"Why, we saw her!" exclaimed Eustace. "Mother, that must have been the boat we saw far away out to sea. The captain of the station told us it was theirs."
"They must have picked me up soon after dawn, before the turn of the tide," said Aunt Dorothy. "I think when I came to my senses and saw the kind of people I was among, I was more frightened than I had been even by the wreck. Most of them were black-fellows--the rest I have since discovered were Portuguese; but not a soul in all that uncouth crowd could speak English or understand a word I said."
"It was pretty terrifying," Bob agreed.
"They therefore did not know where I came from, where I wanted to go, or anything about me. I kept imploring them to take me back to land; but this, though they must have understood my signs, they refused to do."
"What brutes!" exclaimed Herbert hotly.
"They are a low-grade lot," said Bob in his quaint Colonial way, "but you know they can only get the beche-de-mer at certain tides.
It would have meant a dead loss to them to have put back, and probably they were working under contract, bound to supply a certain amount at a given time to their Chinkee employers."
"But it was horrid of them," said Nesta, who had recovered herself entirely in the excitement, and was inclined to agree even with Herbert for once.
"It was a real adventure, wasn't it?" Eustace said, appealing to Bob.
"Rather more of one than I bargained for," said Aunt Dorothy. "But in their own rough way the men tried to be kind to me. The food we had was disgusting, the boat dreadfully fishy, oily, and dirty; there was not a possibility of being comfortable day or night. But I have nothing to grumble at. They took me back safe and sound to the beche-de-mer station at last, and there I heard all about you, even to the saving of Peter. All the discomforts and horrors put together were nothing to my suspense about your fates till then."
The rest of the story was simple enough. Finding the Orbans had left Cooktown, Miss Chase instantly communicated with Bob, and together they arranged the plan for the home-coming. Their chief aim was to convey the good news as gently as possible, and they certainly achieved their end.
"I don't know how I could have borne the waiting had you cabled,"
Mrs. Chase said. "I should have suffered agonies imagining fresh accidents that might happen to you all the time."
"Dorothy has become quite an experienced traveller one way and another," said Mr. Chase. "You little thought, my dear, when you set out so gaily from here, what a stormy life you were embarking upon."
"I should think you would be terrified ever to go there again,"
said Brenda.
"On the contrary," said Bob Cochrane, "I hope your aunt will feel encouraged to return before long. What was the compact, Peter? She was to come back and be burnt as a witch, wasn't she?"
"Not yet awhile," said Mr. Chase gravely. "You can't expect us to part with her for some little time to come."
"Of course not, sir," said Bob genially.
And then he and Dorothy just glanced at each other and laughed with a strange kind of joyousness that mystified the Dixons; but Eustace looked hard at Nesta and nodded meaningly.
Bob's face was no longer haggard and drawn; it wore its old, habitual expression of steadfast happiness.
The party did not break up till "disgracefully late," as Mr. Chase put it. Peter was carried by his mother asleep to bed. The twins and the Dixons felt so wide awake they fancied they would not close an eye all night.
Mr. Chase laughed when he heard the story of the Sevres ornament.
"I'm not surprised you were startled," he said kindly; "but please try to have something a little less valuable in your hands next ghost you meet."
"Nesta," said Eustace, following his twin to her door, "what are you going to do now? Shall you tell mother?"
"Tell mother what?" asked Nesta, with well-feigned astonishment.
"Why, that you are miserable, and won't stay, and all that stuff,"
was the reply.
"Of course not, silly," Nesta retorted. "Any one can see everything is going to be quite different now Aunt Dorothy has come."
"Of course, silly," said Eustace, in a mocking tone, and they both laughed.
"Good-night, you two," said a voice along the passage, and Herbert turned off into his own room.
"I'm coming to brush my hair in your room to-night," said Brenda, bearing down upon them, brush and comb in hand.
Eustace passed on.
"It is all different already," he said softly. "I think Bob has been right all along--Aunt Dorothy has bewitched us, every one."
THE END.