They could not answer him, their voices were no longer their own; hardly could they see him through their tears, but still they were able to tell him by their gestures that it should be as he desired. After which Gilbert managed to rise to his feet and whisper in Bella's ears, 'He is--going--now. The end is close at hand. Say--say "goodbye" to him, and--and kiss him. He deserves it from you, and--I shall not grudge it.' Then, in his manliness, he turned away from them. Perhaps the dying man guessed what had been said; and, because he knew his hour had come, he opened his eyes for the last time and gazed wistfully at her. 'Goodbye,' he said. 'Farewell.' 'Goodbye. Oh, God! that I should have to say it to you. Goodbye--goodbye, Stephen,' and she stooped down and kissed the cold, white lips of the man who had loved her so. And, next, she put her arm beneath his neck and let his head lie on it, while, amidst the tempest of her sobs, she heard him murmur feebly: 'I loved you--from--the first--moment. I love--you--now.' Then his head turned over on her arm and lay there motionless. * * * * * * The wedding was over, Gilbert Bampfyld and Bella were man and wife, the marriage having taken place at Capetown. While the only difference between the ceremony and that which had been originally intended was that the Archbishop of Capetown joined their hands instead of the Bishop of Bombay doing so. Therefore, at last, these two loving hearts were made happy, and, in spite of all that had threatened both Bella and her lover during the past few months, the future now looked bright and cheerful. Not three days had elapsed since Stephen Charke's death when Gilbert (who, with Bella, sat from sunrise to sunset beneath a clump of cocoa trees on the highest point to which they could attain, he being soon able to reach it quite easily by the aid of his cudgel and owing to the rapid improvement in the sprain he had suffered from) saw a vessel not two miles away from the island. 'And I swear,' he exclaimed, 'one of Her Majesty's cruisers. Look at those yellow funnels, one aft of the other. That's a cruiser right enough. I wonder if it's the _Briseus_.' Then he fell to making every kind of signal which he could devise when unprovided with the means of attracting her attention either by pistol-shot or fire, and in about half an hour they had the joy of seeing one of her cutters manned and lowered, and, a moment later, making for the shore. The cruiser turned out to be the _Clytie_, on her way home from Calcutta to Plymouth, and, even as the cutter fetched the shore, the coxswain recognised Gilbert as an officer with whom he had previously served. Then he furnished him with the intelligence that he was reported dead.