“It was all hands again, gentlemen. The hurricane had settled down into a moderate gale from northeast, though it was some time before the awfully confused sea got to roll regularly. Then we judged ourselves––for reckoning and observation had been out of the question––to be a long way south of Jamaica, and even to the southward of the great Pedro Bank. We did not wait this time for the pirate to lead us in getting ready for a race, but we got up a bran-new suit of top-sails and courses out of the sail-room, and, so soon as the men could go aloft with safety, they were ordered not to unbend the few tattered rags still clinging to the yards, but to cut away at once. Up went the top-sails and courses, and they were soon brought to the yards and set close-reefed, with a storm-jib to steady the ship forward. Presently we gave her the whole fore-sail and main-sail, and I think that even then, for some hours, but one half the corvette’s upper works could have been visible as she plunged through the angry heaving seas.

“Thus we went on, the sea getting more regular every hour, so that we could send up the top-gallant masts, get the yards across, shake a reef or two out, and put the ‘Scourge’ in order. The schooner needed no encouragement from us, but cracked on more sail until her long main-mast reeled and bent over, as she came up on the breaking ridge of a wave, like a whip-stalk. By noon the clouds had gone, and left us a clear sky, with the gale going down into a full top-gallant breeze, sending the corvette along good eleven knots. We got an observation for latitude, and five hours later we determined the longitude and our position to be a few leagues to leeward of the Sarrana Keys, with that bird of a schooner before us heading for the Musquito coast.

“If we had caught a cataract of water as it rolled over our bows in the morning, the schooner was taking her bath in the afternoon, for occasionally, for five minutes at a time, there was nothing seen of her deck, and only the masts and broad white canvas above, like jury-sticks out of a raft. But when she did slide up with her low, long hull shooting clean out of water, till nearly half her keel, with the copper sheathing flashing in the sun, was visible, she looked like a dolphin making a spring after a shoal of flying-fish. And then on her narrow deck we could see a few fellows lashed about the fore-mast, and a couple more abaft steering her like a thread through a needle.

“We began to gain upon her now, and whenever she kept a little away before the wind the gap between us closed more rapidly; for the ship could evidently outcarry the schooner, and, had the breeze freshened and the sea kept up, we could have run her under if her masts didn’t go out of her, as we hoped and expected every minute they would. Gradually, however, she watched her chance and hauled up till she brought the wind barely abeam, and steered true for the Musketeers––a bad cluster of low keys nearly surrounded by as terrible ledges and reefs as any to be found in the Caribbean Sea.

“‘Yes, sir,’ he replied, ‘so long as we have a gun and a plank to float it!’

“And, by Saint Paul! we kept on. And there was not a soul on board the ‘Scourge,’ from the drummer-boy up, who did not agree with the captain. How those villains on board the pirate relished this decision we could only surmise; but, at all risks, he held his course with a nerve that might have made the devil himself shudder.

“By this time the sun was well down, and a brilliant moon was riding high in the heavens; but, as bright as it was, the fellow who commanded that schooner required an eye as keen as an albatross and a hand as steady as an iron bar to guide his craft in the direction he was going––too late for either of us to think of hauling off.

“He must, too, have had a thorough knowledge of the reefs and keys, and trusted, perhaps, if he got clear himself, that the corvette, drawing eighteen feet water and ignorant of the channel, might touch something which would throw the game in his hands. Our men had the ropes stretched along the decks and the battery clear on both sides, so as to be ready to wear, or tack, or fire, as our pilot ahead might require.

“The reefs were to leeward of the string of low keys, which made the water comparatively smooth, though the wind still swept strongly over us and sang through the rigging; and it was here the ‘Centipede’ entered, going like wild pigeons the pair of us. The outer reef had a fair, deep passage, and so had the next; but the inner one presented but one narrow gateway, scarcely wide enough for a ship to scrape through, with the whole reef one uninterrupted fringe of black pointed rocks and roaring white breakers, which toppled over, and boiled and eddied like a thousand whirlpools into the smoother water inshore.

“As the ‘Centipede’s’ stern gave a sharp pitching jerk when she entered this boiling gorge, we saw, in the moonlight, her head-yards laid square, the fore and aft sails flowing in the sheets as she fell off with wide wings and the wind on her quarter, and flew down inside the reef.

“There, Hardy!” exclaimed the commodore, “I am tired of talking; suppose you take up the thread of the yarn. Domino, another bottle of tinta!”

Piron turned his gaze toward the first lieutenant, moved away the full glasses of wine, which he had never raised to his lips since the commodore began, and, resting his bloodless cheek on his other hand, listened.

“It’s vera interesting indeed.” “Tear an’ ages, boy! Fire away!” quoth the Scotchman and his Milesian crony in a breath.

Hardy threw his arm over the shoulder of Harry Darcantel as if it was a pleasant Corinthian column to lean upon, and breaking off the ashes of his cigar on the rim of a wine-glass which he had specially devoted to that purpose, he forthwith began:

“I am quite confident, gentlemen, that I can not describe what afterward took place so well as Commodore Cleveland, but, at all events, I’ll do my best. Nor do I remember very distinctly the events of the night after we got out of the Musketeers Keys; for I was pretty well fagged out myself, and all of us who had the watch below turned in to take the first wink of sleep we could catch for forty hours.

“I remember, also, that two or three of the officers and half a hundred of the sailors were very anxious to pitch shot at the chase from the long eighteen in the weather bridle port; but the captain refused, and said we might lose a cable’s length or two in yawing off to fire, and it would be better to save the powder until we could slam a broadside into him. But all the while that ‘Centipede’ was handled and steered in such a thorough seamanlike manner, and proved herself such a beautiful sea-boat, that I doubt if there was a man on board the ‘Scourge’ who would not have given a year’s pay to have taken her whole, and only expended a spare top-mast studding-sail halliards for the necks of her crew.

“From the top-gallant forecastle we could see every thing that took place on the schooner’s deck: sometimes a lot of fellows forward reeving some fresh gear, peering about the low bowsprit, or putting on a seizing to a traveler on the jib-stay; with a chap or two aloft stitching a chafing-mat on the lee backstays; and then aft a man shinning up the main shrouds with a tin pot hung around his neck, greasing the jaws of the main gaff, and twitching a wrinkle out of the gaff-top-sail, so that it would lie as flat as this dining-room table set on end.

“But always, from the very first moment we descried her––before the hurricane and afterward––there were two fellows abaft by the taffrail. One a large fat man, in a long dark dress, who appeared at times to be leaning over the rail as if he were sea-sick; and the other a spare, tall-built fellow, who sat there with a quadrant in his hands and smoking cigars, measuring the distance between the two vessels as if he were a government surveyor, and especially appointed to make a hydrographical chart of the Caribbean Sea. Occasionally, too, we could see him approach the binnacle, spread a chart on the deck at his feet, examine it closely with a pair of dividers in his hands, and then he would return to his seat on the taffrail, cigar in his mouth and quadrant to his eye as before.

“Nor were we idle on board the ‘Scourge;’ for when the breeze lulled we slacked up the lower rigging and stays, got down all extra weight and hamper from the tops, sent the watch below to the berth-deck with a round shot apiece in their hammocks, moved a couple of carronades about the spar-deck till we got the ship in the best sailing trim, and then we went skipping and springing through the water with the elasticity of an India-rubber ball.

“The next morning and all the day there was no change to speak of in our respective positions. The ‘Centipede’ went skimming on over the water with every thread of canvas she could spread, reeling over on her side at times when the breeze freshened, while the spray flashed up joyously and sparkled in the sun, leaving a bubbling current of foam in her wake, which, before it had been entirely lost in the regular waves of the sea, the corvette’s sharp bows would plunge into, and again make it flash high up to her fore-yard, and then go seething, and hissing, and kissing her black sides until it rippled around her rudder and was lost again in the wake astern.

“And all the time that man sat with a cigar in his mouth on the pirate’s taffrail, while Commodore Cleveland there stood with a spy-glass to his eye on the poop of the ‘Scourge.’

“You may imagine, gentlemen,” continued Hardy, as he again knocked the ashes off his cigar, “that going to sea is attended with some few discomforts, such as battening down the hatches in a sirocco in the Mediterranean off Tripoli; a simoom in the China Seas; a bitter northwest gale off Barnegat, with the rigging and sails frozen as hard as an iceberg; but if a man can catch forty winks of sleep once in a while, whether in a hammock, or on an oak carronade slide with the breech of a gun for a pillow, he may manage to weather through it. But from the moment we first saw that pirate till we saw the last of him, neither the first lieutenant of the ‘Scourge’ nor the commander of the ‘Centipede’ once closed their eyes, unless––well, I won’t anticipate.”

Piron reached over his hand and shook that of his friend Cleveland convulsively.

“Vera weel, mon! vera weel!” “He’s the very man to do it!” said Stewart and Burns to Stingo, nodding backward at the commodore.

Another striking contrast to the hand-shaking, virtuous compact between Captain Brand and his friend, the pious padre Ricardo! I wonder if they are shaking hands now! Probably not.

“The sun went down again in a fiery blaze, and with its last ray there slowly rose to the main truck of the pirate a swallow-tailed black flag, with a white skull and cross-bones in the dark field. It fluttered for a moment out straight and clear, and then twisted itself around the thin mast, never more to be released by hands or halliards! That was the last glimpse those pirates ever caught of the murderous symbol they had so often fought and sailed under; and it was the last sun that a good many aching eyes ever looked upon who were sailing there in that half league of blue water. The moon, however, was riding bright and beaming, as clear as a bell, overhead, and that was all the light we cared for. The ‘Centipede,’ no doubt, would have preferred no moon at all, with a cloudy sky and a bit of a rain squall, to pursue the intricate navigation before her; but Heaven arranged the atmospheric scenery otherwise.

“‘By the deep eight!’ sang out the leadsman in the port chains. ‘The mark five!’ came from the opposite side. ‘Another cast, lads––quick!’ ‘And a half four!’ ‘Six fathoms, sir!’

“‘We must have stirred up the sand, Cleveland,’ said the captain; but even as he spoke the man in the starboard chains cried, ‘Three fathoms, sir!’ and while each instant we expected the ship to bring up all standing, and the masts to go by the board, the other leadsman sung out, joyfully, ‘No bottom with the line, sir!’

“Well, we were safely through that bed of coral, doing, no doubt, some trifling damage to the tender shoots and branches, as we flew through a narrow channel, with the waves breaking and moaning on the sandy shores over the keys, out into deep water again.

“Four or five miles beyond stood out a bluff rock, looking in the moonlight like a dozing lion with his paws crossed before him, ready to bound upon any who should approach his lair in the dense jungle of pines and tangled thickets which stood up like a bristling mane on the ridge behind.

“‘Now for it, Cleveland! You take the battery, and I’ll look out for the ship!’

“Then, gentlemen,” said Hardy, with unusual animation, as he waved his right arm aloft with an imaginary cutlass swinging over his head, “came the word ‘Fire!’

“Yes, the entire starboard broadside, round shot, grape, and canister, all pointed toward a centre, were delivered with one simultaneous shock––the hurricane a mere cat’s-paw in comparison––which shook the corvette as if she had struck a rock, while the smoke and sheets of flame spouted out from the cannon, half hiding the black torrent which gushed forth from so many hoarse throats; and as the roar of the concussion was taken up in terrible echoes from the lion on the rock, a peppering volley of musket-balls from the marines on the poop and forecastle made a barking tenor to the music.

“Meanwhile the helm of the ‘Scourge’ was hove hard down, and as she just swirled, by a miracle, clear of the ledge under our lee, and came up to the wind with the sails slamming and banging hard enough to send the canvas out of the bolt-ropes, the courses were clewed up, every thing aloft came down by the run; anchor after anchor went plunging to the bottom, and before the cables had fairly begun to fly out of the hawse-holes with their infernal jar and rattle, high above the sounds of flapping sails, snapping blocks, running chains, and what not, came another clear order, ‘Fire!’

“‘O Madre! Madre dolorosa!’

“This, gentlemen, was the last sound that came from the piratical schooner ‘Centipede.’”

When Hardy had concluded his part of the tale, he stuck the stump of his cigar into the wine-glass of ashes, as if he had no farther use for either, moistened his throat with a bumper of tinta, and almost unconsciously passed his left arm around Harry Darcantel’s neck.

Stingo drank two bumpers, as if he had a particularly parched throat; but Paddy Burns and Tom Stewart, strange to relate, never wet their lips, and passed their hands in a careless way across their eyes, as if there were moisture enough there––as, indeed, there was; feeling, as they did, in the founts of their own generous natures, for their dear friend who sat opposite.

Piron’s head rested, face downward, on his outspread hands, and a few drops trickled through his close-pressed fingers, but they were not wine. And as he raised his head and looked around the board, where glowing, sympathizing eyes met his, he said, in a low, subdued voice,

“I trust I may thank Heaven for avenging the murder of our child!”

Even as he uttered these words, his gaze rested on the face of Darcantel; and striking the table with a blow that made the glasses jingle, he started back, as he had done on the frigate’s quarter-deck, and exclaimed,

“Great God! can it be possible that that boy was saved from the clutches of the drowned pirate!”

Not so fast, good Monsieur Piron––not so fast. Your boy was saved, and Captain Brand was not drowned. So keep quiet for a time, and you shall not only see that bloody pirate, but hear how he departed this life; only keep quiet!

“You shall hear more if you are not tired, gentlemen, though I have very little to add to what Hardy has already related of the ‘Centipede.’ Steward, let the servants turn in; and brew us, yourself, a light jorum of Antigua punch! Now, then,” said Commodore Cleveland, “I’m your man!

“After we had scaled the guns on both sides of the ‘Scourge,’ as Hardy has told you, the captain thought it an unnecessary trouble to lower the boats to pick up the chips floating about the mouth of the channel; and, besides, it would have been a bit dangerous, since the sea was coming in savagely, boiling about the ship, with a very uncertain depth of water around and under us; and, moreover, we had our hands full the best part of the night in reeving new running-gear, bending a new sail or two that had flapped to pieces when every thing was let go by the run in coming to anchor. However, before morning, we were in cruising trim once more, and ready to cut and run in case it was expedient to lose our ground-tackle, and get out of what we afterward learned was the Garotte Gorge. But by sunrise the wind fell away into a flat calm, and with the exception of the long, triple row of rollers heaving in occasionally from seaward, we lay as snug and quiet as could be.

“After breakfast the quarter boats were lowered, and Hardy took one, and I got in the other, and we pulled in toward the jaws of the channel, between the Lion Rock and the ledge on the opposite side.

“There were still a good many fragments of the wreck, which had escaped the reacting current out to sea, floating about on the water; some of the timbers, too, of the hull were jammed in the black gums of the ledge, shrouded in sea-weed and kelp, as if all had grown there together. Farther on was part of the fore-mast and top-mast, swimming nearly in mid-channel, anchored as it were by one of the shrouds––twisted, perhaps, around a sharp rock below. The top-sail was still fast to the yards, hoisted and sheeted home, and laid in the water transversely to the masts, just as it fell under the raking fire of our first broadside, jerking over the main-top-mast with it.

“The gorge, too, was alive with barracoutas and sharks, leaping out of water, or with their stiff triangular fins cutting just above the surface, and sometimes even grazing the blades of the cutter’s oars. I pulled slowly toward the wreck of the fore-mast, and hooked on to the reef-cringle of the fore-top-sail. The birds did not move at our approach, and one old red-eyed vulture snapped on the polished bill of the boat-hook, leaving the marks of his beak in the smooth iron. Down in the clear green depths, too, the water was alive with ravenous fish, and we could see at times hundreds of them with their heads fastened on to some dark object, rolling it, and biting it, and pulling every way, with now and then the glance of a clean-picked bone shining white in the limpid water as the mass was jerked out of our sight.

“The bowmen, however, attracted my attention, and one of them sang out, as he pointed with his finger, ‘I say, Mr. Cleveland, here’s the captain and his priest lying in the belly of the top-sail!’

“I walked forward, while the men fired a few pistols to scare away the birds, and looked in. There, about a foot below the water, lay one drowned man and half the body of another, who had evidently been cut in twain by a twenty-four pound shot at the stomach, leaving only a few revolting shreds of entrails dangling beneath the carcass. The other corpse was a large, burly, fat man, wrapped in a black cassock, with a knotted rope to confine it at the midriff, and around his thick bare neck was a string of black beads, holding a gold and ebony crucifix, pendent in the water. The eyes of the one with half a body had been picked out by the gulls, but he still possessed a fang-like tusk, sticking through a hare-lip under a fringe of wiry mustache, which gave me a tolerable correct idea of his temper even without seeing his eyes. The truck and shivered stump of the main-top-mast, too, with the piratical flag still twisted around it, lay across his chest; but, as we approached, an eagle seized it in his beak, and, tearing it in tattered shreds, flew aloft, with the remains of the parted halliards streaming below his talons.

“At the same time the sharks––many of them resting their cold, sharp noses on the very leech of the top-sail––waiting like hungry dogs for a bone, with a thousand more diving and cutting in the water beneath, at last cut through the canvas belly of the sail, and, before you could think, the floating corpses were within their serrated jaws. In another moment the bodies rose again to the surface outside the sail and wreck; then another dash from the monsters, and a greedy dive and peck from the birds; a few bubbles and shreds of black threads, and that was the last of those wretches until the sea shall give up its dead.

“As for Hardy, he pulled higher up the gorge, and examined the rocks and pools on both sides, but saw nothing living or dead, and we both returned to the ship.”

Had Dick Hardy landed at the flat rock where the eddy swept in under the Lion’s paws, he might have seen the footprint of a man, with a straw slipper in it; and following the track a few yards farther, he would have passed his sword through a villain lying bleeding in a mangrove thicket; and found, too, in his belt, snugly stowed away, a lot of gleaming jewels, with a sapphire gem of priceless value on the finger of his bloody hand. But never mind, Hardy! You will hear more of that man one of these days, and you will have no cause for regrets––though he will, perhaps; and, meanwhile, let him wander in quest of fresh villainies over Spanish South America.

“Well, gentlemen,” resumed Commodore Cleveland, “although I have doubts whether the mangled carcass we saw in the sail was the captain of that notorious ‘Centipede,’ yet I felt confident at the time, and do now, that it was scarcely possible for him or a man of his crew to have escaped our fire and the water and rocks combined. So that evening, when the land-wind made, we tripped anchor and sailed away from the coast of Darien.”

“Come, my friends,” said Piron, in a low, tremulous voice, rising as he spoke, “we must not push Cleveland too far to-night, for it is getting late, you know, and they keep early hours on board men-of-war.”

“No hurry, Piron! I’ll talk to you all night, if you have the patience to listen to me. No? Then I’ll have the boat manned.” He touched a bell-rope which hung over his head, and the cabin door opened. “Orderly, my compliments to the officer of the watch, and desire him to call away the barge.”

“Cleveland, my old friend, tell me more of that young Darcantel!”

“Hist! Piron, don’t wake little Tiny! There’s nothing to tell more than he is my adopted nephew, and the son of the gentleman who occupies that stateroom opposite. But when we go out to Escondido I’ll tell you about his father, who has led a very adventurous life.”

“Well, good-night! You will bring young Darcantel with you, and this little rogue, too, here in the cot. My wife and her sister will be delighted to see you all. Good-night!”

As the “Monongahela’s” bell struck eight for midnight, the commodore’s guests got in the barge and pulled toward the shore.

At the same time, a light gig, with handsome Harry Darcantel, went alongside the “Rosalie,” and Commodore Cleveland turned into his friend’s cot opposite, leaving small Mr. Mouse to sleep his dream out till morning; while, as the barge ran up to the landing at Kingston Harbor, and a gold ounce was slipped into the old coxswain’s honest paw, what did they all think about? Good-night!

Hidden in a cleft of the hills of Jamaica, fifteen hundred feet above that blue tropical sea below, on the brow of a cool valley, where that bounding stream of white water rushes from the tall peak in the sky in tiny cataracts, till it forms a pool there, held in by the smooth rim of rocks, where the cane-mill is lazily turning its overshot wheel, with the spray flying off in streaming mist, and the happy blacks stacking the sugar-cane in even fagots as they unlade the huge carts with solid wheels cut out of a single drum of a cotton-tree; the six or eight yoke of oxen ahead ruminating under the shade of the tropical foliage, with never a switch to their tails; while the lively young sea-breeze comes flurrying up the valley, whistling among the coffee bushes below, bending the standing cane on the slopes, rattling the tamarinds, cocoa-nuts, and plantains, and then climbing with noisy wings up the mountain, is lost with a whirl in the heavy cloud which obscures the lofty peak.

Below the mill, where the mule-path crosses the foaming torrent by the shaky bridge, which stands on cocoa-nut stilts, and never yet has been thrown down by an earthquake, nestling under a precipitous crag, stood the mountain seat of Escondido. Vines and parasitical plants, mingled with scarlet creeping geraniums, made a living wall of dewy green and red on the face of the hoary rock, falling over here and there at some projecting acclivity in leafy torrents, and then forming a glowing green cornice along the topmost edges of the height.

The main house was square––standing on stilts, too, like the shaky bridge––the lower part fenced in by straight bamboos, of one story, with a broad roomy veranda going all round, where half a dozen grass hammocks were slung between the windows which opened into the dwelling. A great airy saloon and dining-room faced the valley, while six or eight cool bedchambers looked out from the rear up at the green wall of the precipice, and down on the sparkling stream of the mill.

But there were no loopholes for musketry, nor vaults and dungeons.

The sun had long passed the tall peaks of the blue mountains above, and the shadows had fallen down the valley until even the patch of white pebbly cove at the shore had become dim; and no sounds were heard save the rustling of the sea-breeze, the splash of the torrent as it fell off from the rickety old wheel of the cane-mill, mingled with the shrill cries and songs of the negroes as they unloaded the carts.

Yes; but there were other sounds––the low, sweet tones of women’s voices––inside the villa of Escondido. Two lovely matrons were sitting within that lofty saloon, hand clasped in hand, and gazing with glowing pride upon a lovely girl, who waved lithe as a lily on its stem before them.

It is about seventeen years since we last saw this charming trio. And now look at them, old bachelors, and tell me if, while old Time has been scraping the hair off your own selfish heads, and pinching the noses, too, of the ancient maids beside you, has not the scything old wretch spared these lovely matrons? Look at their rounded forms, those soft dimpled cheeks, and those bands of brown tresses, kissing the pear-shaped ears before they are looped up in one magnificent knot of satin at the back of the head. Look at them, you miserable old procrastinators, and then kneel down before the ancient damsels you have sneered at, even if they have the pelican gout and a crow’s-foot at the corners of their eyes! They are better than you are, any day; so bear a hand, send for the parson––and now stand back.

“They are coming to-day, my aunt; and Uncle Jules says that our dear old Captain Blunt has just arrived at Kingston, and is coming with them.”

“What else, my daughter?”

The girl held a letter before her face, maybe to hide a little blush which suffused her cheeks.

“Why, mamma, he writes that the spring-cart, with Banou, was to start overnight with the ‘traps’––that means trunks, I suppose––and that––”

“What, Rosalie?”

“That there is a handsome young officer, the nephew of Commodore Cleveland––merci, mamma! some of Uncle Jules’s nonsense!”

No such great nonsense, after all, mademoiselle, when your uncle Piron tells you to keep that fluttering little heart safe within your bodice, for there are thieves in blue jackets in the island of Jamaica. Strange, too, as she spoke––with her animated face, large blue eyes, and graceful, wavy figure––how much she resembled both those lovely women, with their darker coloring, who sat smiling sweetly upon her.

“Oh! here comes Uncle Banou. Well, my good Banou, what news of your master?” said Madame Piron, as she put out her hand to the black, who raised it respectfully to his lips.

“He will be here with his friends at sunset, eh! And Mademoiselle Rosalie must place the gentlemen’s things in their rooms, and see that the billiard-house has some cots made ready in it.”

“Nothing more?”

“No, madame.”

“Allons! Rosalie, we have no time to lose.”

Through this brilliant vegetation, along the uneven road, came the sound of horses’ feet, with hearty shouts and laughter; and presently appeared a cavalcade, mounted on mules and horses, all making the forest ring with merriment.

Ahead came Tom Stewart, on a small, sure-footed pony; and beside him Mr. Tiny Mouse, reefer, on a high mule, with a scrubbing-brush mane, looking like a fly pennant at the mast-head of the frigate, kicking his little heels into the old mule, as if that mule minded it even so much as to shake his long ears! Then straggling in the centre were Darcantel, Stingo, and Paddy Burns; and behind them came a tall, muscular man, on a mettled barb, which he controlled by a touch of his little finger. And at his side, on the most diminutive of the donkey breed, with feet touching the ground, clung stout Jacob Blunt, the sailor, in a more dreadful trepidation than he had ever known on board his old teak-built brig, lying there in the Roads of Kingston; while the rear was brought up by Piron and Commodore Cleveland.

“Now, you little madcap, look sharp when we turn the curve of the mountain, and you’ll catch a peep at Escondido; and don’t you pinch that old mule again on her back, or she’ll pitch you up into that silk cotton-tree.”

“If it pleases Providence to restore me safely to my dear old ‘Martha Blunt,’ I’ll take my davy never to sit astride of any d–– brute on four legs again!” This mild vow came from the lips of Jacob Blunt, and he honestly meant every word he said.

“Give us another jolly song, Stingo; it will keep your throat clear for the claret.”

“For the sake of my old timbers, sir, and as you vally my wife’s blessing, don’t sing! There, you infarnal beast, you’ve yawed sharp up into this ere bush, and put my starboard glim out forever! I say, Don Spanisher, don’t sing––I’m going fast enough!” shouted the poor skipper, as he passed his paws around the little brute’s neck, with his hat over his eyes.

Here Paddy Burns’s small eyes twinkled as he slowly raised the stock of his riding-whip at a slender lance-wood-tree about twelve yards off, and gave the lash a sharp crack.

The person on the spirited barb almost unconsciously put his right hand in his pocket.

Take care, Paddy Burns; the colonel has a cool hand and a colder eye, and has made a study of pistols––cannon and swivels too, perhaps. Knows the cutlass exercise as well, and has had considerable experience in bullets, knives, and ropes. Has murdered women––lots of them. Wouldn’t stick at killing a child with a junk bottle. And as for men––pshaw! Keep a bright look-out, Paddy. Why, he’d drown your mother if you had a sister to love. For didn’t he drag his own old father and mother down to a dishonored grave? and do you think, you brave, honest little Irishman, that he would sleep a wink the less sound for putting you to death? Bah! man. Shoot all the game you spring, but don’t waste powder on a tiger or a shark. You would like to take a mutual shot with him, though? Of course you would––who doubts it? But then, gentlemen fight gentlemen; and this colonel at your elbow is a scoundrel, miscreant, villain, assassin, and––pirate! So you can’t take a crack at him, Paddy Burns.