a dead man beside herself—Nadara was born that night.”
And so, when the clergyman had performed the marriage ceremony he entered upon the certificate in the space provided there for the name of the woman: Nadara de la Valois.
And they are living in Boston now in a wonderful home that you have seen if you ever have been to Boston and been driven about in one of those great sightseeing motor busses, for the place is pointed out to all visitors because of the beauty of its architecture and the fame that attaches to the historic and aristocratic name of its owner, which, as it happens, is not Smith-Jones at all.
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The Cave Girl
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