On board the pigmy black schooner near, half a dozen old salt veterans were squinting at the flag-ship and holding much deliberate speculation as to what all the row meant. Old Harry Greenfield, however, with Ben Brown, who were the gunner and boatswain of the little vessel, observed that, “In the ewent of our bein’ wanted, ye see, Harry, it will be as well to have the deck tackle stretched along for heavin’ in, and get the prop from under the main boom.”

Even as they spoke, a few bits of square bunting went up in balls to the mizzen of the frigate, and, blowing out clear, said, as plain as flags could speak, “Prepare to weigh anchor!”

At the same moment the “Rosalie’s” gig came bounding like a bubble over the water with the tall gentleman beside the young commander in the stern-sheets. There was a great, nervous, bony hand now holding his, but with as an affectionate pressure as the soft dimpled fingers he himself had held the night before. Gig not steered at all wild now, but going as straight as a bullet to the schooner.

The stirring sounds of the fifes as the sailors danced round with the bars in the capstans, with a beating step to keep time to the lively music, were still heard on board the frigate, and then came from the forecastle,

“The anchor’s under foot, sir!”

“Pawl the capstan! Aloft, sail-loosers! Trice up! Lay out! Loose away!” Almost at the instant came down the squeaks from aloft of, “All ready with the fore! the main! the mizzen!” “Let fall––sheet home! hoist away the top-sails!”

Again were heard the quick notes of the fifes on both decks, and in less than five minutes more the anchors were catted, and the “Monongahela,” under a cloud of canvas, began to move.

But where was the “Rosalie,” late “Perdita,” all this time? Why, there she goes, with never a tack, through the narrow strait, lying over under the press of her white dimity like a witch on a black broomstick, as she shoots out to sea.

And who is that tall man, on that narrow deck, clapping on to sheet and tackle, though there was no need of assistance, or skill, or seamanship to be displayed on board that craft, except by way of love of the thing? And why does he, during a pause when there was nothing more that could possibly be done, stand by the weather rail, shaking a great huge old seaman by both hands till he almost jarred the schooner to her keel?––Ben Brown, the helmsman, whom you have heard of on board the “Martha Blunt,” who, by some accidental word he dropped near to the tall gentleman, caused that hand-grasping collision.

But where was the “Martha Blunt?” Oh, that old teak brig was bouncing along past Morant Point, with a good slant from the southward, pretty much where she was some seventeen years before, with a few more passengers in her deck cabin, reading their Bibles, and praying for those who go down to the sea in ships on that Sabbath day––one looking with her sad eyes out of the stern windows, and another doing the same, and both thinking of the same boy who had been dashed out of one of those windows; and though both of them knew the other’s thoughts, yet they did not dream they were thinking of the same person at the time.

And where was the Spanish brigantine, with the exacting capitano––who was a slaver in dull times––and his pleasant mate, who would think no more of sticking a knife into you than he did of kicking that skulking, icy-eyed sailor on board––detesting as he did the entire Saxon race ever since Cadiz was bombarded––and feeding him on rotten jerked beef? There were no prayers, only curses, on board that brigantine as she dropped anchor in St. Jago that fine Sunday morning.

And where was our ancient one-eyed mariner, formerly in command of the colonial guarda costa felucca, the “Panchita,” named after his fat banana of a sposa? Oh, the Don––simply Ignaçio now––had had a quiet confab with the deputy administrador all about some treasure which he knew was concealed, and where––for he had seen with his bright eye the light of a torch in a cleft of a crag––and he would go shares with that official if he would give him a little assistance.

“Oh, cierto!” Why not? And there was an old launch, with a torn lateen sail, which Columbus might have been proud to command; and, in this fine weather, he might sail back to Port Palos in her.

Oh yes! But, to keep all secret, he would merely take old Pancha, his wife, for crew. And so, with a few bundles of paper cigars, and some dried fish and water––the only property they possessed, save his eye and a pack of cards, and those valuables rescued with difficulty––they sailed the night before the blessed Sunday. He never came back, though. No blame attributable to the eye––that was as bright and wary an old burning spark of suspicious fire as ever; but then old Pancha held the cards, and this time she won. Very singular it was, cierto. If Ignaçio had not gone back again for another bag which was not there, why, the sota of a knave being the next card––Ah! we won’t anticipate.

But we are all alive yet, except those murdered women, whose white coral head-stones still stand up there in the cactus, and poor Binks, and those slashing blades of the poisonous, many-legged “Centipede,” who were eaten by the sharks––all alive the rest of us, and wide awake!

Well, the positions of all hands were simply these. The icy-eyed man, without snuff-box, or ring on that mutilated flipper, with two under pockets in his shirt, and something in them, a pair of filthy old canvas trowsers, and no hanger by his side, where there had been so much hanging in the good old times, slipped overboard like a conger eel, and swam on shore at St. Jago de Cuba. Without a real of wages––for he was to work his passage––and because he didn’t feel inclined to work, the capitano in command assisted his agile subordinate to kick him all the voyage.

Had, however, the mate presented that cold eel his knife for a moment before he jumped overboard and squirmed to the shore, that cuchillo would have found a redder sheath than the crimson sash which usually held it. Fortunately perhaps for the mate, he was not of a generous disposition, save with kicks and ropes’-ends, or else he might have regretted his philanthropy.

So soon as the icy-blue man had congealed, as it were, in the sun until he was quite dry and frozen again, he slunk away to the ditch of the old fort, where he thawed till nightfall, and then entered the town; hanging round the pulperias, smacking and cracking his parched lips for a measure of aguardiente, only two centavos a cup, and not caring for that fine, generous, pale, amber-colored old Port sent to him by the good Archbishop of Oporto! But, not having the copper centavos––though his own coppers stood so much in need of moisture––he continued to skulk on.

All this time the one-eyed man, with his banana woman, Pancha, were creeping along the water part of the land––with the Peak of Tarquina in sight––toward Cape Cruz, bound round that peninsula, and so on to the Doçe Léguas Cays; while the man on the mule navigated by the Sierras del Cobre of St. Jago, steering by bridle for Manzanillo, and then to take water again for the same secret destination.

The cargo that both expected to take in there was about ten thousand pounds sterling in mildewed coin of various realms and denominations; but it was there, and would pass current any where.

So they sailed and navigated. It was tedious work, though; and it took a week for the old launch with the torn sail to get into the Tiger’s Trap––fine weather, and no sea––and there make fast to the rocks. At the same evening hour the mule with his passenger planted his fore feet, like a pair of kedges over his bows, in the fishing village near Manzanillo, and foundered bodily, going down with his freight slap-dash in the mud. The passenger, however, escaped, and skulled along by the shore, where he fell in with a poor fisherman who was about to shove off in his trim, wholesome bark for professional recreation on the Esperanza bank.

Glad was old Miguel Tortuga to have a strong man to assist him for the privilege of joining in a sip of aguardiente and catching a red snapper or two; so they jumped on board and spread the sail.

Had old Miguel, however, seen the sharklike eyes of his assistant in the sunlight, or dreamed what a snapper was about to catch him, he would not have gone fishing that night, and it would have saved him much tribulation at daylight the next morning, when he was picked off a small rock by a fisher acquaintance of his from Manzanillo.

But we have nothing to do with old Miguel; and need only say, to console him, that his stanch boat went safely through the blue gateway of the roaring ledge of white breakers, and late Sunday night lay calmly in the inlet abreast Captain Brand’s former dwelling.

With her proud head toward the east, she went dashing on past the White Horse Rocks, and woe to the small angry waves which did not get out of her way, for she smashed them contemptuously in foaming masses from her majestic bows, sending them back in sparkling spray and bubbles to hiss their angry way to leeward in her wake. On she went, far off to sea, where the trade wind was strongest, disdaining gentle zephyrs near the land, with her great square yards swinging round at every watch while beating to windward––the tacks close down, yards as fine as they would lay, and the heavy sheets flat aft.

Every evening the surgeon, the purser, the chaplain, the major, and the old sailing-master were in the cabin, going over the chase of a certain pirate in a schooner “Centipede” away down on the Darien Coast, with Cape Garotte there under their lee, and the vultures and the sharks grinding the bones and tearing the flesh of the half of a man with the tusk gleaming out of his wiry mustache; and the padre, with his eyes staring wide open, and the crucifix, borne away by the carnivorous birds of prey.

All of those dreadful particulars, together with matters that had gone before––of a lost boy, a heart-broken mother, and a murdered mate, Mr. Binks, on board the brig “Martha Blunt”––the party at Escondido, the snuff-box, and Paul Darcantel––all about him, too, from the tragedy on the plantation, his despair, and reckless life afterward, when he served in slavers, where he did something to allay the sufferings of the poor wretches; and afterward how he was trepanned to the “Doçe Léguas,” went a cruise with Mr. Bill Gibbs, whose leg he hacked off with a hand-saw, not knowing at the time about the locket; the little child he had saved; how that child had saved him from his torture on the trestle with his mouselike teeth; how he had wandered the wide world over searching and searching for the mother of that boy!

And there the boy was––the manly, brave young fellow now––whom officers and sailors had always loved, flying away with the dark doctor––no longer Darcantel, but Harry Piron––with his fond father and mother in the distance, and the sweet girl he adored with her blonde head resting in her mother’s lap.

“Sail ho!” sang out the man on the fore-top-sail yard.

“Where away?”

“Right ahead, sir. A brig on the starboard tack!”

Ay, the old “Martha Blunt” bouncing along under all sail, squaring off at the short-armed seas, and striking them doggedly, as she beat up for the Windward Passage between Hayti and Cuba.

But there was an old sea-bruiser of a different build, who wore the belt in the West Indies, and was after that sturdy old brig with teak ribs for a hearty set-to; and when she came up alongside, in the friendly sparring-match which ensued while both squared their main yards, and lay for an hour side by side, there was considerable conversation; so much talk, in fact––boats going to and fro, mingled with roars and shrieks, and clasping of hands on board the brig––never a sound on board the ship––that the blue pennant fluttered in such a way it was hard to tell whether it was Jacob, or Piron, or the sweet wife, or mademoiselle, or her lovely mother, who threw their arms around that pennant’s truck.

Then yard-arm and yard-arm, the frigate with her canvas canopy of upper sails furled, and the brig in her best bib and tucker, they both filled away and moved side by side.

For a day or two they went on, talking and laughing to one another in these friendly shakes of the hand over blue water, until one day, the brig being to windward, she came upon an old water-logged launch, with a broken mast and a torn sail hanging over her side.

It fell calm, and Jacob Blunt ordered young Binks to get into the yawl and tow the boat alongside, and to be smart about it; for the breeze might make so soon as the fog rose, and the commodore was not the man to be kept waiting in a big frigate. Mr. Binks was smart about it, and presently he returned––though there was no hurry, for the calm lasted a long time––with his water-logged prize.

There was no human being in this prize; but when she came alongside, and a yard tackle was hooked on to let the water drain out of her, Jacob Blunt and the people on board gave a pleasant yell of astonishment.

“By all that’s wonderful, here is my old bag of guineas, and some few Spanish milled dollars! Look at the mark, my darlings!”

Another weighty bag was set aside for Mrs. Timothy Binks, and the rest were devoted, with some large doubloon reservations for crew, to Martha Blunt and Jacob Blunt in their declining years.

Then, the weather being still calm and foggy, Jacob and his passengers went on board the double-banked frigate for church service, where they all prayed with much hope and thanksgiving for what had passed and what was to come; and then they went into the commodore’s cabin, where they remained ever so long a time.

Let us go back this same week again––a very long seven days it has been for every body, particularly so for the icy-eyed man, who was extremely anxious, as he kicked and lashed his mule, and kept looking round the south side of Jamaica, from Portland Point to Pedro Bluff and San Negril, throwing a ray of cold frost there day and night, expecting that tall doctor to come striding along in that deep water, heading due north.

And at last the dark figure hove in sight, in the schooner “Rosalie”––the sweet little craft skimming exultingly over the seas, kissing them occasionally with both her dainty, glistening cheeks, reeling joyously over on her side, with her tidy dimity laced and spread in one flat sheet of white, while the slender arms bent like whalebone to the freshening breeze, and she left the dancing bubbles sparkling and flashing lovingly in her wake.

Two hundred miles to go, and the breeze fell from fresh to light, until at last, shrouded in a thick fog, one Sunday morning, when there was no air at all, only a flat calm, the sea as smooth as a glass mirror with the quicksilver clouded.

Then out sweeps, my lads! Ten of a side, and two of those bronzed old lads at each sweep! All except the two after ones, where Ben Brown and the tall doctor handled one apiece.

Thus, with sails down and bare arms, the light little “Rosalie” continued gliding rapidly over the mirrored surface––a little ashamed of herself, perhaps, at being seen in such a scanty rig––while her commander guided her graceful course, and Harry Greenfield peered about forward to see that no harm should arrest her dainty footsteps.

“That must be a man-of-war off here on the quarter,” exclaimed the young officer at the tiller, “ringing for church.”

The old seamen at the sweeps unconsciously took off their hats, wiped the sweat from their brows, and listened.

“It can hardly be the ‘Monongahela,’” said Ben, “though p’raps she took more of a breeze to wind’ard, off the island.”

Still the schooner glided on noiselessly over the sea, until, a minute later, Harry Greenfield sang out,

“Port, sir! or we’ll be plump into a vessel here ahead.”

The helm was put down, and the “Rosalie” sheered off to starboard within a biscuit-toss of a large brig.

“By my grandmother’s wig!” said Ben, “that’s the old ‘Martha Blunt!’”

“Henri,” said Paul Darcantel, in French, in his deep voice, “the last request I shall ever make is to keep on. There is not a moment to lose!”

“Give way, men!” shouted the officer, in a decided tone, as the words came with a stifled gasp from his heaving breast, while the sigh that followed was drowned in the splash of the sweeps in the water as they again chafed in their gromets, and the foam flashed away from the blades astern.

But there was another splash. A white object sprang with a bound over the brig’s quarter, dipping below the surface of the calm sea, and when it came up, two great flippers, with a large black head between them, struck out like the paws of an alligator, breasting the water with a speed that soon brought him within a few fathoms of the schooner’s low counter. Then, seizing hold of the slack of the main sheet, which was thrown to him, he came up, hand over hand, as if he could tear the stern frame out of the schooner. A vigorous grasp caught him by one paw, and, with the other laid on the taffrail, he leaped on deck as if his feet had pressed a springboard instead of the yielding water.

Again, as in the olden time, he held his little Henri aloft in his giant arms; but this time it was Banou who was dripping from a souse, and not his little master.

“Give way, my souls! Another thousand dollars if we get up to the Key before dark!” said the deep, low tones of the tall doctor.

“Good Lord!” roared a voice from on board the brig, now shut up again all alone in the fog––“if that old nigger has not gone and jumped overboard, my name’s not Binks!”

“All right, Mr. Binks; Banou is safe! Send a boat on board the ‘Monongahela,’ and report that the schooner ‘Rosalie’ has passed ahead,” went back in a clear note.

Then young Binks took considerable more time to get a boat lowered, and send her, with the cabin-boy, to the large frigate close on his beam, whose bell had just struck seven.

The boat, too, with four sleepy hands to pull her, took considerable time to find the ship, and then the whistles were piping to dinner, and all the good people from the brig, with the flag-officers, had retired to the commodore’s cabin for luncheon.

When Jacob Blunt heard the news, regardless of sherry and cold tongue, he himself got in his boat, leaving his passengers in an excited frame of mind, but rather comfortable on the whole, and returned to the teak bosom of his “Martha.”

There he took young Binks firmly by the shoulder, and walked him aft to the rail where his father––long since dead and murdered––had been used to sit and sing sailor ditties.

Then he impressively told him that “this ’ere sort of thing wouldn’t do! even if he was a readin’ the Bible, which was all very good on occasion, sich as clear weather out on the broad Atlantic; but in fog times, when schooners was creepin’ about in among the Antilles, and partick’larly off Jamaiky or the south side of Cuby, mates and men should be wide awake and lookin’ every wheres. And harkee, Binnacle! when you commands this ’ere old brig, or maybe a bran-new ‘Martha Blunt,’ and me and my old woman lying below together in narrow cabins, you must bear in mind these my words! Well, my boy, don’t rub that ’ere sleeve over your eyes no more, and it will be all right.”

Young Binks promised “that from that ’ere minnit he would never sit on no rails, or sip no grog, or even read his old mother’s Bible when he wos on watch, but always be as keerful as if there wos no lady passengers or children on board, or bags of shiners in the lower cabin stateroom––that he would! And his blessed old second father might take his davy he, young Binks, would never be caught foul again.”

Meanwhile the girlish schooner tripped away far out of sight, and when the fog lifted and the breeze came to blow it to leeward she was once more tidily dressed in snowy white, and splashing the water from her black eyes, as the last rays of the setting sun showed her the Tiger’s Trap in the distance.

“Ho, ho!” said Captain Brand, as he stretched out his straight legs in their canvas casings on the sand of the little cove, “safe and sound, and not a soul to share this nice supper of that good old man Miguel!

“Ho, ho!” continued he; “here at last! No Babette to cook for me––no ‘Centipede’––nothing but that stanch little boat presented me by that generous fisherman, who, I fear, is drowned by this time. Well, let us enjoy ourselves! Excellent real snapper this! Sausage rather too much garlic perhaps; but the brown bread and the aguardiente unexceptionable. Blaze away, my little fire; your sticks cost me much labor to dig out of my once comfortable house, but you are better than gunpowder any day.

“Just to think of the years that have passed! That great bank of sand there over the sheds, nearly as high as the crag, where my brave fellows once caroused; the young cocoa-nut springing up on the crag itself––not a vestige of my old habitation left, or the bright blades or pleasant guests to dine with me!”

Here there was something of the old cold murderous scowl on the captain’s face as he twisted the point of his nose.

“Ah! yes, there may be my wary-eyed Sanchez left, though the last I heard of him he was in the Capilla dungeon of the Moro. And that”––grating his teeth, and glaring with his icy eyes at the fire, as if those two blocks of ice would put it out––“cursed doctor who pursues me!

“Well, well, neither of those old friends are here yet, and before another sun sets I shall bequeath the old den to them both! Ho, ho! with those solid bags of clinking metal, I shall leave them as much sand and rocks as they choose to walk over. What a sly devil I was to stow that treasure away for a rainy day! Never told a living being! Poisoned the fellow, too, who made the lock! Capital joke, ’pon my soul!”

This was the very last of the very few jokes that Captain Brand ever enjoyed.

“And, now I think of it, I wonder if my thirsty old mate’s bones are yet lying there in the vault. What was his name? such a bad memory I have! Oh! Gibbs––Bill Gibbs––with one leg! Ho, ho!”

Here Captain Brand drained some more aguardiente out of a cracked earthen pot, and slapped his fine legs with rapture.

“And those dear girls who married me! Lucia, too!”

The dirty wretch started as the wing of a sea-bird swooped down over the pure inlet; and he thought he saw a white fore finger beckoning him on to his doom.

“Pshaw!” said he, smoothing down his filthy tattered shirt with the finger of his mutilated left hand, “how nervous I am! But what a bungle Pedillo made of that marriage! And my good Ricardo, too! What a feast the sharks must have had on his oily, well-fed carcass! Misericordia! Ho, ho! I believe I’ll bid my friends good-night.”

Captain Brand stretched himself out at full length on the shelly strand, his boat secured by a clove-hitch round his right leg, which rode calmly in the little inlet; his bald head, with the few dry gray hairs on his temples, resting on Miguel’s sennit hat, and the thin scum of frosty eyelids drawn over his frozen eyes––cracking their covering at times––until at last the pirate, aided by fiery aguardiente, slept.

A few late cormorants and sea-birds sailed over him in his fitful slumber, and uttered a cold cry, as if their pecking-time had not come yet, but would shortly, as they sought their silent retreats on the wall of rocks opposite.

And Captain Brand dreamed, too––of the old laird, his father, in prison; his mother weeping over forged notes; the sleeping, unsuspecting people he had treacherously murdered; the pillages he had committed; the men he had slain in open conflict; those he had executed with his own private cord; the poor woman who had died in worse torments, when, indeed, even knife or pistol, rope or poison, would have been a mercy; the agony and sufferings of those who survived them; with all the concomitant horrors which make the blood run cold to think of, and which made the pirate’s almost freeze in his veins––living years in minutes––did Captain Brand, as he lay there on the chill sand in his troubled nightmare of a sleep.

“Ah! Dios! Dios!” chattered the Señora Banana Pancha, at the other outlet to the inlet, rolling over on the ledge of the rocks at the Tiger’s Trap.

Yes there has, Doña Pancha, for just then a piece of hawser-laid rope––rather dry, perhaps, for mastication––was placed across your crying mouth that you might bite upon, if you would only stop your old tongue.

For while you were screaming on the rocks, and yelling for your Ig––Ig––naçio, who went back for the last bag of gold that wasn’t there, a light gig glided in like a blackfish, and a bigger blackfish jumped up and stopped your old mouth, Pancha, with that bit of hide rope. But if you will keep quiet, Pancha, and not exorcise Banou for the Evil One, that old nigger will give you a cup of liquid not known in the devil’s dominions, and treat you also to some white biscuit to nibble upon.

Ah! you will, eh? and tell all about that thin curl of smoke, which you believe to have been made by that coal-eyed Ig––Ig––naçio, away up there by the inlet? Now keep quiet again, old Lady Banana; and while your screaming mouth is gagged, don’t cut this small gig away, or else she may navigate herself out to sea, as did your Ig’s launch, and you be left desolate again.

The tropical night was still; the lizards wheetled, the breakers roared on the outer ledge, the ripples washed musically on the shelly shores, the alligators flapped about on the surface of the lagoon, the insects buzzed around the mangrove thickets; and as the gray dawn of morning appeared, and the rain began to fall, a steaming hot mist arose, through which the sea-birds flapped their wings and sailed away in search of their morning’s meal. The sharks and the deep-sea fish, however, lay still and motionless low down by the base of the reefs, and watched with their cold, round eyes. Captain Brand, too, arose, and, opening his green-bluish eyes, smoothing his moulting feathers, and splashing his fins in the wet sand, took an observation.

This was the rainy day for which Captain Brand had laid by all that money to spend it in!

It was a Monday morning––Black Monday for Captain Brand––when, after divesting his leg of the clove-hitch, he secured old Miguel’s boat to a large stone, and then, according to his own ancient practice, he clambered with difficulty up to the venerable crag. Captain Brand had no spy-glass, and there was a good deal of rain falling, but yet he thought he saw a large ship, a brig, and a small schooner in the offing.

So Captain Brand scrambled down again, a good deal disconcerted, knowing it would be hours and hours before those vessels got up to the island, even were they so inclined; but, nevertheless, he bestirred himself. Fortifying his inner man with the last half pint of aguardiente for breakfast, which quite refreshed him, he went to work.

First, he took Miguel’s copper coffee-pot, into which he emptied that disciple of the net’s shark-oil jug, which Miguel himself used for a torch to attract the fish. Then, with a strip of old canvas––part of one leg to Captain Brand’s trowsers; to such straits was he reduced––seized like a ball on the end of a stick, and a match-box, he was all ready for Black Monday’s work.

Captain Brand, however, made one serious omission; he snugly stowed away his beautiful pistols in a locker of the boat to keep them dry, never having been wet but twice before in all his marine excursions––the first time at Cape Garotte, and the next when he jumped overboard from the brigantine at St. Jago. He set great store by these valuable implements, for they had done him good service in time of need. Miguel came into possession of them afterward, and sold them almost for their weight in gold.

But, for the first time, Captain Brand forgot his personal friends and bosom companions. It was a great oversight; and he was extremely sorry when it was too late to go back for them. However, with the copper oil-pot dangling from his little finger, where the sapphire once shone, and the torch-stick in the other hand, he marched boldly over the sandy ridges toward the crag.

But, Captain Brand, there had been three pairs of open eyes watching you through every mouthful of snapper you snapped, and every drop of fiery white rum you swallowed. Ay! and while you tossed about on the shelly beach, with the red glow of the embers of the fire lighting up your cold-blooded, wrinkled face––while, twisting your nose, you muttered ho! ho’s! of murderous satisfaction––there was not a bird that swooped over you, or a lizard on the rocks with jet beads of eyes, that watched you so sharply as did those attentive beholders from the crag.

And when you made your observations from the young cocoa-nut clump, those watchers retired down the opposite side, and two of them clambered through a hole in the roof of the decaying little chapel, while the other moved to the little cemetery of coral gravestones, and there scooped a place in the sand and cactus behind the one cut with the letter L.

He may have been gone twenty minutes; but when he again emerged the rain had ceased, the clouds were breaking away, and the gentle sea-breeze blowing, while Captain Brand looked a thousand years older. He seemed to have borrowed all the million of wrinkles from his compadre, in addition to those he already possessed. The thin lids of his frozen green––now quite solid––eyes had apparently exhaled by intense cold, and left nothing but a stony look of horror.

What caused our brave captain to reel and stagger as he plunged with a bound out into the matted cactus, without his tattered hat, like a wolf flying from the hounds? Had he trodden on a snake, or seen his compadre, or had that white finger waved him away? Yes, all three. But the interview with his one-eyed compadre had shocked him most.

On he came, driving the hot, wet sand before him, toward the Padre Ricardo’s chapel. There he paused for breath, though it was only by a spasmodic effort that he could unclose his sheet-white lips, where his sharp teeth had met upon them, and held his mouth together as if he had the lockjaw, while he snorted through his nostrils.

“Ho!” he gasped, “the spying old traitor has sacked the cavern, and the gold must have gone in that launch I saw the night I came over the reef. Ho! the traitor has found the torture I promised him; but I would like to have killed him a little slower.”

Here Captain Brand, having regained some few faculties and energy, moved on beyond the church, till he came to the white coral headstone, where he stood still.

It was his last walk on deck or sand! Shading his still horror-stricken eyes by both hands, he glared to seaward.

“Ho, ho! there you are, my Yankee commodore, with that old brig under convoy, and that pretty schooner! Reminds me of my old ‘Centipede.’ Bueno! there are other ‘Centipedes,’ and I must begin the world anew. I am not old; here is my strong right arm yet; and who can stop me?”

Captain Brand made these remarks in a loud tone, as if he wanted the whole world to hear him; and as if he had failed in early life, and come to a strong resolution to retrieve his past errors.

As he waved his strong right arm aloft, while, in imagination, blood rained from the blade of his cutlass after cleaving the skull by a blow dealt behind the back of an unsuspecting skipper or mate, suddenly he paused, and the arm fell powerless at his side, where it hung dangling loose like a pirate from a gibbet on a windy night.

“Ho!” he choked out, his jaws rattling like dry bones, “I see it all now. The column was snapped just where the rope was hitched, and the trestle must have been torn to pieces by the hurricane. Ho, ho! That’s the way my man escaped, to dog me all over the world. Ho! I have no time to lose; he may be here at any moment.”

This was the last connected speech that Captain Brand ever made in this world, or in the world to come, perhaps, for at the last word Paul Darcantel rose in all his revengeful majesty before him. With folded arms he bent his dark, stern eyes upon the pirate, wherein the revenge of twenty years was gleaming with a concentrated power.

“You palsied villain! the oath I took to you, and for which I have been accursed, expired yesterday! I took another myself, when we stood here last together, and I am come to fulfill that oath, and––strike!”

His terrible voice and words came back in an echo from the crag, and they seemed with their intense energy to pierce and shrivel the man before him into sleet. And the pirate would have fallen had not two huge, black, lignum-vitæ paws grappled him about the body, pinioning his arms to his sides as if they had been bolted through and through, while at the same moment another pair of tough, sea-weed flippers wound a lashing round his straight legs, and they laid him gently down on the sandy esplanade.

“The trestle, Banou. And you, Ben, bring the hide strands, the faded old cord, and that black altar-cloth!”

The pirate lay on his back, his eyes wide open––for he could not shut them, since the lids had gone in frost––but the solid balls, light green now in the light, rolled from side to side. He recognized the old apparatus too, though it was in different hands than those of Pedillo and his confederate; and he saw, also, that, though the pale green rope was rotten, yet his knowledge of nautical matters taught him that it yet might bear a taut strain, and that those coils of hide thongs never gave way by any amount of tugging, and he saw as well that they had been recently dipped in grease.

But what was to be done with that rotten, moth-eaten old cloth, which the men used to play monté on on Saturday nights in the sheds, and on which the good padre played his cards likewise in the chapel? It was not to keep the cold air away from him, or shield his half-naked body from the poisonous insects. Then what could it be for?

“Lift him up, men, and when you lash him down, leave only that little finger free!”

Taking in at a glance the exact amount of hide stuff he required, he middled the coils, and passing each strand fair and square, his old bronzed arms went backward and forward, under and over––sometimes pricking a little hole by accident in the pirate’s own thin hide as he passed the strips by the aid of his marline-spike, but always apologizing in his bluff, rough way, though without squirting tobacco-juice into his victim’s face, as did Mr. Gibbs to Jacob Blunt.

“Beg pardon, ye infarnal pirate! but that stick will do ye no harm. It’ll heal much sooner than the iron spike one of yer crew drove through both cheeks of my watch-mate when you gagged him on board the brig.

“I say, old nigger, hand us a little more of that slush, will ye? this ’ere strand won’t lie flat. Thankee, old darkey! Kitch hold on that lower end, will ye? and draw it square up between his pins, and straighten out that ’ere knee-joint a bit––so fashion.

“I wouldn’t hurt ye, you ugly villain, for a chaw of tobaccy.

“Warm work, shipmate! suppose you just toddle down to the boat for that ’ere grafted bottle lyin’ in the starn sheets, and bring a tin pot of fresh water with you; the gentleman might be thirsty, you know. I am––Benjamin Brown, of Sandy Pint, seaman.”

So Benjamin plaited Captain Brand, late of the “Centipede,” down on his bier; not a thong too little, or one in the wrong place. A strand between each of his toes, and the big ones turned up in quite an ornamental way, and worked around with a Turk’s-head knot.

“Breathin’ works all reg’lar, too, no bit of hide bearin’ an onequal strain over his bread-basket. Throat and jaw-tackle in fair talkin’ order, little finger free; and there, Capting Brand, jist let old Ben reward ye, good for evil, ye child-murdering scoundrel, for the lick your mate gave him with the pistol on the head, by placing this soft pillow of green silk rope under your bare skull. There! a little this side, so as ye can look at your finger, while I pass this broad piece of stuff over your ear. Don’t ye look at me, ye infarnal scoundrel, or I’ll let this ’ere copper spike slip into one of yer junk-bottle glims!

“Now,” continued Ben, “I’ll take a spell till the doctor and the old nigger come back.”

Ay, the job was done, and the mat over the dead-eyes of the shrouds!