A Queen but yesterday. (See page [418].)

LATITUDE 19°

A ROMANCE OF THE WEST
INDIES IN THE YEAR OF
OUR LORD EIGHTEEN HUNDRED
AND TWENTY

Being a faithful account and true, of the painful adventures of the Skipper, the Bo's'n, the Smith, the Mate, and Cynthia

By Mrs. Schuyler Crowninshield
Author of Where the Trade Winds Blow

ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE GIBBS

NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1898

Copyright, 1898,
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.

All rights reserved.

To
C. S. C.

CONTENTS.

• CHAPTERPAGE
  I.—Our involuntary landing[ 5]
  II.—Our first view of the natives[ 29]
  III.—We change our camp, and Cynthia discovers a disturbing element[ 45]
  IV.—The skipper makes a prayer[ 68]
  V.—A mysterious flight[ 84]
  VI.—The pirates return[ 99]
  VII.—A villain meets his end and a prisoner escapes[ 125]
  VIII.—A living death[ 143]
  IX.—I am rescued[ 159]
  X.—The Minion points a moral, although he does not adorn a tale[ 169]
  XI.—The Bo's'n hides the treasure[ 189]
  XII.—The Skipper again enacts the rôle of chaplain[ 204]
  XIII.—I commit the error of my life[ 222]
  XIV.—We start out to lay a snare and fall into a trap[ 240]
  XV.—We meet some strange acquaintances, are made prisoners, and lose our only means of rescue[ 259]
  XVI.—The goat without horns[ 277]
  XVII.—I meet an old friend and lose my all[ 297]
  XVIII.—We find a new abode, and Zalee departs to seek succour[ 308]
  XIX.—We meet for the second time with "le bruit du gouffre," and i take another journey[ 325]
  XX.—I meet with the terrible black king, and voluntarily assume a task to regain my liberty[ 345]
  XXI.—I offend the King's foster brother, and am forced to take the consequences[ 368]
  XXII.—We engage in battle, murder, sudden death, and—freedom[ 393]
  

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

• FACING PAGE
  A Queen but yesterday[Frontispiece]
  Pirates at play[ 134]
  The Skipper's marriage service[ 220]
  The Pythoness circled slowly around[ 284]
  Cynthia was standing on the very edge of the chasm[ 330]
  Sans Souci, the Palace of King Christophe[ 342]
  I placed my foot on his neck[ 355]
  

LATITUDE 19°.

The Homestead, Belleville, N. J.
September 23, 1867.

Dear Son Adoniah: In complying with your request that I jot down the facts with regard to my early experiences at the time when I was cast away, I have hardly known what to tell and what to leave untold. I could not relate to you the detailed occurrences of each day, though you will think that I have come quite near it, for it would have made a manuscript too large in size. I have told you much when we have been sitting by the fire on a winter evening, you with your leg on a chair, and little Adoniah hanging round you trying to persuade you to "make Grandpa stop," that you might tell him your more recent tale of interest of the battle of Gettysburg. Many a time, as we have been talking, I have seen your dear mother, always beautiful and always young—though she has been a grandmother now seven times, what with Mary's children, and Gertrude's, and yours—many a time I have seen her look at us disapprovingly, as if wondering what pleasure we can take in such gruesome tales, but I find that with most men adventure is as the breath of their nostrils, and that no matter what suffering they have undergone, they always hark back to the wild, exciting scenes of youth, forgetting the pain and dwelling only on the pleasure.

Miserable as I have been at times, and in some pretty tight places, too, now that we are all happily at home together, I would not exchange one of those experiences for a pot full of gold. I would not give away the remembrance of them any more than you would have blotted from your memory that fight in the Wilderness, where you led so gallantly; any more than you would be willing to discard the scar on your leg, or the strap on your shoulder, the one gained because of the other.

Sometimes, as I sit on the settle at the door of the farmhouse, when the sun has gone down and twilight is coming on, I dream those days all over again. I see the buccaneers in the cave. I experience again the suffocation of the cage in which they left me for dead. I see before me as plainly as if I held it in my hand, with those wondrous eyes intact, and shining like two living balls of fire, that symbol of mysticism, the serpent ring. I see again the vaudoux dance and the long, light eyes of the Pythoness, which fascinated while they struck terror to the very soul. I again take part in those sad and dreary burials at sea, in which the dear old Skipper so revelled, and once more I find myself at Christophe's Court, with all its magnificence, all its barbarity, and all its horrors, and I wonder if any other life ever crowded so much into itself in so short a space of time. My letter must not be too long or tell too much in advance. I am not an author, son Adoniah, nor do I wield the pen of a ready writer even for my children. This has been to me a laborious task, though at the same time a labour of love.

If you should show these recollections to some of your friends, they will probably discredit the statement that anthropophagi have lived in the recent times of which I write, and so near our own coast. What would they say, I wonder, should they meet my friend, the late United States Minister to the Island, and learn from him that the dreadful practice existed not only at the date of which I write, but that it is actually extant, though more concealed, at the present day. And we pour our gold into old Africa while New Africa, where these awful crimes are rampant, is but twelve hundred miles from Belleville!

Finally, son Adoniah, believe that I have set down nothing here which can not be substantiated by historians, by living witnesses, and by the published proceedings of courts of law.

Your affectionate Father,
Hiram Jones.

CHAPTER I.
OUR INVOLUNTARY LANDING.

I put my head down through the hatchway and called to Cynthia to come on deck. I always called her Cynthia to myself. What I said was:

"Come up, Miss Archer; I can see Christophe's castle."

"You can't!" she said. These words were uttered, I was convinced, more in astonishment than in contradiction. They issued from the funnel of a white cotton sunbonnet. The funnel appeared above the hatchcombings, then a pair of shoulders incased in blue dungaree followed suit, and, finally, the tall figure of Miss Cynthia Archer emerged from the open hatchway and stepped lightly on to the deck.

"Where is it?" she asked.

"I will answer that question if you will answer mine," I responded.

"I was never good at guessing riddles," she said.

"It's no riddle," returned I.

"Oh, the same old question!" hazarded Cynthia. The handsome gray eyes looked out questioningly from the depths of the funnel. I nodded appealingly.

"You've got me up here under false pretences," said Cynthia. "I will go below again. I don't believe there is any castle."

"There is, indeed, Miss Archer." I held the spyglass tightly under my arm. "I will show where if you will answer me."

"The chronic question?"

"Yes, the chronic question."

Cynthia looked out at me, a world of sincerity shooting from her eyes.

"To tell you the truth," said she, "Jones is simply impossible! I couldn't, really! Why, Mr. Jones, Jones is synonymous with anonymous. And then Hiram Jones!" She knew as well as I did myself what I wanted to ask her. I told her so.

Cynthia stood for a moment looking meditatively at me.

"I don't know why I shouldn't, after all," said she in a musing tone.

My heart leaped up into my throat.

"I might call you 'J,'" she said.

"And I might call you 'A,'" answered I. "'"A" was an archer and shot at a beau.'"

"Shot with a bow, you mean," said Cynthia; "but, really, the words run, '"A" was an archer and shot at a frog.'"

"Thank you," said I. Of course, she knew what I had in mind. I said it every time she came on deck. I made a point of it. I thought that she might get used to it after a while.

"You haven't been up all day," said I reproachfully.

"There's no variety in your conversation, Mr. Jones," said Cynthia. "The parrot is much more interesting. But when you called down that Christophe's castle was in sight, I thought that perhaps you were in your right mind once more."

"If my present mind's wrong, I shall never be right," said I, as I hove the wheel over to larboard to keep the Yankee Blade on her course.

"Archer's so much prettier than Jones," said Cynthia in a dreamy, convincing tone. She reached out her hand and took the glass from me. Her touch was like a magnet. I couldn't have held it back to save my life. She stepped to the rail and rested the barrel of the glass upon one of the ratlines.

"Now where's your castle?" she asked; and added, "How this ship rolls!"

"The wind is falling light," I said. "Seems to me we're farther in shore than we ought to be.—Tomkins, did you keep her exactly on the course the Captain gave you?"

"Yessir," said Tomkins, without winking.

"Now where is it?" asked Cynthia.

I called one of the men to take the wheel and went to Cynthia's side. I guided the glass very slowly to within a hair's breadth of the imposing structure, ran it hurriedly past, so that the view was all in a blur, then I searched slowly and carefully for the thing that we had passed by. Cynthia was not long deceived.

"Give me that glass, Mr. Jones," she said with dignity. "I will find the citadel if it is there."

"It is there, upon my soul!" said I. I saw that she was angry. "There! Don't you see that big pile of stone?"

"Where?"

"There! Just there!"

"Is—that—Christophe's castle? What—a—big—thing—it—is! Why—Mr.—Jones—you—never—told—me—half! How—I—should—like—to—go—there!"

"God forbid!" said I, and I shuddered.

"Hand me that glass!" said the Skipper, who had tumbled up from below. He laid a heavy hand upon the spyglass and took it without ceremony. He could. He was her Uncle. He could call her Cynthia, too. I could only think it. The Skipper wheeled about and looked out to sea.

"Here, you, Mr. Jones!" said the Skipper, his gaze fixed on the stranger, "what did you do with that Cook?"

"The Cook?" said I inquiringly.

The Skipper removed the glass from his eyes.

"Didn't I tell you that pudding wasn't fit to give to a dog?"

"Yes, you did, sir, but the man did his best. I thin——"

"Mr. Jones, am I Captain of this vessel, or am I not?"

An acquiescent nod from me.

"Very well, then! You go below, Mr. Jones, and you take Bill Tomkins and the Growler, and you take that pudding, and you put it in the brig, and you take that Cook and you set him alongside of it, and you lock the door, and don't you let either of 'em come out until one of 'em's inside of the other!"

"Yes, sir," said I, and I went below to carry out his orders.

I closed the door of the brig, leaving the Cook sitting in the hot little place, looking ruefully at the nauseous mess that he had tried to force on the cabin table. I suddenly remembered something that I wanted done about the men's mess gear, and returned along the companion way. It was evident that I was not expected, for I heard some words, not overcomplimentary to myself, proceeding from the Growler, who had lingered behind; and he added, calling out to the Cook:

"Never mind, doctor,[A] you will be ashore in less than an hour."

[A] A sailor's name for the Cook.

When I came on deck again the Skipper had the glass glued to his eyes.

"Did he eat it?" asked the Skipper.

"No, sir, not yet," said I. "He'd just had his dinner."

The Skipper did not seem to listen to my answer. He handed the glass to me and pointed seaward.

"Don't like the looks of that vessel out there, Jones. She's been crawling up on us for the last hour. Looks as if she was trying to head us off. About three points forward of the beam now, I should say. Isn't this vessel off her course, Jones?"

He walked over to the binnacle, and took a look at the compass.

"No, you're right. But we certainly are farther in shore than I expected we would be. Head her up, man, head her up!"

"Tomkins had the wheel while I was below," said I. "He said he kept her just as you told him. That stranger's flying the English flag." The Skipper shook his head, looked at the Union Jack, and then over the side of the Yankee Blade.

"Didn't know there was any currents around here. Strange! Strange!"

Cynthia stood sniffing and wrinkling up her handsome nose.

"What is it smells so sweet?" she asked.

"The land," said I.

"Yes, I know, of course. But I never smelled land so sweet as this before. Now, off Martin——"

"The wind has fallen light, Captain," said I.

"How monotonous you are," said Cynthia, "not to call it——"

"Damn the wind!" said the Skipper. He wet his finger in his mouth and held it up.

"Why don't you throw the cat overboard, and shoot an albatross?" questioned Cynthia, who was versed in sea lore.

"The cat was left behind at Martinique," replied the Skipper. "I guess with some of those girls Jones was hanging round, and any fool knows that no one ever saw an albatross in these waters."

"Well, please don't damn the wind, Uncle, while I'm on board." Cynthia spoke with some asperity, and turned her back squarely on me. "You know very well you promised Aunt Mary 'Zekel——"

"Damning the wind ain't anything; want a blow!" said the Skipper.

"Do we? Why?"

"That's our safety," growled he, with his eyes glued to the glass.

"Are you really afraid, Uncle Antony?"

"Well, no, not what you might call afraid. Wouldn't be very agreeable to be taken prisoner just now. Damn if I don't believe that's a letter of marque, that fellow!"

I laughed.

"Don't be afraid, Miss Archer," I said; "there are no letters of marque nowadays."

"Oh, do let me see! I hope he is one. I never saw a letter of marque."

The Skipper growled in my ear, "Pirates are just as bad."

"Will he take my cassava bread, and capture Solomon?"

"He'll capture you and the whole bilin' if we don't get ahead a little faster. I'd like to head her up. Can't, till we pass those nubbles on the starboard bow. Jones, we may have some tough work. You go below and get a bite, while I take the deck. May have to run."

"Where to?" asked Cynthia.

"Ashore, I guess," answered the Skipper. Most girls would have fainted.

"I'd better go below and pack my bag," said Cynthia. She turned to me condescendingly. "I'll give you something, Mr. Jones, if you choose to come."

Choose to come! I would have followed her to a much warmer interior. The cabin was close and stuffy. There were some cushioned seats on either side of the table, just too far from it to allow one to eat comfortably. The most of my bread dropped, between my knees and rolled away on the deck.

"What does he carry that ridiculous picture all around the world for?" I growled.

Cynthia turned and looked at the coloured picture of a falcon which hung in its frame at the end of the small cabin.

"Doesn't he look foolish? He's so out of drawing. He makes me seasick," said I.

"It is an excellent picture," said Cynthia.

"And a plain Yankee skipper coming to sea with a coat of arms and a motto. It's positively silly!"

"It belongs to him just as much as his name does. I can't see why he shouldn't bring it. It isn't a coat of arms, either. You can't say such things to me about the hooded hawk, Mr. Jones, though I am not a Schuyler exactly. But I have a great respect for the family."

"And a Latin text," I added.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, Mr. Jones. Even the bird will be shocked. Do you know what the motto means?"

"It's Latin," I answered. That was conclusive. At Belleville we had other things to do besides study Latin.

She turned on her transom and surveyed the coat of arms, her head on one side, her handsome eyes screwed out of all shape. They rested upon a very fat bird holding with difficulty to a wrist to which it bore no proportion. The wrist was as large as the trunk of a tree.

"Aunt Mary 'Zekel did it," said Cynthia. "Uncle says it means, 'A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush'—the motto, I mean."

"Well, so it is," I answered. "A bird in a white sunbonnet is worth——"

"William Brown is waiting at home on the dock for me," said Cynthia, as she removed the sunbonnet.

I sat silent and drained my cup.

"Have some more coffee, Mr. Jones?" She took my cup and replenished it.

"I said that William Brown is waiting on the dock for me."

"He can't; a dock's a hole."

"Well, anyway, he's waiting." A short silence, during which she wrinkled her forehead.

"Wharf, then! William Brown's——"

"I should think Brown was synonymous with synopsis," said I absent-mindedly.

"Some people have no dictionary knowledge," sniffed Cynthia. "He is, really."

"Is what?"

"Waiting. We're going to keep house."

"On what?"

"What? On what?"

"Keep house on what?"

"Well, I'm going to begin with the parrot. That's what I got him for."

"Stew him first day. What'll you do next?"

"I decline to talk with you," said Cynthia, twisting huffily around on the old red plush cushion. "William may be very rich some day. His great aunt was a Schuyler. He has a share in the Belleville copper mines."[B]

[B] It has been rumoured lately that there is a project on foot to resume the working of these mines.—Author.

"You still have faith in them, have you? Now, Miss Archer, let me tell you——"

Plim! Splash! The water was dashed through the open stern ports.

"What was that?" said Cynthia, rising. "A whale or a hurricane?" And then, as she sat looking questioningly at me, we heard a report. The report of a gun. This was followed by the pounding of the Skipper's feet on the deck above our heads. Cynthia ran out of the cabin door and up the companion way to the poop. I heard her calling as she went: "Don't be afraid, Uncle Tony! I'm coming."

"Where's Jones?" I heard him growl, as I followed close at his heels.

"Fainted away in the cabin."

"Damn coward!"

"What's the matter?" said I.

Bill Ware had let go the wheel, and the vessel was yawing round. We were in the trough of the sea.

The Captain seemed incapable through astonishment. I jumped to the wheel and got her on her course again.

"That damn fellow fired at me across our bows. Next he'll cut us amidships."

"Shouldn't wonder," said Cynthia, "if he takes the stern for the bow."

She stood looking calmly at the approaching vessel.

"I should think he'd fire straighter than that. Looks as if he had something in him."

Her acceptance of the situation threw the Skipper into a towering rage. He stammered and stuttered. Cynthia paid no attention to his angry words.

"Shall I take the wheel, Uncle?" she asked.

This seemed to bring the Captain to his senses.

"Take the wheel, Mr. Jones." I had had it for a minute.

"On deck, everybody!" The men came tumbling up in lively fashion. They could have heard our Skipper on board the other vessel.

"Jump to the lee braces, men! Brace everything sharp up! Get a small pull of the spanker sheet! Haul all the bow lines! Let her luff! Luff, you beggar! Bring her close by the wind!"

The Captain stood, his chin raised in the air, his eyes on the yards.

"Well! The main yard!" The men ceased hauling, and belayed the braces.

"Well! The maintops'l yard. Belay the lee braces!"

"Do you think we'll get ahead of that other ship?" said Cynthia.

I looked critically to windward.

"No, I don't," said I.

"Then what will happen?"

"Depends on the other fellow; if——"

"Think we might weather the nubbles, Mr. Jones?" And then, before I could answer, "Ready about!" he roared.

"Ay, ay, sir!"

"He's bound to catch us on this tack," confided I into the funnel as I ran to my station.

The men ran willingly to obey the orders; all but Tomkins.

"Blank you, Tomkins! why don't you move? Got rheumatism, or what? Why don't those sails fill? Darn it all! We're in irons. No, there she goes! We're forging ahead. Think I'll run for that cove when we tack again. Might stand 'em off with two four-poun——"

The Skipper was interrupted. He stood with open mouth, from which no sound issued. We were all, as we stood, swayed slowly forward, then as slowly backward, with a motion that made me sick and dizzy. There was a shaking of the hull, an ominous creaking of the masts, as the Yankee Blade careened slightly and stood still. At that moment a shot struck the foremast, cutting it in two. It fell to leeward, a mass of splintered wood and tangled rigging. The crashing of the top into the water sent the foam flying over us.

"He wants you to stop," said Cynthia.

"Well, haven't I?" said the Skipper dryly.

"Yes, you have certainly," answered Cynthia in a tone of conviction. The Skipper turned on Cynthia in a sudden rage.

"Can't you cry or do something? Why don't you act womanly. I wish to God you was home with your Aunt Mary 'Zekel!"

The Skipper seemed to have lost his nerve.

"What shall we do, Jones? Cut away the mast, I suppose."

"Better lower some boats, sir, at once," said I. "We're no match for them."

Cynthia had the glass raised to her eyes.

"They're getting out a boat," she said.

"Let me see."

The Skipper seized the spyglass from Cynthia so roughly that he pulled her sunbonnet from her head. She stood beside him bareheaded, the gentle tropic breeze blowing her hair into a thousand little brown rings. I ran close to her as I was hurrying to get the boats lowered. Her mouth was set, as if she did not fancy her Uncle's rough treatment.

"He doesn't mean it, Miss Archer," I said in as sympathetic a tone as I could command. "He's worried and——"

"You need not apologize to me for my Uncle, Mr. Jones. We understand each other thoroughly." She went up to the old man and laid her hand upon his shoulder. He shook it off impatiently.

"Lower a boat, Mr. Jones!" he said. "Lower a boat at once!"

Cynthia put on her sunbonnet to hide, I thought, her mortification.

"I have given the order, sir," said I. "Better lower two, sir. The men don't want to be captured any more than we do."

"Couldn't wish the stranger any worse luck than to capture them all, Cook included," said the Skipper with a scowl at the men.

"I guess they did their best, Captain," said I, in a louder voice than was necessary, with an eye to a possible future.

"Don't answer me, Mr. Jones! Get a boat down!"

"Lay aft there to lower the dinghy! Stand by!"

"How can you worry Uncle so, Mr. Jones, when you know how——"

Two or three of the men lay aft with alacrity at my order. Among them was Tomkins. He worked with a will.

"Where's Ned Chudleigh?" asked the Skipper.

"In the foc's'l, sir," said the Bo's'n.

"Send him up here. On deck, everybody!"

"Says he's sick, sir."

"Sick, is he? Guess he'll be sick before we've—Why don't you get out that boat, you rascals?"

"Shall we lower a third one, Captain?" said I. The shore looked inhospitable. We might as well be on the right side of the men.

"Bear a hand there, whatever you do! They've got their boat in the water. The men are climbing down the falls now. Put a cask of salt pork under the thwarts, Mr. Jones, and a breaker of water."

I gave the order, and added thereto a bag of hard bread, some coffee, tea, and sugar. I saw that the Bo's'n was adding the necessary utensils. Cynthia watched these preparations with disapproving mien. She came over to where I stood, her eyes flashing fire.

"Do you mean to tell me," she asked fiercely, "that you'll run from those letter-of-marque people without even a struggle? There are all my shells and that West Indian dress of mine down in my box. Do you intend to let them be taken without so much as——"

"I'm not Captain of this craft," said I, "but he's doing the only——"

"Don't hide your cowardice behind my poor old Uncle. If no one else will do anything, I'll—Get me a slow match; light it quickly, do you hear?" with a stamp of the foot at the cabin boy.

"Shall we put any blankets in the boat, Mr. Jones, sir?" asked the Bo's'n. "Something for the lady——"

I ran down below into Cynthia's cabin. Even with all the hurry, confusion, and excitement of the moment, I did not fail to note the neatness of that white little room. I tore the blanket from the smoothly made bed and seized a pillow from its place. I stood looking around a moment to see if there was anything more that she might want. I saw on the dresser a little note-book, with a pencil slipped into the loops. This I put into my pocket with a picture done by a Belleville artist of Aunt Mary 'Zekel. Another of a very meek-looking man, with his hair brushed forward over his ears, and a collar the points of which ran up nearly to his eyes, I took it to be William Brown. This I detached from the hook on which it hung, and, going to the open port, I thrust my arm through and tossed it up in the air, hoping that Cynthia would in this way look her last on the face of my rival. Simultaneously with my toss of the picture there came a report from overhead, and I saw some fragments of shattered glass. I knew that the six-pounder on the poop had been fired.

I hurried on deck, encumbered with the pillow and blanket. The smell of gunpowder was in the air. Cynthia was standing defiantly by the gun. She had just dropped the slow match. The Skipper was dancing in rage on the poop.

"Now you've done it! Now you've done it!" he screamed. "You've made 'em so angry there's no telling what they'll do.—Are the boats all ready, Mr. Jones?"

"If we are going to run, we may as well show them a little Yankee spirit first," said Cynthia. "I wish I could make them hear me. I would tell them that the only man on board this vessel's a girl."

I had picked up the glass and was trying to get a sight on the long boat. She was a little way from the end of the ship, and Cynthia through sheer luck had struck her amidships. I saw that there were five or six men struggling to keep afloat. A boat was being lowered to pick them up.

"Seems to me now's our time to go," said the Skipper. "Just look at the guns on board that fellow!" He turned on Cynthia, his face crimson, his eyes fierce and angry. "How dare you accuse me of being a coward?" He shook his fist in her face. "I'm thinking of you more than anybody. We haven't a ghost of a chance with those fellows if they're what I think they are. You may talk to Jones there; he's weak enough to stand it, but by——"

"Mr. Jones has taken the precaution to have a comfortable time, at all events," said Cynthia, with a scornful glance at the blanket and pillow. "If you're really going ashore, Uncle, I'll just step below and get my bag. I'm glad I packed it now."

She disappeared down the companion way, and after a few moments, during which we were getting the Jacob's ladder slung so that she could descend into the long boat, she came on deck again. A sound of stumbling and a banging of metal preceded her.

When she appeared above the hatchcombings, I saw that she held a worked canvas bag in one hand and a large, square parrot's cage in the other. A shot from the stranger went over our heads at that moment, doing no damage beyond cutting away a few threads of rope, which fell upon the cage.

"Damn those Britishers!" said the parrot.

"They didn't do much that time—only cut off those Irish pennants. That's a very sensible bird of yours, Cynthy," said the Skipper, who remembered the late war only too well.

"I'm glad there are some brains on board," answered Cynthia, "if only a bird's."

"Get in the boat and stop sassin' me!" ordered the Skipper.

I handed the blanket and pillow to the Bo's'n, who placed them in the bow, thus making a comfortable seat.

"You'd better go up in the bows," I said to Cynthia, as I helped her down from the wobbling Jacob's ladder. She stepped exactly on the middle of the seat. I never saw another girl step anywhere but on the gun'l.

The Skipper took the steering oar.

"I'll keep the Yankee Blade between us and them," said he.

"I haven't the slightest doubt of it," remarked Cynthia gratuitously.

I sat forward of the men, next to Cynthia.

"Where's William Brown?" I asked. We were about three boats' lengths from the ship. Cynthia arose in her seat.

"O Uncle! wait!" she called; "I must go back a moment. I have forgotten something."

The Skipper paid no more attention than if she had not spoken.

"Not too short a stroke, Bill," he said, "but strong, strong. Am I keeping the Yankee Blade between us?"

"You be, sir," answered the stroke.

Cynthia sat down, impelled to do so partly by the jerk of the oars and partly by the silence of her Uncle.

"I thought you never forgot him for a moment."

"I never do. That was the only time all this voyage. If it hadn't been for you, Mr. Jones——"

This sentence was subject to two constructions. I tried to look upon it as an admission.

A shot fell over the Yankee Blade and pierced the water just behind us.

"Damn those Britishers!" said the parrot.

"I'll give you fifty dollars for that bird when you get him home, Cynthy," said the Skipper. "Did you teach him that?"

"I!" There was a world of wrath in Cynthia's tones. "He was probably taught by the Minion when he took the cage out to clean it."

Cynthia jumped excitedly to her feet.

"Oh! See there, Mr. Jones, they are firing on the flag! There goes a shot through it! I don't suppose they know we have left yet. The Yankee careened so."

It was true. Our emblem, which we had left floating at the masthead, had been shot directly through the field, and some of the stars were carried away with the ball. Cynthia wrung her hands.

"Uncle Antony," she screamed, if that sweet voice could ever have been said to do anything so vulgar, "let us go back! Don't you see? They have fired on the flag."

"Don't get flustered," said the Skipper to the stroke. "Steady and strong wins to-day. My niece's a little excitable."

Cynthia heard the words. She turned on me, her lips white with suppressed passion.

"You know what the trouble with the English is, don't you, Mr. Jones?"

"Yes, I know of several failings they have; first, they——"

She took the words out of my mouth.

"They haven't a cowardly hair in their heads," she said. "I am ashamed to-day, for the first time in my life, of being an American."

Of course, she did not see that it would have been worse than foolhardy to remain, and I did not try to convince her.

"I see a man on the foc's'l," said Cynthia.

"Nonsense!" roared the Skipper from the stern. "We ain't goin' back for anybody. They had their chance.—Is there any one on board, Bill?"

"There is, sir."

"What's his name when he's sober?" asked the Skipper viciously.

"Ned Chudleigh, sir."

"Didn't you call him?"

"I did, sir," puffed Bill.

"Why didn't he come, then?"

"Said he was English, sir; 'd like, to go back. Waited a purpose for them Britishers. Wanted 'em to capture him."

"I am afraid he has mistaken their nationality," said I.

"Damn the Britishers!" remarked the parrot.

"We have no quarrel with the British at present," I remarked. "What's your antediluvian bird talking about, Miss Archer?"

"I should think that with two six-pounders in the waist, and a gun that none of you had the pluck to fire on the poop, you might have——"

"Too much noise in the bows!" growled the Skipper.

I was sitting in the bows, facing Cynthia, as we left the Yankee Blade. I had watched the citadel on its far distant height grow lower and lower to the eye, and finally sink behind its seaward hills and masses of foliage. I noticed, however, that our course was laid in an almost direct line for it; a little to the left, but still so that the position of the castle was impressed upon my mind. As we neared the shore, white rocks began to show, and the water, from having been blue, of a dark and beautiful shade, began to fade into tints no less lovely. There were streaks of pale green upon darker green, streaks of yellow upon blue. This was caused by the depth or shallowness of the water which flowed between us and the white rocks. Cocoanut tufts fringed the shore, and behind them were the various species of trees that thrive in the tropics. The gri-gri, the mahogany, reared their tall heads and vari-coloured leaves. Masses of green of all shades clothed the hills, which sloped upward a short distance from the level of the beach.

"O Uncle! See those lovely pieces of coral! Stop a moment, do, and let me get a piece to take home to Aunt Mary 'Zekel."

The stroke trailed his oar.

"What are you about, Bill Tomkins, stopping for coral! I never saw a mite round here. You stop when I give the order.—Don't be too much of a fool, Cynthy! Do you know we're running for our lives? Look back at that Yankee of ours, and see if there are any other——"

"I see only one lonely man. He looks repentant, as well as I can make out. Let's go back and—Why, yes! There are some other people, too. They seem to——"

"Go slow there, ahead!" called out the Skipper, standing up as he spoke.

He held the steering oar firmly and looked for a landing place, trying vainly to see over the heads of those in the boat.

"Tom, jump up there in the bows, and see if you see any——"

"There goes another piece of the flag! O Uncle Tony! they've almost shot our flag away."

The spyglass dropped with a bump into the bottom of the boat, and Cynthia put her hands inside the funnel and over her eyes, and burst into floods of tears. She did not cry like a young lady. She cried like a young cyclone.

"Damn those Britishers!" shrieked the parrot.

"Yes, damn them, Solomon dear! Damn them again, since there's no one here to even——"

Her words ended in a rain of sobs. They issued from the sunbonnet wringing wet and soaked through. They might have come out of the washtub. She stood up the better to see the extent of her misery.

"Down in the bows! You will be overboard."

"There comes the Union Jack! I see it over the Yankee. That letter of marque's getting closer. Shame on us all! Oh, shame!"

The grounding of the boat seated Cynthia rather suddenly again in a manner which would have been undignified in any girl in the world but Cynthia.

The bow of our boat had not reached the shore. Some of the men dropped overboard and tried to get her clear. She had grounded amidships. As they pushed, she swung round as if on a pivot. I joined the men.

"We'll have to lighten the load," said I, and without more words I took Cynthia in my arms and waded with her ashore. I set her high and dry on the beach. She surveyed me with anger and scorn glowering from her eyes.

"Your Uncle was steering," I explained humbly, "and the men——"

She cast a comprehensive glance at Bill and Tanby.

"Yes, I suppose you are better than——"

"William Brown will have to possess his soul in patience," said I. "Do you think he'll wait?"

"Yes, he will, but he will——"

"What! On that dock?"

"Yes, and I'll wait here."

"I wouldn't; at least, not too long," hazarded I.

"Where's that kag of salt pork and that bag of hard bread?" roared the Skipper. "Is the breaker ashore?"

"Looks hospitable, don't it?" said I.

She raised her eyes to the wooded heights above us, and then looked up along the coast.

"I see the other boat has landed."

I looked along the beach, and saw that the men were leaving the dinghy and were carrying some heavy weights high up on the beach. Cynthia seated herself upon a rock. She deposited the cage on one side and the worked bag on the other.

"Jones," said the Skipper, "I wish you'd keep the glass on those people out there while the men get the provisions up."

I took the glass willingly and seated myself by Cynthia. Before I put my eyes to the glass, they rested upon the bag which reposed at Cynthia's side.

"I'm so glad I brought it," said she. "Aunt Mary 'Zekel worked it for me."

"It's a curious-looking bag," ventured I. "What are those funny-looking white things on the side, made of glass beads?"

"There's nothing funny at all about that bag, Mr. Jones. That's our family plot."

"Your what?"

"Plot—our family plot. Aunt Mary 'Zekel worked it for me. She said she thought it would be a pleasant reminder of home. That's her tomb in the middle. Don't you see her initials: 'M. S. A.'—Mary Schuyler Archer?"

"Is she inside of it?"

"Who? Aunt Mary 'Zekel? Mercy, no! She's just as much alive as you are. At least, she was when I left home. There's her tomb in the middle. Uncle 'Zekel's buried inside of it."

I withdrew my eyes from the Yankee Blade.

"Isn't he rather heavy to carry round?"

"Don't be silly, Mr. Jones. His name's on the other side. It doesn't show on the bag. On the right you see Antony's shaft, and then little Peter's—there was always a Peter in the family—and on the left comes Gertrude, and then Mary—Aunt Mary 'Zekel's little girl. The beginning of that next one is for Adoniah. She didn't have time to work that in."

"Oh, I see! She chose the time to depict the plot when a burial was in progress. There are the horses' tails."

"How can you joke on such a solemn subject, Mr. Jones?" I dropped the glass at her evident displeasure, and it rolled down the slight declivity. "Those are not horse tails, as you know very well. Besides, they are green. Any one can see that they are weeping willows. She didn't have time to work the trunks. She's going to do that when I come back. Please do not add stupidity to your other failings, Mr. Jones."

She moved the bag to a safe distance from me with a reverential and disappointed air.

"Where is that glass?" she said.

Every man on the beach ran for the spyglass. The Cook got it first.

"Thank you, Cook," she said, with a radiant smile.

"You never looked at me as you did at that Cook just now," I whispered under my breath.

"The Cook never presumes," she answered in a low tone. "Lend me your shoulder, Cook."

The Cook knelt on the beach with Spartan firmness. I did not envy him his cushion of sharp and jagged rocks. I gloated with joy over the wince into which his features were twisted. The Skipper turned and waved his arm at me.

"Come here, Jones! One would think you were at a picnic, the whole of you."

I walked over to where the Skipper stood, fanning himself violently with his panama.

"You told me to keep my eye on them, sir," said I. "Hadn't that Cook better build a fire?"

"What! Think he's hungry so soon?" with a grim smile. "We must husband our resources, Mr. Jones."

"Sounds just like a shipwreck," called Cynthia, who had caught the Skipper's words. "'Husband our resources!' Isn't that delightful!"

"We've got no place to sleep to-night, sir," said I, pursuing my theme. "There are all sorts of crawlers in the bushes yonder. A fire will clear up the place, and will cool off before night."

"You've got more sense than I credited you with," said the Skipper. "Cook, build a fire up there under those trees." The Cook arose, joy and regret intermingled in his looks.

"Thank you, Cook. I never rested the glass on so steady a shoulder."

She had rested it on mine a hundred times.

Thus we each took our turn at the glass, and each told each other what we saw.

"If they're looking for money, they'll be almighty disappointed," said the Skipper in a low tone to his niece and myself. "I took all there was."

Then in an undertone, and with that rashness of statement that sometimes we live to regret, "I wish I could strike a flint in that magazine. What was that, Mr. Jones?"

We saw a puff of smoke out at sea, and some moments later a report.

"Why should the British attack us, Uncle?" asked Cynthia. "I thought we were at peace now."

I shook my head at the Skipper.

"Don't know as they have," answered the old man for want of a better explanation.

Cynthia jumped from her seat and ran back to a slight ascent which rose above the beach. To the top of this she climbed, and, shadowing those wondrous eyes with her hand, gazed out to sea.

"It's another vessel! An American, I am sure! Yes, I can see the flag; probably a man-of-war. Regular officers, of course. They won't know how to spell R-U-N—Run!"

"Did you hear me tell you to stop sassin' me a while back? 'Twas the best we could do. Some one got us off our course on purpose. They tell me some one's got a Haïtien wife down here."

At these words Cynthia, who at this time seemed to live to make me miserable, surveyed me with unconcealed scorn.

"You had the wheel while Uncle was taking his nap," said she.

"I turned it over to Tomkins a half hour before I called you, Miss Archer. I have never been here before, give you my word," said I.

"I think they're leaving the Yankee now," said the Skipper. "When they take what they want and clear out, we can right her and get her on her course, and I'll take care how I get in these waters again."

Cynthia took the glass from her Uncle without permission.

"Yes, they are," said she. "Don't you see those black figures climbing over the bulwarks? There, to the right of the mainmast."

"Guess I must be looking through the other end," said the Skipper.

Cynthia restored the magnifying medium with some reluctance.

"My eyes are so much better than yours, Uncle Tony," she urged.

"Use 'em, then!" said the Skipper shortly, as he screwed the glass to a focus. "Yes, they certainly have gone. Yes, by cracky! there goes another shot from the American." He ran a little higher up the hill to a better vantage point. We followed. "I can see 'em now over the bulwarks of the old Yankee. They're pulling like Satan for the Britisher. Hope the Americans 'll knock Ned Chudleigh's head off!"

He changed his focus, and fixed his gaze on the newcomer.

"That last fellow's an American, sure! The other has turned his attention to him."

As the Skipper looked through the glass and reported what he saw, there were several shots interchanged between the two vessels.

"Hope they'll knock seven bells out of 'em!"

"Cook, send up a smoke. They will see us, perhaps, and take us off. Are those our colours, Mr. Jones? Perhaps you can make——"

I almost snatched the glass from his hand. I raised it hurriedly to my eyes.

"It's—yes—no—yes—it is—the——"

"What a lucid description!" remarked Cynthia.

"Don't devil the man, girl! Can't you speak, Jones? It's the——"

"Stars and Stripes," said I.

The Skipper at this juncture snatched the glass from me. He fixed it upon a nearer point.

"My God!" he ejaculated.

CHAPTER II.
OUR FIRST VIEW OF THE NATIVES.

The Skipper's tone was reverent, but full of horror. We all, even to the Cook, ran up to a higher spot to see what had so disturbed the old man.

"You'll see it just as well from the beach," said the Skipper. "They've set the old Yankee afire!"

It was true. We could not see very clearly for the smoke which the firing had made, but as we gazed anxiously, knowing what the entire loss of the ship would mean for us, we saw that smoke had begun to pour from the ports and hatches. First appeared the misty stream which the Skipper had discovered, then it grew thicker.

As we gazed, fascinated with the horrible spectacle, the flames began to shoot upward. They curled round the lower mast, they ran up the rigging, they licked their way up the shrouds. They ran aloft, and swallowed the crosstrees, first having eaten into the very tops. The smoke was thicker than ever, and made a dark background for the points and jets of flame, which leaped through its walls. And now, as we watched breathless, each one glued to his post, no word spoken between us, a long, low, ominous rumble came to our ears. There were two or three sharp cracks, the flames leaped to the sky, there was a final thunderous crash, and the air was a mass of flying timbers. I turned to look at the Skipper. The glass had fallen unheeded from his fingers, the tears were dropping off the end of his nose. He winked hard, and took out a bandana and wiped his forehead to hide his emotion.

"I suppose you think I'm an old fool to stand here and cry like a baby. Perhaps you don't think I should feel anything to see my handsome ship go up in smoke." The old man's lips quivered. "She's been home and wife and children to me for a good many years, the old Yankee Blade has—yes, and a livin'. I ought to have stayed at home. I never should have tried it again. I was foolish; I deserted her; I never should have done it but for that damn' girl, who don't appreciate it any more——"

Cynthia's arms were round the old man's neck.

"Dear Uncle Tony! I do appreciate it. I do! I do! I didn't know you were doing it for me. I thought——"

"And I thought they would leave, and we could perhaps get her afloat again. Is there anything left of her, Jones? I suspect we've seen the last of the old Yankee Blade." He turned and walked down the hill. I stooped and picked up the glass and handed it to Cynthia.

She turned it on the spot where the Yankee had gone on the rocks. A dull, thick smoke overhung the place. On the hither side we could see a mass of wreckage. Some large splinters of wood were floating in the water. We heard repeated shots, but the other vessels were obscured from view by the smoke which they themselves had made, as well as that which enveloped the wreck of the Yankee.

"I think there's a little of her left, Uncle Tony," said Cynthia. "She seems to stand up on the rock, part of her. Oh, if they could only see us! We haven't anything to signal with, not even an apron."

She seized the sunbonnet from her head and waved it wildly in the air. "They must see us!" she said. "They must!" But her action was of no avail. Our sight could not penetrate the smoke, and the vessels, even if their crews could have seen us, were too busy to notice us. Cynthia waved until her arm dropped tired at her side.

"We'll have to give it up, I suppose," she said. "Good-bye, old Yankee Blade, good-bye!" And together we descended the hill. Captain Schuyler had turned his back on the ocean and was talking with the Cook.

"No use crying over spilt milk," I heard him say. The Cook regarded him as surlily as he dared. The pudding lay heavy in his interior, mental and physical.

"We'd better get some food ready and then put out the fire. No knowing who's lurking round."

"Why, Uncle Tony, isn't Haïti a friendly country?"

"Friendly enough, girl, but we don't know what's happened since we were here before. Might have had forty revolutions. These fellows are always revolutin'.—Now, my men, stir round and beat out that fire! Reckon the crawlers are all killed or scattered. Come, men, stir your stumps! Do you hear me?"

The Skipper looked round at the men.

They were standing apart, conversing in low tones. They did not move at once.

"Isn't it exciting?" whispered Cynthia, her eyes shooting out light from the funnel. "Do you believe it's a mutiny? I hope it is. I never saw a mutiny. I believe they usually say: 'Now look a-here, Cap'n, we ain't a-goin' to stand this sort of thing! It's a-goin' to be share and share alike. There ain't no officers and there ain't no men. We're all equal on this here island.'"

I laughed.

"You must have read some very instructive books in your time, Miss Archer," I said.

"Yes, I have. I seem to know exactly what they are saying. Don't you think I understand pretty well how they conduct a mutiny?"

"Yes—in books," I said. I laughed, more to disabuse her mind than anything else. I remembered a very pretty mutiny a few years back. For weeks I never slept without seeing those men strung up to the yard-arm with not a moment in which to say a prayer. I thought this a good time to advance myself a little in her favour, and at the same time make her forget the loneliness of her situation. I saw that the Skipper seemed to be arguing with the sailors, and that he seemed to want no help from me.

"I wish that I could express to you, Miss Archer, how really beautiful I think you. The English language is feeble to convey all that——"

"When we get home, Mr. Jones," Cynthia broke in, "I will lend you a book which contains all the adjectives you could possibly need——"

I looked at her to see if she was in earnest.

"It is called 'The Complete Idiot.' Now do stop your nonsense and look at those sailors. What do you suppose they are saying to Uncle?"

I withdrew my gaze from her face and regarded the men as they stood in a group near the Skipper. Their attitude did savour somewhat of insubordination. We could not hear their words or the Skipper's as he answered them.

When they had finished, they proceeded to the glade where the fire had been kindled, and began to beat the bushes with a will. Then, with brooms improvised of thickly leaved branches, they swept the place clean.

"Will that do, Cap'n?" asked Bill Tomkins.

"Yes, I call that a pretty handsome clean up," answered the Skipper. "Now you men go and sit down upon the beach and I'll send you some food."

They withdrew in a cluster, and sat down on the beach as directed. The Cook, who had been broiling some pork, handed us our shares first, each slice on a piece of hard bread. Then he served the men.

Cynthia took her ration and ate as heartily as the rest of us.

"Is it mutiny, Uncle? I was never in a mutiny."

"Wasn't you, really? Well, it is mutiny, if you like to call it so, Cynthy.—Give me some tobacco, Cook; and you, Minion, just run up the hill and see if those ships are in sight."

The Cook handed the Skipper the tobacco with a look that expressed the wish that it had been gunpowder instead, and the thin young lad, who was at everybody's beck and call, ran as fast as his legs could carry him up to the little knoll. The Skipper seated himself in the shade and puffed away. Cynthia hung anxiously on every puff, every breath.

"Uncle, will you never speak? If you knew how interested I am——"

Captain Schuyler sat, his pipe in his mouth, and talked one-sidedly between the puffs.

"The idiots want to walk to Cap Haïtien," said the Skipper. "I tell 'em it's worse than foolish, but they seem pretty determined. They say they can do it in two days' time. Must be twenty miles or more, following the shore. They say they can bring back horses for the rest of us."

"That's an excellent idea!" said Cynthia. "I don't believe I shall get tired of pork in two days' time. I don't know about the third. Have we enough food for two days, Uncle?"

"Lord, yes! We'll get along a week easy.—What do you think, Jones?"

"I'd let 'em try it," said I. "Of course, they'll never come back. I've seen 'em start off before this to bring aid and succour. They never returned, except in story-books."

"If I was sure of that, I'd let 'em go mighty quick," said the Skipper. "We're better off without 'em."

He turned to the group. "How many of you want to go?" He raised his voice, so that it would carry to where they sat.

Tomkins stood up and answered respectfully:

"All but the Bo's'n and the Minion, sir."

There was a certain decision in Tomkins' tone, which revealed the fact to me that they intended going, permission or not.

"The Cook, too?" asked Cynthia.

The Cook looked down and shuffled his feet.

"I can cook, Cap'n, miss, sir, beggin' your pardon, ma'm, Mr. Jones," volunteered the Bo's'n.

"Good enough!" said the Skipper. "Let Cook fit you out with vittles, men. What have you got for water?"

Bill Ware spoke up eagerly:

"Tomkins says as there's two or three springs on the way, sir——"

"How does he know?" asked the astonished Skipper.

"Been here before, sir, so he was a-tellin' us last night. Says it's a puffec pair-o-dice."

"Oh, he does, does he?—So you've been here before, have you, Tomkins?"

Tomkins looked daggers at Bill Ware.

"Yessir, I was here some years back."

"Know the coast pretty well?"

"Yessir, pretty well."

"Thought so," muttered the Skipper in a low tone. "Knew it better than I did." Then aloud: "Very well, my man. Now do you think you can get horses from whoever's governor down there, and be back in a week?"

"Sartin sure, sir," answered Tomkins unblushingly.

While Tomkins was speaking, the Skipper was muttering under his breath, "Better get rid of the rascals, anyway."

"You don't think——" said I.

"I do think——" said he.

"What! Wrecked the vessel?" asked Cynthia breathlessly.

"Yes; drove her ashore."

"Why?"

"Hush!" said the Skipper.

"Tomkins!" called Cynthia.

"For God's sake, Cynthia, don't——"

"Miss Archer, I'm usually called, sir! I believe in always going to the root of every matter."

Cynthia arose from her sitting posture. She stood tall and stately. Her dignified air recalled to my mind a young woman by the name of Portia, of whom I had once read somewhere.

"Be quiet!" said the Skipper, pulling her skirt with a rough jerk. "Sit down!"

Cynthia gently disengaged her skirt from the Skipper's hand. She removed her sunbonnet, and with her pure face turned toward the sheepish Tomkins, she looked like a very young Daniel come to judgment.

It was a strange scene, one which I shall never forget. The tropic shore, the shipwrecked crew, the young girl standing forth as the exponent of right—foolhardy, if you like, but fearless in her righteous indignation.

She raised her hand, commanding the attention of the men.

"Tomkins," she said, "as you shall answer at the day of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed, did you wreck the Yankee Blade?"

The man shifted from one foot to the other, his head hanging down. He looked up with ferret eyes from under his sparse eyebrows.

"'Fore God——" began Tomkins.

"You are before God!" said Cynthia sternly.

He ground his feet restlessly, making little pools in the gravel of the shore.

"O Lord!" groaned the Skipper helplessly.

"Well, then, miss, 'fore God, I didn't!"

"Remember you're on oath, Tomkins. Well, then, who did?"

"Beg his pardon, ma'm, it was Mr. Jones!"

"I!"

Cynthia turned upon me a glance of most withering scorn and horror.

"You hear what this honest sailor says, Mr. Jones?"

"Tell you how it was, ma'm," said Tomkins. "I come on deck this mornin', long 'bout 'leven o'clock, and I see we was goin' straight for the land. Skipper was below, you was below. Mr. Jones, he had the wheel. I says, 'Fer Gord's sake, Mr. Jones,' I says, 'what are you a-doin', sir?' He says, says he, 'You, Tomkins, mind your da—, mind your busi——'"

"Shut up, Tomkins!" said the Skipper. "If you're goin', you'd better get ready."

Cynthia turned on me.

"What could possess you to do such a thing?"

"I was so anxious to get home to see William Brown," said I. "Haven't we had enough of this farce, Miss Archer?"

The Skipper laughed aloud, and I saw the backs of some of the men shaking.

"Don't be any more kinds of a fool than you can help, Cynthy. Sit down and keep cool until we can get rid of those rascals. Thank God they've elected to go! The sooner they take up their march the better for all hands."

"Do you mean to tell me, Uncle Tony, that you don't believe Tomkins on his oath?"

"What!" The Skipper's voice had the rising inflection. The word was uttered in a tone between a roar and an incredulous scream. "Believe a sailor?" roared the Skipper. "What are you talking about, Cynthy? Believe a sailor? O Lord!"

The men saw the Skipper's amusement, and doubtless judged of the cause.

"No use in threatening Tomkins," he said in my ear. "Better treat it as a joke, and let them go."

"As you say, Captain Schuyler; but when Mr. Tomkins and I meet again, there will be a reckoning that he won't forget, I'll warrant."

"Perhaps he really thought so," said Cynthia. "Hadn't they better wait until morning? It's getting so late now. They might be lonely without us."

"Now, Cynthy, don't you go and suggest any such a thing. We shan't be lonely without them. We shall be well rid of 'em, the Lord knows.—Here, you, Cook, fry some pork for those lunatics! Give 'em two days' rations, and let each man carry his own."

While the Cook was frying the pork, I noticed that the men were busy behind some guava trees at a little distance from the place where we were sitting. I had placed the pillow and blanket at the root of an enormous tree, and had made as comfortable a seat for Cynthia and the Skipper as my limited means would allow. The Skipper had his coat off, and was fanning himself with his great panama hat. The sun was broiling down upon us, but Cynthia looked as cool as a piece of ice from the Passaic River. I never saw such a provoking girl. While every one else was sweltering, she appeared perfectly comfortable. I was trying to balance myself upon a rather sharp piece of rock and to keep the men in my eye at the same time. We could not see much of them. They were stooping down, with their backs toward us.

The Skipper turned lazily round. Suddenly he straightened himself and glared at the group in the bushes.

"What have you got there, Bill Ware?" shouted he.

The Skipper's tone of authority startled the men.

They arose to a standing posture. Bill Ware turned his face toward us.

"We've—we've found some guavas, sir, that's all. I'll bring you over some."

"No, no, I'll come over. I don't know as I remember ever having seen guavas growing on——"

But Bill Ware had started toward us with great alacrity.

"Don't come here, sir, for the Lord's sake! The place is alive with scorpions."

The Skipper thought better of it, and waited until Bill Ware's arrival. The man walked across, holding something in his hand. When he came near, we discovered two very small and very unripe guavas.

He came close to Cynthia and handed the fruits to her. His face was very red. His breath was almost upon her cheek. She started back.

"Are those guavas? What a curious odour guavas have, Uncle!"

"I never noticed it," said he.

"How queerly Bill Ware walks!" said Cynthia, as she watched his return to his mates. "I never noticed it on board ship. I suppose he hasn't got his land legs on yet."

The Skipper raised himself and looked critically at the man.

"Those are the legs he always has on when he goes ashore," said he.

I had my suspicions, and I saw that the Skipper had his, but I did not want to frighten the girl and anger the men. Besides, she might not be frightened. She seemed to think that she had been sent into this world to set things right, and no one knew what tack she might take next.

The Skipper took out his silver watch. "Come, men, you'd better start! It's gettin' late. You'll want to pick out a good place for the night. It comes down in a minute in the tropics, you know.—Cook, are you ready?"

The men arose, turned one after the other, and came lingeringly out of the bushes.

"Are there any more of those guavas?"

"It's a little early, sir," said Tomkins. "They don't ripen well until the last of May."

Bill Tomkins's tongue seemed thick and his speech halting.

"Well, it's time to start. Cook'll give you your rations. Come, now! Good-bye, my men. Don't forget to bring those horses. We shall expect you by daybreak on Saturday." (We had gone ashore on a Monday.)

"Yessir, you expect us, sir," answered Tomkins.

The men took their rations from the Cook, then they one and all paid a last visit to the bushes to seek for a few more guavas before they left us, and then, with a hang-dog nod and touch of their caps, they took up their straggling march. We sat watching them as they moved westward in a wavering line.

"It must be very hard work walking up that beach," said Cynthia. "Did you remark what a difficult time Bill Ware had to get pointed straight, Uncle Tony?"

The Skipper and I sat and watched them. There was no need to answer Cynthia. The men made a line as straight as the fences which we were beginning to use about Belleville. The idea came from Virginia. We called them Virginia rail fences. As the last man of them staggered round the point and was lost behind the trunks of the cocoanut grove, the Skipper arose and approached the thicket where the mango tree stood. I followed a close second, and Cynthia came behind.

"I thought as much!" exclaimed the Skipper. He had parted the bushes and stood looking downward. I gazed over his shoulder, and Cynthia condescended to stand on tiptoe and cast her eyes over mine.

"What is it, Uncle Tony?" asked she.

"Those blanked rascals! In the confusion, Jones, do you see? Broke into my store-room, of course. I wanted to bring some myself, but it's never safe with such a crew. Got that at Santo Domingo for medicinal purposes. Wish to Heaven it would physic them all! Darned if I don't! Wish now I'd put arsenic in it." And then followed some language which I will not weary you by repeating. The Skipper was not the most profane man that I ever sailed with, but in those days of which I write—days long past, ah me!—that is saying a great deal more than any one to-day would imagine. Men, and particularly men who followed the sea, did not regard profanity as we do nowadays. Cynthia was used to the Skipper's ordinary looseness of speech, and, having heard it all her life, was astonished at very little that he said. I have learned to look upon such language with disgust, and I thank the refining influences of the day in which we live for making me see how much worse than silly it was, and, though I shall try to make the Skipper's speech sound more like the Skipper of modern times, still to make him seem at all the man that his friends knew him, I must occasionally point his marks as he himself pointed them.

Cynthia stood looking steadily at her Uncle as his adjectived indignation poured forth. When his vocabulary was exhausted, he sat down on the ground, weak from his exertion. Cynthia stood looking fixedly at him. Then, as the enormity of his offence overcame him, he drew out his bandana and mopped his face.

"Beg pardon, Cynthy, but you shouldn't have been here."

Cynthia fixed him with her glances as long as she could hold her tongue between her teeth, then turned and walked away with dignity.

"Now that girl's mad! And she'll go and tell Mary 'Zekel, and I promised Mary 'Zekel—Where'd we better put that damn thing, anyway?"

I aided the old man as he rolled the cask nearer our camping place, if the spot where we had deposited our few belongings could be called such. We had placed our cooking utensils—or the Bo's'n had for us—the parrot's cage, and the mortuary bag in a secluded spot among the trees. There happened to be a depression in the earth near where we sat, up beyond the line of the beach in the soft earth. We tumbled the cask in and covered it well with leaves and branches. Cynthia, whose curiosity would not allow her to remain longer away, had returned, and was watching our efforts.

"If they come back, they will demand it," remarked Cynthia.

"What! Those honest sailors?" inquired I.

I was still sore from her ill treatment of me. Cynthia's face, as much as I could see of it, was a brilliant crimson.

"Have they any weapons, Uncle Tony?" she asked, ignoring me entirely.

"Got pistols, I'll be bound, every man Jack of 'em!—By the way, Jones, what have we got in the way of firearms?"

I threw back my thin coat and displayed a pistol stuck in my belt in either side.

"Oh!" exclaimed Cynthia. "If I had known that you carried those murderous weapons, I should have refused to come ashore with you."

"From the ship, or the boat?" I asked.

She blushed again, and drooped her head so that I could see nothing but the white top of the funnel.

"I've got a fine knife," said the Skipper, "and so has the Bo's'n. He has brought some ammunition ashore, and I've got my old musket, of course."

"Do you really suppose that we shall need all those dreadful things?" asked Cynthia, her lips white and quivering.

"And you're the girl who fired on the letter of marque?" said I, for want of a more non-committal name. "What sort of a girl are you, anyway?"

Here was an anomaly, indeed! A girl who had had the courage not only to defy her Uncle and the whole ship's company, but to fire a gun which made a pretty good deal of noise when close to one's ear, afraid to listen to a simple discussion of weapons of defence! The Skipper at this moment hitched himself up a little higher, and threw his whole weight against the trunk on which he was leaning. I heard a softy, mushy crumble, and his head and shoulders disappeared from view.

I arose and ran to his aid, and at once clasped his outstretched hands and pulled with all my might. He finally, with my help, succeeded in regaining his position. He spluttered and coughed, his eyes and mouth full of the dust of decay. He rose to his feet and kicked viciously at the crumbling bark. A large piece fell inward, making an opening, into which a man could have squeezed himself. At that very moment, so mysterious are the ways of Providence, there was a short, sharp whiz and ping, and a bullet struck the tree just above my head. I lost no time in looking for the cause of this assault, but only the thick green of the near wood rewarded my searching glance. I seized Cynthia by the wrist and bent her almost to her knees. I forced her to push her way into the opening.

"It may be an attack," I said, hurriedly, to the Skipper. "Go in quickly! I will follow."

No one who has not seen the great trees of Santo Domingo and Haïti can believe to what a grand extent they grow. I have heard of the so-called "big trees" of California. The only one which I have seen is one placed in the grounds of the Smithsonian Institution at Washington. I made that trip with my wife lately. We were both of us a trifle infirm for so long a jaunt, but she agreed with me, and she has also been among the great trees of Haïti, that nothing that she had ever seen, with the exception of this one curiosity, exceeded the size of those trees in the island.

As yet we had not caught a glimpse of our secret foe. Whether he had caught sight of us or not I did not know, but, as a second bullet whizzed past my head, I hastily secreted myself also within the hollow trunk. I whispered to Cynthia to push over more to the side, and give room to her Uncle and myself. I could hear the beating of her heart, I stood so near her. Several bullets struck the tree, and one entered and dropped upon my foot. And now I heard some cries of anger. My curiosity became too much for me. I stood as near the opening as I could and placed my eye just over the edge of it. The voices grew louder, the bullets flew faster, and then from the bushes emerged a retreating party. Their backs were toward us. They were firing as they retreated. They were dark men, but not of pure African type.

They were unclothed, except for some trousers of white linen and a thin sort of shirt. They wore belts and carried the national weapon, the machete, stuck through the leather bands.

"Are you afraid of fainting?" I asked Cynthia. "Here, take a whiff of this." I had a little kit in my pocket which I had seized upon as I left the ship. I felt for the vial of sal-volatile, telling what it was by the smell of the cork, and pressing it into her hand.

"Faint!" she replied with scorn. "If I could only see something, I should enjoy it hugely."

"It would not be safe," I whispered. "Stand farther back. They may discover us, in any case."

"Stand farther in, Cynthy," whispered the Skipper. "I'd like nothing better than to join one side or the other, but I can't risk it with you here."

I pushed my knife through the soft, spongy wood where the bullet had entered, and made the hole larger. Here I could see, myself unseen.

"Do let me look, Mr. Jones," said Cynthia.

As any bullet which struck the tree might enter it, and she was in equal danger anywhere inside the tree, I saw no reason why she should not look if she felt so inclined. I gave up my place to her, and had to content myself with peeping through the large hole through which we had entered.

The line of retreat was now changed, for I saw the Haïtiens veer to the right, toward the beach, still firing as they retreated. There were yells and wild noises. The attacking party seemed close to us, and these sounds did not seem unfamiliar. As we gazed at this unexpected sight, we perceived that the retreating party had with, them a young girl. She was tied by the wrists to the belt of one of the men, who fired as he backed toward us. The girl did not struggle to free herself, but ran backward as the men ran. She seemed a not unwilling captive. The tall, thin mulatto would fire a shot, turn and pull his captive after him, then load and fire again. There was blood upon the girl's clothing and upon the clothes of her captors.

"Oh, that poor child!" whispered Cynthia. "I must go out and take her away from that brute!" I barred the way.

"It would be death for us all, perhaps," said I. "Wait! The attacking party may be her friends. Whatever we do, I beg of you keep concealed. That is your only safety."

"Don't be a fool, Cynthy!" whispered the Skipper hoarsely. "No one knows what's going to happen." And so prophetic were his words that, as we listened, we heard a thoroughly American whoop, participated in by several voices, and who should burst from the undergrowth, shouting as they came, but Bill Tomkins, followed by McCorkle, Bill Ware, the Growler, Hummocks, Tanby, and all the rest of them.

CHAPTER III.
WE CHANGE OUR CAMP, AND CYNTHIA DISCOVERS A DISTURBING ELEMENT.

The attacking party seemed to remember the little camp where they had remained for so short a time. As they advanced upon the Haïtiens, they gazed around, as if the place were familiar to them, but at the same time they continued to come forward, and to fire as fast as they could load their pistols. They outnumbered the Haïtiens, as they were thirteen and the Haïtiens only four. As the Haïtiens backed toward the shore and to the eastward of our shelter, we lost sight of them entirely. I took the Skipper by the shoulders and drew him away from his position. I opened my knife and tried to pierce a hole through the tree on the side toward the water, so that I could follow the men with my eyes, but the wood was more firm than at the place where we had entered the cavity, and I could not manage it. We heard the sound of bullets rattling among the leaves, and fierce cries and oaths, mingled with long sobbing wails from the young captive, but we could now see nothing of the battle.

It was exasperating to be obliged to remain in seclusion. We might have joined the attacking party, but, though no one enjoyed a scrimmage more than I, I reflected that if the Captain or I should be killed the chances were that Cynthia would be left at the mercy of the sailors or the Haïtiens, and I could not decide in my own mind which would be the worst. The sailors were all very well so long as they had the eye and nerve of two men to oppose them, but if either one of us should be killed, the girl would be left with only one protector, and should anything befall him she might better be dead than to fall into the hands of the Haïtiens or of that drunken crew of sailors.

Thinking of the Haïtiens brought to my mind the keg of rum. I turned to the Skipper—rather, to the place where I knew him to be—and said:

"Captain, we do not know what may happen. These brutes may return and find the cask, and we ought to have a little of that liquor."

"No danger of their finding it," whispered the Skipper.

"Well, perhaps not," said I. "But I think I had better steal out, now that they have passed by, and get what I can. Where did the Bo's'n put the cup?"

"No need to look for that, Jones; here's my flat bottle. I didn't fill it last time I used it. Knew I had plenty on board. Take this."

I groped in the dark and my hand met the Skipper's. I took the bottle from him and went to the opening in the tree. I put my head out cautiously and listened. Shots were still being exchanged, though they sounded much farther away. I withdrew inside the tree again.

"I think," said I, speaking aloud, "that if you and Miss Archer will lie close I can manage it."

"I don't want any rum, of course," said Cynthia, "but I am dying of thirst. Do you think that you could manage to get to the breaker, Mr. Jones, and bring me a little water?"

"Where did they put the breaker?" I asked.

"Just up along the bed of that little dry creek. Not more than a hundred feet away. Directly back from the shore."

"If it is a possibility, you shall have it," I answered.

I advanced with caution from my hiding place. The trees were so thick to the eastward that I was now completely concealed from the two parties. I wanted much to follow them and discover, if possible, how the battle had waged, but Cynthia wanted the water. That was enough for me. They might take it into their heads to return, and then we should again be imprisoned. Without more ado I hastened back through the glade, and found the water breaker just where Cynthia had told me it was. I found and filled one of our two cups and returned, carrying the water carefully, so that it would not spill. When I reached the place where the rum keg lay, I uncovered it. To my surprise, I found that the bung had fallen out. In the haste with which we had moved it we had not noticed this. I saw that much of the precious liquid had been lost. There was, however, enough and to spare. I placed my bottle upon the ground, raised the cask, and tipped it so that the bottle would fill. The position of the keg was awkward, and I lost much of the liquor. Some large bees flew near and settled on the stones wet with the rum. The air was filled with the odour which they had noticed almost as soon as I had. I laid the keg down, bringing the bung right side up, and, having no stopper, I proceeded to fill the opening with leaves. These I gathered in handfuls, and stuffed them into the orifice. The mass that I squeezed together in my hand was not large enough to fill the hole, and the leaves fell inside the keg. This happened twice or more, but finally I seized a double handful and forced them into the bunghole, and pressed them compactly down. This time I was successful; then I took up the cup of water, and proceeded upon my way back to our refuge.

I still heard distant shouts, and the sound of an occasional shot from a gun. There were voices from the water, as well as from the land. I wondered what new danger threatened us. When I got opposite the tree where Cynthia and her Uncle were concealed, I set the cup and the bottle upon the ground, and, crouching down, I stole toward the line of the beach. I passed from tree to tree with great care. Finally I reached a vantage point where I could survey all the actors in the drama.

The first thing I discovered was that our two boats were a hundred yards or so out on the waters of the bay, and that the foremost one only was occupied. The dinghy was being towed behind the long boat. There were two persons in the boat, and, as I shaded my eyes from the rays of the setting sun, which struck obliquely down the long beach, I managed to make out the Bo's'n and the Minion. The Bo's'n was paddling slowly along with an easy motion, which did not seem to argue at all that he had any intention of leaving the island, and the Minion was standing up in the stern sheets and executing what we should call nowadays a double shuffle or a breakdown. He made derisive motions toward those on shore, whistled and laughed unrestrainedly, patted his legs as we would if calling a dog, and, in fact, was so outrageous in his insults that he had worked the men into a perfect frenzy. I truly think that his life would not have been worth a moment's purchase had the sailors on shore been able to lay hands on him. The Haïtiens were nowhere to be seen, and of the sailors there remained but nine. Whether some of the men had pursued the Haïtiens or whether they had been killed, I could not determine. I saw that Bill Tomkins, the acknowledged leader of the men, had the young girl in his possession. The cords were still around her wrists; the other ends he had twisted round his hand, as one holds the reins in driving a frisky horse. The girl had her hands over her eyes, and was weaving back and forth, as if in great agony of mind. If we had had the Bo's'n and Minion on our side, we might have attacked the sailors and rescued the girl. But the men were just enough inflamed with liquor to care nothing for the authority of either Captain Schuyler or myself, and I thought it more prudent to wait a little and see what resulted. For, terrible as it was to see that young girl in the clutches of those rough men, it would be death to us three to have them obtain possession of Cynthia.

I now saw that the men, with fists shaking in air, and uttering bitter and profane imprecations at the Bo's'n and the Minion, had turned their heads our way again. I retreated hastily, and picked up my bottle and the cup of water. I had hardly reached the hollow tree when I heard the sound of running footsteps, and just as I got safely inside they rushed past us, Bill Tomkins pulling the young captive after him. The poor child was forced to run with him, or to be dragged along the beach.

The sailors ran straight for the mango tree, whooping and hallooing as they came. Tomkins tied the cords which he held in his hand to a stout limb, thus fettering his captive, and then, with his comrades, proceeded to search the thicket. I knew at once for what they were searching.

I heard some reference to "the old man," which I understood, of course. When they spoke of "the popinjay," I was at a loss to comprehend to whom they referred. Bill Tomkins seemed to take charge and give orders. He remained close to the tree and near his captive. There was blood upon his hands and clothes, and upon the young girl's skirt. The girl leaned against the tree in the most abject state of misery and fear. Each time that Tomkins moved she raised her large eyes to his in a frightened, imploring manner, as if begging for mercy.

"I must go and rescue that child!" whispered Cynthia to me in fierce tones. I seized her wrists and held her in a viselike grasp.

"You will do nothing of the kind," I whispered back. "We should be at the mercy of those ruffians. Wait until the case gets desperate. They may mean to liberate her themselves."

The men had always been fairly good sailors on board ship, and had been respectful to the officers during the voyage, but the enemy that a man takes into his mouth to steal away his brains had made them fiends. They ran about in a sort of frenzy, looking for the keg, uttering wild oaths and imprecations against the Skipper and that "blanked popinjay," whom I was finally forced to mentally acknowledge was myself. I could see no way out of the difficulty. I hoped that they would resume their march along the coast, and yet I did not purpose that they should take the young girl with them. I thought that should they discover the keg, no bounds would be placed upon the excesses which they might commit.

We watched them with anxiety through our vantage holes, and at last, just when we hoped that they had missed the keg, some one stumbled exactly upon it. My heart fell with a thump like lead as I heard Hummocks's foot strike against the hoop. A shout of joy went up from the men which made me heartsick. Even Tomkins left his captive and joined the others. They threw themselves upon the ground one and all, and struggled like wild men for the first draught of the madly desired liquor. Blows began to rain down, and pistols and machetes were drawn. I began to hope that they would kill, or at least maim each other sufficiently to allow of our capturing them with the aid of the Bo's'n and the Minion. But Tomkins, seeing how things were going, interposed. He called a halt in an authoritative tone of voice.

"Belay there, boys!" he cried; "let's be fair. What do you say to drawing lots?" He stooped and picked some blades of grass, and broke them in different lengths.

"Somebody's got to drink first. You can't all drink to onct." As he spoke he arranged the blades between his fingers so that they appeared the same length. The men stopped quarrelling and faced Tomkins.

"Shortest drinks first," said he. "Step up, Growls, and take a chance."

Growls drew a short blade, Hummocks a shorter, Bill Ware a very short one, and, at last, the longest of all was left in Tomkins's hand. The men crowded close together with an eagerness which should have been inspired by a more worthy motive.

"It's Bill Ware," said Tomkins; and, without wasting time unnecessarily, Bill Ware plumped himself upon the ground, his mouth to the bunghole. Tomkins held a battered old watch in his hand, and kept his eyes fixed upon the second hand.

"Ten seconds apiece," said Tomkins. "Time!" he cried suddenly. Bill Ware had almost to be dragged from the keg by sheer force.

"You, Hummocks!" said Tomkins and the scene was repeated. The thirsty crew had even a harder tussle to pull Hummocks from the keg than they had with Bill Ware, Ware himself tugging at Hummocks's legs, while the rest endeavoured to unclasp his arms from the keg.

"My turn," muttered Growls, in that tone which had procured him his name. "Time me, boys, but time me fair."

"That cask's gettin' light," remarked Tomkins in an anxious tone of voice.

"It's just like a play," whispered Cynthia. "I never saw a play but once. Aunt Mary 'Zekel thinks it's wicked. It was a more refined play than this, but I consider this all very interesting."

"What about the girl?" asked I.

"I have not forgotten her," said Cynthia. "I am hoping that those brutes will fall asleep; then I can go out and rescue her."

"What, from those honest sailors?" I asked. I could not resist it.

For some time I had been conscious of a distinct burning sensation in the palms of my hands. I could not account for it except that I had had my hands in salt water a great deal during the day, and, as we had been unprotected from the sun much of the time, I thought that the combination had affected them unpleasantly. However, no one had complained, and Cynthia's skin was certainly much more tender than mine. My palms itched incessantly, and when I rubbed them to quiet this unpleasant sensation, the skin suddenly puffed up and my wrists pained me intensely. My fingers swelled, and the pains shot up to my shoulders. I bore it without a word, hoping that it would soon abate. I would not have had Cynthia hear me complain for the entire world. I had been obliged to play the part of coward in her estimation too often during the last few hours to wish her to see another exhibition of that attribute from me. So when she whispered to me to pick up the blanket which had been trodden under foot, I seized the rough thing and handed it to her, though its contact seemed to scorch my flesh like living coals.

I had fancied that the men might drink themselves into a state of insensibility, but I did not dream that this condition would overcome them so speedily. In a very few moments after they had taken each one his allotted amount of the rum, each man had rolled over on the grass and laid there like a log—all but Tomkins, who was the last, according to lot, to be served. When he found that there was very little of the liquor remaining for him, he swore frightful oaths, and used such language as would have precipitated a general quarrel had not the rum taken an almost immediate effect upon those who had drank of it. His vile epithets fell upon unheeding ears so far as his mates were concerned, and, in fact, in a very few moments he, too, was breathing heavily.

"I never did a kind action in my whole blamed life," snarled Tomkins, "but what I got my come-uppance," and I must say that, painful as is the reflection, I have noticed much the same circumstance in my dealings with my fellow-men.

Before Tomkins had ended his grumblings his utterance became thick, and he followed his comrades to the borderland of death.

"Do you think they're asleep?" whispered Cynthia softly in my ear. Eleven distinct and stertorous snores answered her more plainly than any assurances of mine could have done, and a twelfth, from the interior of our tree, chorussed them and made the round dozen.

"Poor dear Uncle Tony! I had forgotten all about him. I remember now that he has not spoken for some time," said Cynthia in her gentlest voice.

She felt for her pillow and then for the old man's head. "Strike a light, Mr. Jones," she added, more kindly than she had spoken hitherto. I did as she requested, repeatedly striking my fire until she had made the unconscious Skipper comfortable. When this was accomplished we stepped outside. Although the sun was getting low, I found it difficult to face the glare and the heat after the darkness and cool seclusion of our hiding place.

The young captive was still endeavouring to pull her hands loose from the cords. They were black and swollen. I say black, for, though the girl was a Haïtien, she evidently had a mixture of French blood in her veins, being much lighter coloured than the men in whose custody we first discovered her. I thought that should she smile and her face recover from the storm of grief which had swept across it for the last half hour, she would be very pretty. She had soft, large eyes like a deer's, but they were swollen with crying, and her face was drawn with pain.

Cynthia emerged from the tree just after me. The girl, hearing the roll of a stone upon which I stepped, turned in a terrified way and confronted us. It was not to be wondered at that she should be horrified at seeing two persons whom she had not seen before, appear upon the now quiet scene. She raised her manacled arms to heaven and shrieked as if for aid, then threw herself upon the beach, and screamed and beat her head against the ground.

The education of this child had taught her to fear the mysterious, and when the beautiful white girl emerged like a hamadryad from a tree in the depths of the forest, the child imagined her an avenging angel. What vengeance she intended to take upon a young girl of such tender years the girl herself had not knowledge enough to imagine. Later developments taught us what she had feared.

The poor child continued to wail and beat her head against the ground. I glanced at Cynthia. Her lovely eyes were dimmed with tears. At once she became all gentleness, all tenderness. She approached the girl slowly, as she would a frightened bird, holding out her hand and making soft, cooing noises. As she drew near, the girl shrank behind the tree, peering out with terrified eyes at this strange apparition. Cynthia continued to advance, still making those sweet sounds. The prisoner trembled in every limb, and drew away as far as the cords would allow. She looked wildly over her shoulder, as if longing to escape. Cynthia came nearer, and put out her hand. She laid it gently on the girl's shoulder, when the young savage twisted her head suddenly and with a snap like that of a wild beast buried her teeth in the tender flesh. A blow from my hand laid her sprawling. Cynthia turned angrily on me, forgetful of her own pain.

"Don't you dare to interfere with me!" she said angrily. "I shall never get her confidence now."

The Haïtienne lay where I had thrown her, and watched our movements with glittering eyes. Cynthia took me by the shoulder and marched me off to the hollow trunk, where the Skipper lay snoring his antiphonal response to the louder snores of the sailors. Then Cynthia returned to the attack of kindness and humanity.

The prisoner, seeing that I was quite gone, and that it was Cynthia's wish that I should be gone, lay looking at her as she again approached her. This time Cynthia knelt upon the ground, and, seemingly without fear, she stretched out her hand and gently stroked the captive's head. The girl did not renew her attack upon Cynthia, but suffered her to stroke her head and coo and murmur over her.

"Bring me some water, Mr. Jones!" Cynthia ordered.

I stretched my hand inside the tree and felt for the cup; then I ran to the place where we had left the breaker of water. I drew some and carried it to Cynthia. She took it from me, saying at the same time:

"What is the matter with your hand?"

"Don't mind me!" I said shortly. By this time my fingers were puffed out of all semblance to their original shape, and when I endeavoured to move them the pain was intense.

Cynthia put the cup to the girl's lips. She shook her head and closed her lips tightly together. Then Cynthia drank a little of the water, and again held it toward the girl. This time she drained the water eagerly and to the last drop.

"Some more!" demanded Cynthia, holding out the cup to me. When I had replenished it, Cynthia took her handkerchief from her pocket, dipped it in the water, and bathed the girl's face and hands, whereupon the prisoner drew a long sigh of satisfaction.

"Bring me your knife, Mr. Jones," ordered Cynthia.

"If you free her, she will run away," protested I.

"Bring it at once!" responded Cynthia.

It was with difficulty that I opened the blade with my swollen fingers, but, after slipping the lanyard over my head, I managed to do so. Then I walked with the open knife toward the pair. When the captive saw me coming she began to cry and scream and roll on the ground in an agony of terror.

Bill Tomkins heard the cry, and turned over in his sleep, opened his eyes a crack or so, asked how the weather was, and went off again into a profound slumber. I argued that if he who had drank so little of the rum was thus stupefied, the others would not awake for many hours.

"Lay your knife within reach and go away again, Mr. Jones," said Cynthia.

I obeyed, as I was willing to obey her every word and gesture.

As Cynthia took the knife up from the stone where I had laid it, the girl sobbed and wailed and clutched at the grass.

"Go away," said Cynthia; "quite away."

I did as I was bid, and sat again at the foot of our sheltering tree. Then Cynthia, with motions and signs that she did not intend to injure her, drew near the captive, and, taking her unawares and with dexterous movement, inserted the point of the knife under first one and then the other of the cords, and the captive was free. The girl looked up in a dazed sort of surprise. Cynthia smiled down on her as only the angels in heaven smile. Then she again dipped the handkerchief in water and again cared for the swollen hands. The girl ceased her crying, knelt down and laid a caressing cheek on Cynthia's feet, then sprang up and ran into the forest.

"You have seen the last of her," said I.

Perhaps I was a little jealous of this new favourite.

"If I have, you are to blame," said Cynthia, "and I shall never forgive you."

But I had prophesied falsely, for the child came back to us in a moment with her hands full of leaves. She gave them to Cynthia, and by signs persuaded her to bind them on her own hands and wrists.

The girl then stood up and beckoned to Cynthia to follow her into the wood. They walked together a few steps. Then she stopped and pointed to a strange arrow-shaped leaf. She shook her head and held up her hands as if in horror, and displayed various signs of fear. I noticed from where I stood the leaves to which she pointed. They were the same kind with which I stopped the bunghole in the keg.

"The Skipper did not need the arsenic," I muttered to myself as I surveyed the sleeping men.

I went inside the tree and awoke the Skipper. He turned over drowsily at first, and asked how we were heading, and if she was off her course. I shook him pretty roughly then, and he asked me how many bells.

I answered, and truly, that it was four bells, and the dog watch. Dog's watch, I might have said; I had certainly had one. I then hurriedly explained the situation to the Skipper.

"Captain Schuyler," I said, "I think we had better get away from here before these wretches wake up. There is no knowing what they may do. They may wake up sober and they may wake up drunk. They may possibly awake in a pleasant and friendly state of mind, but it's my opinion that they will be pretty vicious when they find the rum all gone and also that I have liberated that young girl."

"What young girl?" asked the Skipper.

"The young girl they rescued from the Haïtiens."

"What Haïtiens?" asked the Skipper.

I saw that it was no use to consult the Skipper; he was hardly awake, and could not yet comprehend what had happened during the last hour. I left him with Cynthia, to do what he could toward gathering up the articles hidden in the bushes, and ran down to the beach. I saw that the two boats were farther out than they had been, and, when I put my hands to my mouth and shouted my loudest to the Bo's'n, I could but just make him hear. He and the boy laid to their oars with a will, but I soon perceived that they were making little progress. I saw the Bo's'n drop his oars, stand up in the boat and gaze around him, and, as there was no one but the Minion to help him row, it was plain that he could not overcome the current, which I now saw was taking the boats out to sea. I saw the Bo's'n take a sight on shore and watch it for a moment, like a true sailor; then he shook his head, stepped to the stern, and, drawing the boats close together, he cut the painter short off at the bows and set the dinghy adrift. I was sorry to see this, but I knew that unless it was done we should lose both boats, and the Bo's'n and boy as well. Then the Bo's'n sat down and began to pull with vigorous strokes, and soon the boat was quite near the shore.

"Beg your pardon, sir, Mr. Jones, but where's them crew?"

I pointed over my shoulder, and made him understand that they were incapable of injuring us. He did not ask how this had come about, but pulled up to the beach. I saw that the boy was rowing with one hand; the other was bound up with a piece of cloth, and was bleeding a little, the result, probably, of the defiance which I had witnessed. The Bo's'n had torn away a part of his shirt sleeve to bind up the boy's hand. This, I thought, argued well for us. I had fancied that I could trust the other men, and how mistaken I had been! This kind trait, however, in a man on whom we must depend more or less, gave me courage.

"Where are those Haïtiens?" I asked.

"Dead, sir, as far's I know."

"Where is Wilson?"

"Saw him fall—and Tanby, too. Guess they're all down the beach there together."

I did not investigate. We had no time. It was growing late, and I wished to get away before the men should awaken. I hurried my little party together. They ran into the bushes, one and all, picking up and carrying what they could. Captain Schuyler and the Bo's'n rolled the keg of pork and the breaker down to the water's edge; the boy held the boat while we deposited our few belongings therein.

"If you'll take the bag, I'll carry the parrot," said Cynthia.

I lifted the mortuary receptacle from its hiding place among the leaves.

"Why, just look at that crab!" said Cynthia. "That's a very good discovery. If we can find crabs, we'll——"

I seized her by the arm, with horror, no doubt, in my look. I pushed her roughly toward the beach.

"Run," I said, "for God's sake!"

"How rough you are!" said Cynthia; but she ran a little way, as I impelled and commanded. I hastily set the parrot's cage on the ground and drew my pistol, and, difficult as it was, I pulled the trigger. I aimed straight at the black, hairy thing; but my bullet missed, and I seized up the cage, preparing for flight, when I saw the animal turn to crawl sluggishly away. I looked with astonishment at this movement of the tarantula, for it was that dread scourge of the tropic forest that Cynthia had taken for a crab. I saw that it was moving from the spot where the rum had been spilled, and found in its low and halting pace additional reason to believe that the liquor which I had sought to protect with the leaves from evaporation I had unconsciously drugged, perhaps poisoned. There was nothing to do. I had no remedies, and such men, I argued, are better off, or rather we are better off with them dead than alive. I took a second shot at the tarantula, and this time I was successful. I had shot it through the body. The body was as large as an egg, the legs long and hairy, and the proboscis curved, pointed, and vicious-looking. Cynthia's hurried departure had left me to carry the bag and the parrot. My hands were extremely sore, and, somehow or other, as I lifted the cage I swung it against a rock. The catch was loosened, the bottom fell out. In my nervousness I dropped the cage, and before I knew it I heard a voice over my head, saying, "There's no fool like an old fool!"

Here was a nice mess! Cynthia's parrot gone! The pride of her heart sitting over my head in a tropic wood, where he could fly away, if he wanted to, hundreds of miles, and always find a resting place.

"Why don't you come, Mr. Jones?" It was Cynthia's voice.

I hastily picked up the cloth which always went with the cage, and which had covered the bird on its voyage ashore, threw it over the wire top, and covered the cage. I refastened the catch, and came stumbling down to the beach with my two burdens.

"Miss Archer, you had better sit in the stern," said I, as I proceeded to place the cage in the bow.

"I prefer the bow, thank you," said Cynthia.

I waded out in the water and set the cage in the stern sheets. At this Cynthia began to climb over the seats. She reached the stern just as I removed the cage and waded with it back to the bow. At this Cynthia stood up, preparing to move again.

"Sit down, Cynthy; you can't crawl over me."

"But, Uncle Tony, I want to hold Solomon," said Cynthia. "He gets so frightened without me."

"He won't this time," I said. "Besides, the yellow girl will have to come in here." We had left the stranger on the beach purposely until the last. She watched our preparations with interest, crouching on the beach, staring at every movement of Cynthia's, and occasionally turning a look of horror in the direction of the men. When she was sure that Cynthia was seated in the boat, and that she had no intention of returning, the girl stretched out her arms and said something which we could not understand. Without more ado I took her up from the beach and placed her beside Cynthia. A flock of parrots had settled in the mango tree, and Cynthia looked at them with interest. I pushed the boat from shore and jumped in. As I did so I heard from the tree the words, "Damn those Britishers!"

"How far off that sounds, Mr. Jones! Was that Solomon?"

"I think it was, undoubtedly," said I.

"It sounded up in that tree. Do you think that perhaps while we were in hiding some wild parrots have come around and learned to speak as he does?"

"It is barely possible," said I. "Now, Bo's'n, look out there; what are you doing? We don't want to run ashore too soon."

"Are we putting out to sea in an open boat, Uncle?"

"Ask Jones," growled the Skipper. "He seems to be the captain of this expedition."

I saw that the old man's feelings were hurt because I had not consulted him, but there had not been time. I felt that the party must obey my orders first and protest afterward.

"I only want to run back along the beach a mile or so," I said, "to get away from the crew. The chances are that they'll think that we have tried to get to Cap Haïtien and follow along the coast; but from what I heard at Santo Domingo of Christophe's latest didos, I don't believe we want to go to Cap Haïtien just now."

"Why, Mr. Jones! And you let the men go! They might all have been killed!"

"Just what I was hoping for," said I. "A little more lively with those oars, Bo's'n; it's growing dark."

"How quiet Solomon is!" said Cynthia. Just then there came the distant words, "No fool like an old fool."

"It certainly is among those parrots there," said the Skipper.

"Yes, I think it is," said I.

"I never heard of wild birds learning to talk so soon," said Cynthia. "I don't believe you will get any one to believe it at home."

"Neither do I," said I.

The night had come down upon us suddenly, but there was a fine line of light in the east, which betokened an early moonrise. As we looked out to sea, we could still perceive a faint glow round the wreck through the haze which overspread the water in that direction, but of other ships we saw none. We had forgotten about the fight between the pirate and the American while watching the fight on shore, and whatever had happened there was no one to tell us. I had hoped that the American would have sunk the pirate, and then we could have pushed out to him in our boats and gone home in one of our own bottoms, but the two vessels had vanished as completely as if they had never existed. It has seemed to me since that the privateer, as we called him, had tried to run away, and the American in chasing him had been led either very far out to sea or else round some point which hid them both from view. And now the moon, which had arisen many hours earlier, flooded the world. Its light came across the water a beam of silver. Our boat seemed always in its rays. This worried me somewhat, as I felt that we must be silhouetted against the eastern glow, and that any one on shore with hostile intent could follow us to our hiding place by simply walking along the beach. We kept rather close in shore on this account. When we had rowed about a mile and a half, we came to a little indentation, which I thought betokened the presence of a stream or rivulet from the hills.

"What do you think of this place for a landing, Captain?" asked I.

"This isn't my expedition," said the Skipper surlily. I wasted no words in explanation. I ordered the Bo's'n to pull for the beach, and we were soon ashore.

It was a pretty place, this, at which we had landed; an ideal one, I have thought since, for a modern picnic, but God forbid that any of the young women of the present day should have to go through what we had suffered, and what was to come, for the sake of finding so pleasant a picnic ground. We rowed the boat directly into the small inlet, and the Bo's'n, the Skipper, and I hauled her up a little way on the shelving beach. It was hard to know just what was best to do—whether to prepare for a land flight or for a sea flight. We took the stores out of the boat, but laid them near it, so that we could replace them at a moment's notice. We dared not build a fire, as the strange vessel might return, so eating some hard bread and drinking some water had to content us. We laid the blanket upon the ground and the pillow at its head. I motioned to Cynthia to take her position there. She beckoned to the girl, who laid down by her. The Skipper stretched himself at Cynthia's feet, and the Bo's'n, the Minion, and I removed ourselves to a spot at a little distance.

I laid awake the early part of the night, partly because I was anxious and worried, and partly because I was suffering a good deal from what I now felt sure was poison. If my simply touching those leaves had had that effect, I wondered what would be the result to the men of the Yankee's crew. I laid on my back, looking up into the sky. The moon had set, the heavens were deep and dark, but studded with stars. The Southern Cross stood out beautiful and brilliant. I had seen it so many times when cruising in these waters, and here it was again to welcome me as an old friend. Strange how one feels a personal right to, almost ownership of, these splendid works of God when again one meets them after a long or short separation. A swelling comes up in the heart and a pride in seeing again the thing which one has known for years, but which, so sad and persistent is fate, ignores us in return, unknown atoms that we are!

It must have been much after midnight. I had dropped off into an uneasy slumber, when suddenly I was awakened by the sound of a stealthy footstep. A pebble rattled against another pebble; I raised myself upon my elbow. The stars were obscured by heavy black clouds, which had arisen after we had settled ourselves for the night. I saw nothing unusual among us. I could dimly distinguish some recumbent forms, and could trace the spot where Cynthia and the stranger had laid themselves down. The Skipper, if one could judge from the sounds, was enjoying his first sleep hugely. I have never seen a being with such a capacity for sleep. I did not disturb the old man, but turned quietly and raised myself to my feet. I looked in all directions, but there was nothing to be seen. I walked on tiptoe to where the Skipper snored and dreamed probably of his lost Yankee Blade. I could dimly see one sleeping form, and from the position in which it lay I felt sure that it was Cynthia. The rescued girl was nowhere to be seen. I returned to my sleeping place and laid myself down again and watched, lifting my head occasionally and scanning the edge of the wood and the near hill. Finally my search was rewarded by seeing two forms come out from behind a clump of trees and stand a moment in earnest conversation. Then one of the figures vanished from sight, and the other came without noise toward the camp. As it passed me by, I recognised the form and height of the young Haïtien girl. She stepped lightly and quickly, making no noise as she went, and laid down again by Cynthia without disturbing her.

We were all awake early. When I opened my eyes I found that both Cynthia and the girl were absent. In a few moments, however, they came toward us, Cynthia fresh and smiling from her bath in the stream. One could follow this stream a hundred yards up toward the hills, and the bushes drooped, so that they made for the bather a perfect screen. The Haïtien girl followed in Cynthia's footsteps, like a devoted and faithful animal. The rest which she had obtained made her look almost handsome, and she had evidently imitated Cynthia in bathing and in arranging her hair.

Cynthia had in her hand a large bunch of stems and flowers, behind which her head was nearly hidden.

"Do I look like Birnam Wood?" she called as she came toward us.

"Throw those down, I beg of you, Miss Archer," I shouted, "if you don't want your hands to look as mine do. It is most dangerous to pick flowers in any woods, and here——"

Cynthia continued arranging her flowers.

"You should let Lacelle show you where to get that remedy which she gathered for herself yesterday," said she.

Lacelle seemed to understand, for the moment that Cynthia called her attention to my swollen hands she ran hastily toward the bank. Again I urged, "Do throw away those flowers." Cynthia at my request flung them on the beach. As they fell, a strange metallic sound struck upon our ears.

"I have thrown something away with them," said Cynthia. "What can it be? I have no rings or jewellery. Can it be my scissors or my thimble?" But a search of the interior of the little bag depending from her belt disclosed the fact that she was still in possession of those useful articles. I stooped over the weeds and, as well as I could, pulled the bunch apart. I searched among its leaves. Upon the very central branch—a branch of thin wood with heavy green stems jutting out from either side—I discovered the cause of the strange sound. I found a large twisted circle of some dark metal, dull in some places, in others so bright that it hurt my eyes. The circle was made by the curving of the tail of a serpent, whose body formed the ring. Where the seal is usually placed there was the head of an animal. It looked like the head of a sheep or a lamb. There were no horns, but ears were there, and laid back viciously close to the head. The eyes were formed of strange red gems, which glittered wonderfully in the morning sun. They seemed to shoot forth rays of light, and as I looked into them I fancied that they gave back an answering gleam of intelligence. There was a barbaric splendour about the trinket which attracted while it repelled. I wonder how Cynthia could have broken the stem and not have seen the ring; but she said she was trying to keep her eye on the harbour, as she was convinced that shortly some ship would heave in sight, and she wished to be the first to see it. The strange trinket had evidently been dropped by its owner, and it had fallen circling just over the tender shoot of green. This sprout had grown into a stem, and the stem into a strong plant, and in growing had carried the bauble with it into the air.

Cynthia put it jokingly over her thumb.

"You could almost get it over your hand," said the Skipper. "It would make a splendid bracelet."

"What a curious find!" I exclaimed.

"How long do you suppose it has been there?" asked Cynthia.

"I can't say; since this stem began to sprout, anyway. This is May. Say since March, or even earlier; you see that the stem is very well grown."

"Then the person who dropped it was here, on this very spot, in March," said Cynthia.

"Oh, that does not follow at all," said the Skipper, who had drawn near, much interested. "The ring might have laid there a long time before the stem decided to grow through it."

"No," said I, "I don't agree with you. I think the ring was dropped by its owner exactly over the young and tender shoot, and it has had the strength——"

"Of mind——" interpolated Cynthia.

"Or of purpose——" chimed in the Skipper.

A shriek interrupted our nonsensical parleying. The Haïtienne had come shyly up to us, wondering doubtless what we had found to so interest us all. She had thrust her head forward into the circle close to Cynthia's arm. The shriek that she gave utterance to was blood-curdling. It was between a howl and a wail. It chilled me through and through. The girl put her hand quickly to her heart, looked at each of us as if in great terror, and, turning, fled to the near woods. The Bo's'n joined the group, and stood respectfully on the edge, waiting to ask if he should build a fire and prepare breakfast. He craned his long neck forward and looked over my shoulder at the curious bauble. When his eye lighted upon its barbaric strangeness, he drew a short, sharp breath and turned away, running in a different direction from that which the girl had taken; but before he started I heard his horrified voice mutter in distinct tones:

""The Goat Without Horns!"

CHAPTER IV.
THE SKIPPER MAKES A PRAYER.

The girl's strange behaviour did not surprise me. In the short time that she had been among us I had become quite used to her vagaries. I have spoken of her as a savage, but only as one would call any human being a savage, either black or white, who had attacked another as viciously as this girl had attacked Cynthia. The girl was not a savage in the common acceptation of the term. She was of mixed blood, a French octoroon, probably from the country districts; at least so the simple chemisette and short skirt which comprised her costume would imply. Her hair was black and wavy, her lips red, her teeth white and small. She was plump and prettily formed, and looked in reality like a girl of eighteen, though we afterward learned that she was just then in her fourteenth year.

A large tree, which had fallen across the stream up near the cliff, formed a bridge over the deep little river. To this the Haïtienne flew, and, springing upon its trunk, she crossed to the other side as if she had been a rope-walker. I watched her as she fled down the beach. I did not care when she returned to us, or, indeed, whether she came back at all, but the pangs of hunger were beginning to tell upon me, and the Bo's'n was the only one who could assuage them. So I turned from contemplating the flying figure of the girl and gazed in the opposite direction. The Bo's'n, too, was still running, as if pursued by some horrid nightmare. I watched until I saw that he had abandoned his pace, then ran slowly, then settled down into a walk, looking furtively over his shoulder the while, and finally stopped. I beckoned to him, but he shook his head. I started up the beach to meet him, but he began to run to the westward again. I returned to Cynthia.

"Give that fellow up as a bad job," said I. "Did you ever cook anything, Miss Archer?"

"I can make calves'-foot jelly," said Cynthia, "and oley-koeks. I always made those for Christmas dinner at home."

I looked around the shore scrutinizingly.

"I don't see any little calf sticking up his feet to be chopped off—except the Minion," I added, after a moment's survey of the sloping sand, where the cabin boy was disporting himself upon his back with his feet in the air. "I suppose oily what-you-call-'ems need butter and eggs——"

"As I haven't the necessary materials, suppose I cook some pork," said Cynthia. "I suppose"—looking quietly at me—"it isn't so very difficult. You will have to build a fire, you know, and wash the frying-pan and cut the pork."

"And lay it in the spider and let it cook itself," said I. "I am sorry to put you to so much trouble."

"Don't mention it," said Cynthia good-naturedly. "Now, you know, by rights a piece of the old Yankee should come floating ashore with a dozen fowls, a pail of milk, and a keg of butter planted safely on the upper side and——"

"A barrel of flour," added I. "Well, stranger things have happened——"

"Not much," said Cynthia.

This silly badinage served to while away the time while I cut the pork, made the fire, and started the breakfast on its way. I brought the water and hard bread, and then told Cynthia that if she would watch the breakfast I would go and take a bath. I had something on my mind which depressed me greatly. When I took the parrot's cage ashore on the previous evening, I had hung it on the limb of a ceiba too high for Cynthia to reach. That was very well for the night, but this was the next morning, and, like many another next morning, its light ushered in a day of reckoning. I had told Cynthia, I am ashamed to say, that I would give Solomon his food and water, and I am also humiliated to confess that I did actually fill the bird's cup and take it with a bit of hard bread to the secluded place which I had chosen for the scene of my base deception. Let me state here, with the entire reliability of all explorers, that it was not entirely the fear of what Cynthia would think of me for the part which I had played in what was to me a comedy, and which might prove to her a tragedy, but that I really could not bear the thought of seeing her sorrow when she first heard the dreadful news that Solomon had escaped. I had often longed to wring the neck of the feathered brute, for he had repaid me, as many kindnesses are repaid in this world, by biting my finger to the bone when I had tried to tempt him with some dainty. However, Cynthia loved him, and, notwithstanding his viciousness, I had tried to make friends with him for her sake. Kick a man's dog, and he is done with you. Ill treat a woman's parrot, and if that woman is the woman you adore, you had better be dead. I had left the cover drawn tightly over the cage, telling Cynthia that it would protect the bird from the night dews, Facilis descensus Averno. Little Adoniah says that means tell one lie and you will have to tell a hundred. I had stuck to the letter of the truth, but I really cared very little whether the dews of evening or the deluges of the tropics descended in floods upon that wretched bird. When I left Cynthia I walked directly up the bank of the stream, and was soon lost to sight behind the low foliage which fringed its western slope. So soon as Cynthia could no longer see me, I struck to the right, and, circling round, I was again in the vicinity of the camp. I could see that her back was turned toward me as she stooped over the frying-pan, scorching her hands and face doubtless in doing this menial work. I went to the tree where the cage hung, reached up and pulled down the limb, seized upon the cage, loosened the catches, and quietly released the floor. This I laid upon the ground half upon edge, as if it had fallen so. I then returned to the stream and took my bath, which much refreshed me, and appeared in camp with my guilty heart thumping and my pulses ringing in my ears. The Skipper was narrating a wonderful tale to Cynthia, to which she was listening, as if she wished some confirmatory evidence before quite believing him.

"Oysters growing on trees!" Cynthia exclaimed as I joined them. "Uncle Tony, you should not try to practice upon my credulity in that way, and you a member of the church in good and regular standing! But then you don't carry the deacons to sea with you, or——"

The Skipper asserted his discovery in loud and positive tones, which drowned Cynthia's softer ones.

"Don't be a fool, girl! Shows you never travelled. Here's one now! See it? Shell and all! Here's where I broke it off the branch!"

"Well! It beats Robinson Crusoe," said Cynthia. She turned to me. "Do you believe it, Mr. Jones?"

"It is nothing new," said I. "I will take a pail, if you like, and get some for breakfast."

"I will go with you," said Cynthia. "I know there's some catch about it. I never saw oysters growing on trees."

"That's strange!" said the Skipper with ill-concealed scorn; "since you have seen everything else in the whole blessed world——"

"Where are they, Captain?" I inquired, interrupting the controversy.

"Along there, where that girl's standing. You go and get 'em, and I'll fry some more pork."

I took the pail which the Bo's'n had left near the fire and we started across the tree and along the beach in the direction which the Haïtien girl had taken. When she saw Cynthia approaching, she began to run with the fleetness of a deer.

"I guess she's gone for good," I said.

Long before we reached the low mangrove growth we heard a curious snapping, like quick, sharp taps with a hammer. "Click!" "click!" "click!" it sounded, until, as we drew close, the noise was confusing, and we had to raise our voices somewhat in speaking. We came to a little inlet, a sort of marshy place, where thousands of the low mangrove trees grew and pushed their roots and hooplike ends into the salt water.

"Now where are your trees?" asked Cynthia.

"Why, there they are, those mangrove trees."

"Oh, you call those trees, do you? Explosion of story number one."

"Story?"

"I didn't like to call it by its real name," said Cynthia, "as Uncle Tony told it. Don't you think, Mr. Jones, that going to sea is very bad for the mor——"

The conversation was taking too personal a turn. I pushed in among the hooplike roots.

"See here!" I said, "and here! and here!" as I pulled the oysters from their holding places and threw them into the pail. All about us the shells were opening and shutting, as if they longed for the return of the tide, which was about two feet below them.

"Now that's exactly like so many of the stories one hears. I expected to stand under a very high tree and see you climb it as you would a hickory at home. I meant to stand under the branches and hold my dress and catch—Oh, pshaw! Why do I talk to you?"

"You have too much imagination," said I. "Just taste one before you begin to abuse us all so."

"I am not abusing any one, Mr. Jones; I only said——"

"Halloo! Halloo!"

It was the Skipper's voice. Fearing that something of an unpleasant nature had occurred, we started quickly back again.

"Breakfast's ready," said the Skipper, with his mouth full of pork.

As I approached the camp I saw a signal in the distance. I discovered after a moment's scrutiny that it was a signal from the Bo's'n. I beckoned him to come to me, but he only shook his head, and waved more wildly than before, pointing with sharp, quick jerks of his thumb over his shoulder to the westward.

"Are you going to see what that fool wants?" asked the Skipper.

"No," returned I. "I am tired of playing tag with the Bo's'n and the Haïtien girl. Besides, I am famished."

We sat down on the rocks and ate our salt pork from a plate made of hard bread. We washed it down with water from the spring at the base of the rocks, and I heard no remarks upon the coarse fare.

Cynthia said only that she had never known how good salt pork and ship's biscuits were, and that she should get Aunt Mary 'Zekel to have them three times a week when she got home.

"Where's that Minion?" asked the Skipper, with his mouth full.

As nothing was to be seen of the boy, we left his breakfast with the Bo's'n's share and that reserved for the Haïtien girl, and I started to go to the rescue of the Bo's'n, who was still waving violently. I had taken but a few steps when I heard a call from Cynthia.

"Mr. Jones," she called, "bring me a biscuit before you go." My heart sank down like lead. In the pleasure of gathering the oysters and the walk which I had had with her alone I had forgotten that the day of reckoning was near at hand. I took a piece of bread from the cask and ran to meet her.

"Hungry again?" I asked, outwardly smiling. There was a singing in my ears. I could hardly see.

"Oh, no," said she in answer; "but 'a merciful man,' you know, and my poor beast must be starving."

"Yes, I think he is," said I. I forgot the Bo's'n's signal; I forgot everything.

I seated myself miserably on a stone and waited for the deluge. It came. I heard:

"Oh! Oh! Uncle! Mr. Jones, do come here; Solomon's gone!"

"We ought to sing the doxology," said the Skipper to me in an undertone. He called to her in a well-simulated tone of regret:

"Oh, no, Cynthy, it can't be possible!"

So there were two cowards of us.

"How can she tell? She can't reach the cage," said I.

"How can you tell he's gone?" called the Skipper, in tones whose joy was but poorly concealed. "You can't reach the cage."

"I'm standing right under the cage, Uncle; I can see right into it. O Solomon, Solomon! my dear, darling, beautiful bird!"

"Never knew she could look through a piece of tin. Guess I'll go and see."

I put my fingers in my ears and ran toward the Bo's'n, who was still waving. The Minion trotted along by my side. The strange thing about the Minion was that, unlike most boys, he seldom spoke; I should have thought that he was dumb had it not been that occasionally, when hard pressed, he did open his childish lips and pour forth words of wisdom. There is an old saying that actions speak louder than words. The Minion seemed to prefer to communicate his thoughts in this way. He pointed to the beach, where I still saw the Bo's'n making his gestures. I turned and looked back to the camp. I put my hands to my mouth and hallooed to the Skipper, who had emerged from the shadow of the trees.

"It's a flag of truce, I think," said I.

I saw the Skipper shake his head and look despondently on the ground. What he said was: "O Lord! those wretched sailors again."

I wondered if he was correct in his surmise as I ran along toward where the Bo's'n stood. When he saw that I was really coming, he dropped the flag of truce and put it on, for it was his shirt which he had fastened to a branch to use for this purpose.

"How silly you are, Bo's'n!" I said. "I can't be following you all over the island. You had better come back to the camp and behave like a Christian."

A look of horror overspread his face as I spoke of his return to the camp, but he shook his head and said:

"I should not have called you, sir, Mr. Jones, sir, but I have discovered something. I thought you would like to know it." He turned and walked briskly away.

"Hold on!" I said. "I am tired of this tomfoolery. Do you know what a hot morning it is?"

"Yessir, I know, sir," said the Bo's'n. "Come here, sir."

The Bo's'n's air of mystery overcame my desire to sit down in the shade. I followed where he led.

"It's the result of the battle, sir," he explained.

"What battle?" I asked, as I walked beside him.

"The fight between the sailors and the Haïtiens, sir."

"You don't mean," I said, "that the sailors have come down here to——"

"No, only those are here who were left here." He parted the shoreward bushes and revealed to me three men lying there. Two of them were white men. They were our sailors Wilson and Tanby. The other was a Haïtien. He was lying by a partly dug grave. Indeed, so nearly ready was the grave that I had some thought of confiscating it for the body of one of our sailors. There were two other graves; at least, so I took them to be. They were finished, and their occupants were at rest under that wonderful leafy bower which only the tropics can afford. I thought that I heard a rustling in the bushes, and told the Bo's'n my suspicions. The Minion pointed to the thicket, and with a wild yell disappeared. One never knew what the Minion would do. One always knew what he would say, and that was nothing. There seemed to be an air of mystery about this secluded spot. I watched the bushes, expecting the Minion's return, and, as I watched, I felt that a pair of eyes was fixed on me. I pierced the undergrowth right and left with my gaze, but only the mompoja leaves moved languidly in the baby breeze which was now stirring, the precursor of a later wind. I followed the Minion into the thicket, but saw no one. Even the Minion had vanished. It was a great relief to me to be able to act like a man with courage once more, instead of guarding my words for fear that they would agitate the being the dearest in the world to me.

"Did you see any one as you came along the beach, Bo's'n?" said I.

"No, sir, Mr. Jones, sir; I was not looking or thinking of any one when I stumbled right on them bodies. I was running to get away, sir."

Again the look of horror overspread his features, and he glanced backward over his shoulders toward the camp.

I believe in always going to the root of a matter with the ignorant and superstitious.

"Now, Bo's'n," I said, with an air of logical argument, "what should you see in that simple, plain, iron trinket—" But he stopped me with a gesture which was strangely authoritative from an inferior to a superior, and in hushed, scared tones he said:

"Don't speak of it, Mr. Jones. Don't mention it, sir. Don't think of it. Make the young lady throw it away."

"Make!"

"Yessir, Mr. Jones, make her throw it away, sir."

I laughed to reassure him, though I must acknowledge that I was impressed by his manner. My laughter had the effect of reassuring myself somewhat also.

"Shall I take the boat and row out and sink this dangerous bauble with its snake's body"—a tremor seemed to seize my listener, and he shook as if with a chill—"and its sheep's head?"

"Do not make fun of it, sir. You will be sor——"

"We will go and get it, Bo's'n, and you shall row me out while I——"

"Do not ask me to touch it, sir. There is doom in that sign." I noticed that he did not call it a ring, as I had done; and then he came close to me and looked into my eyes with impressive and beseeching earnestness, and said in a whisper:

"You may take it out to sea, far, far out to sea, and drop it beneath the waves, but the storms will come, the waves will roll, and the breakers will dash it again on the shore. You may bury it in a pit so deep that you can hardly get yourself out again from its grave, but an earthquake will rumble beneath it and with its cracks will upheave it, and it will be here again. You may take it to the top of yonder mountain and lay it on the topmost peak, but the tempests will come and the hurricane will blow and will toss it again at your feet. She has found it, and it will follow her to the end—to the end."

The mysterious tone of the man, the ghostlike voice in which he spoke, made me feel unpleasantly, although it was broad day and the sun was shining brightly. He seemed to be lifted out of himself, and to speak in a voice and tone not his own. I tried to laugh. I reasoned with myself thus. How utterly absurd that a man of little education, of the most ordinary ability, and, withal, a man holding that absurd position Bo's'n of a merchant craft, should have an insight into mystical and occult things which none of the rest of us possess! But as he still stood staring at me, and directly into my eyes, as if he would read into the very depths of my mind, I began to have what is commonly called a creepy sensation. Little shivers ran up my backbone, and I longed for other companionship. I cast a glance at the dead men, and felt that if I were to retain the strength to go for aid to bury them, the sooner I went the better for me. With difficulty I withdrew my gaze from the man's eyes.

"Come, come, Bo's'n!" I said, forcing a laugh, "you are overwrought and nervous. Come back with me, and I will give you my word that you shall not see the ring again while you remain with us."

He stood gazing irresolutely out to sea.

"It is no ring!" he muttered. "A circle, a sign, an emblem of horror—of dread—of vengeance!"

"I am hungry, Bo's'n," I said, dropping from the height to which he had raised me and endeavouring to drag him down with me. "You left your post, and Miss Archer is doing your work. I shall return for my breakfast, and then get the Captain to come back here with me and bury our men. That will be only decent."

These matter-of-fact statements brought the Bo's'n down to earth again.

"I see crumbs on your shirt front," said he. He spoke now in his natural voice. His eyes had lost their far-seeing look. I left him and ran back to the camp, calling him to follow. I told the Skipper what he had found, also his strange and unreasonable terror of the ring. Cynthia looked sad and downcast, but entered into this new subject with interest.

"If he's afraid of the ring, I can conceal it," said she, "but don't ask me to throw it away. I wouldn't give it up now for the world."

"For some reason," said I, "the man is half dead with fright. Just hide it, Miss Archer, and I will tell the Bo's'n that you have thrown it away."

Another!

People will tell you that it is only wicked women who lead men astray. Here was the best and sweetest woman that I had ever known, and I had told three absolute falsehoods in less than an hour's time, and was ready to tell another—many others, in fact—should circumstances demand it.

"I think it very wrong to tell a falsehood," said Cynthia. "I never tell one"—a short pause—"unless it is absolutely necessary."

Meanwhile she was feeling under her collar. When her fingers came to view again, they held a little gold chain and locket. I looked at the locket curiously.

"My lover's portrait," said Cynthia, looking up at me with a saucy smile. She calmly and with patience prepared to pull apart the two pieces of the slide or clasp that held the delicate chain together.

"This was my baby chain; I have worn it ever since I was a little thing.—How old, Uncle Tony?"

The Skipper blew his nose.

"I remember my sister putting that chain on you before you could walk, Cynthy," he said. "I remember she said it was big enough to grow in."

"I have never taken it off but twice," said Cynthia; "once to slip the locket on empty, and once to slip it on after I put the picture in it."

"Let us have a look at William," said I, chagrined that I had not destroyed the only likeness extant of that hated individual.

"You shall see it some time," returned Cynthia. "There!" She took the ring from her pocket, slipped the chain through the circle made by the serpent's body, and clasped it around her neck.

"Don't do it!" I remonstrated. "There may be something in the Bo's'n's fears, after all."

"Nonsense!" laughed Cynthia, as she tucked the ring down below her collar and rearranged her tie. Her dress was still neat and fresh, but as I looked at her I wondered how long it would be before she would appear like other shipwrecked women.

And now I beckoned to the Bo's'n. He started and came haltingly up the beach. I cast my eyes on the loose pebbles at my feet for a moment and discovered what I wanted. As children we had often played with what we called lucky stones. A lucky stone was a little stone washed by the motion of the water into an open circle. The lucky stone that I picked up was a glittering piece of rock, and shone in the sun.

"We can not spare the Bo's'n's services," I said, "and he won't come back to camp until the ring is thrown away, so here goes."

The Bo's'n was nearing us slowly on the left, and the Haïtien girl as reluctantly upon the right. When the Bo's'n was perhaps a hundred feet away, I threw back my arm and hurled the pebble as far away as I could. It glittered as it flew through the air, and entered the water with a splash at about three hundred feet from the shore. I was considered a good thrower in my time.

The Bo's'n advanced now with more confidence, though he looked continually out into the bay at the concentric rings in the water, which were approaching the beach where we stood.

"Expect that fool is looking to see it bob up and swim ashore," laughed the Skipper. The Haïtien girl now returned also. She drew close to Cynthia, and laid her cheek down on her skirt in a respectful way.

"Li negue a peu," she whispered. She looked at the place where the stone had gone down and shuddered. She shook her head several times. "Ça, retou'! Ça retou'!" she said.

"I understand her talk a little, sir," volunteered the Bo's'n. "I lived with a Dominican, Mr. Jones, sir, for a year. I was with Toussaint's army when he marched to Haïti." That seemed ancient history to me, and I gazed on the Bo's'n with respect. "It was then I learned about——" He broke off suddenly.

"What did Lacelle say, Bo's'n?" asked Miss Archer.

"She says the negro is afraid, miss. That's what she meant to say, miss. The Haïtiens don't speak what they call the fine French, miss. It's half African and half French, miss."

"Captain," I said, "we are wasting a good deal of time over nothing, seems to me. There is something that we should do as soon as possible." I drew him aside and told him about the dead sailors.

"Come on," said the Skipper readily. "Bo's'n, you stay and watch the camp, and if any danger threatens, signal us."

"What with, Cap'n, sir?"

"Why, as you did before."

The Bo's'n became very red, looked at Miss Archer sheepishly, and said, "Yessir." The Minion had now appeared mysteriously from somewhere, and, after ordering him to stay with the party and help the Bo's'n "clean up," we started. We pushed the boat into the water. The Skipper took the steering oar and I took the sculls, and we pulled westward. When we arrived at our destination, I beached the boat and walked with the Captain up the slope to where the dead sailors were lying.

"Dear! dear!" said the Captain. "Wilson and Tanby! How natural they look! Poor fellows! You'll never tumble up again to the sound of the Bo's'n's whistle, my lads."

"And he'll never pipe any more to your crew," said I, as I thought of the sleeping forms we had left behind us the night before. I stood looking about me. "Captain, there's something queer about this place. It's uncanny, it seems to me. When I left the men here, a half hour ago, there were three—our two men and the Haïtien, and two graves. Now there is no Haïtien, and three graves instead of two."

"Lord! you don't say so! Well, I have seen queer things in my time, a sight of queer things. Nothing ever surprises me. Let's give the poor fellows a decent burial and get back to camp. I don't quite like leaving Cynthy with that crazy Bo's'n——"

"We have no spades, Captain," said I.

He saw what I meant, for he turned and looked at the graves.

"How's that?" he asked, jerking his head over his shoulder toward the water.

"The only way now," I answered.

We lifted the poor fellows and laid them gently in the bows side by side, and then pulled for the open water.

The dinghy's painter was lying in the bottom of the boat, and as I rowed the Skipper untwisted and split the rope. Of course, I had known quite well why he lifted two heavy rocks from the beach and laid them under the thwarts. When I had rowed for about ten minutes, the Skipper said, "Way enough!" I trailed my oars, and together we prepared the men for the last sad rites. With one end of a rope around the body of each, and the other fastened securely around one of the rocks, we lowered them one after another into that deep over which for so many years they had sailed happy-go-lucky fellows. As they sank below the surface, the Skipper shifted his squatting position into a kneeling one, raised his eyes to the blue above him, clasped his weather-beaten hands, and said:

"Oh, Thou who holdest the oceans of the earth in the hollow of Thy hands, hold these poor sailors, we pray Thee, within Thy tender keeping, and when the sea gives up its dead, good Lord, and they are called aft to Thy mast, where they must answer up, no shirking, remember the many trials and temptations of poor Jack, dear Father, and judge them as sailors, and not as human beings!"

"Amen!" said I.

CHAPTER V.
A MYSTERIOUS FLIGHT.

I could not restrain a smile, even at this most solemn moment, as I heard the Skipper's ending. I sat looking at the water for a little—at the resting place of the men, which was marked for a short time by the bubbles which came to the surface; and then a light wind ruffled the water, and I closed my eyes, breathing a few words for the living as well as for the dead. When I opened them again, I had lost trace of those nameless graves for all time.

As I rowed the boat swiftly toward shore, away from that scene of sadness, I pondered upon the situation. It seemed to me that the others had not considered seriously enough our strangely exceptional fate. In most accounts of shipwreck and adventure the castaways are left upon a desolate island with savages more or less gentle, who help and care for them; or else the natives are bloodthirsty wretches, who, if they come in contact with the shipwrecked people, are outnumbered and overcome. Then a vessel heaves in sight at the right moment, and takes the unfortunates to home and happiness. There was the alternative of being shipwrecked upon an utterly desolate land, where provisions were few and enemies none. Our case was not any one of these three. We had not been obliged to seek refuge upon a desert island, far from home and friends. On the contrary, we were but twelve hundred miles at the most from Belleville, which was the centre of our world. The anxiety which filled my thoughts was caused by recent facts in our history, which followed each other rapidly through my mind, and which gave me reason to fear that if we could not quickly get safe passage away from the island something of a dangerous nature might befall us. That black monarch, "King Henry of the North," as he chose to style himself, was at this time reigning over the island of Haïti with resolute and powerful sway. No absolute monarch ever ruled a people with as decided and unbrooked a will as Henri Christophe. The French occupation, which had lasted about one hundred years, had been finally ended with the revolution of 1793. Toussaint l'Ouverture had instigated and led the most bloody rebellion of modern times. The slave of the Breda plantation, through insurrection, wars, and bloodshed, had become a great general, and so the dictator of the entire island known as Santo Domingo. It is an almost incredible fact that Toussaint was a gentle and humane man, even though he rose against and massacred the whites that his people with him might throw off the yoke of slavery. Had Toussaint been alive at this day, I knew that we should have had nothing to fear, but his mantle had fallen upon other shoulders, and those who had succeeded him had lost sight of the primary cause of the uprising. Like some other reformers, his path ran with blood, but it was either that or continued slavery for himself and his people. Toussaint was the grand figure of the Haïtien revolution. The Marquis d'Hermonas said of him, "God in this terrestrial globe could not commune with a purer spirit." It was well known that Toussaint's enemies were treated with a gentleness and consideration which was abnormal in those days of bloodthirsty cruelty and excess. But at the time of which I write Toussaint had died in the Alps. The French, short-sighted as to a policy which should have urged upon them the recognition of Toussaint as the best governor which the island could procure, instead of treating with him, and forming an honourable peace, decoyed him on board one of their ships. He was sent to France, where he died in the Château de Joux. His death was caused by Alpine rigour, and it is hinted that it was aided by unnatural means. Toussaint was a courageous general, a keen legislator, an astute philosopher, a good citizen, a generous enemy, and a faithful friend. Had we but had such a man to turn to, I should have felt no fear, but there had been wars and bloodshed since Toussaint's time. His generals, Dessalines, Christophe, and Pétion, had continued the war with the greatest bitterness. They had driven out the French, who, however, had left their various mixed progeny behind them. That progeny, the product of two races, who despised their black mothers and hated their white fathers, were always at war with the blacks and whites alike. Then Dessalines, following the example of Bonaparte, in 1804, crowned himself emperor, saying, "I am the only noble in Haïti." This would be laughable if the results had not been so disastrous and far reaching. Then came the downfall of Dessalines. Then Pétion was elected president. There were more conspirings, more treachery, and more bloodshed, and finally Christophe crowned himself king. This was in 1811, about ten years before the last cruise of the Yankee Blade.

Back from the coast, about eight to ten miles as the crow flies, upon a mountain height which overlooks the sea and land as far as the eye can reach, Christophe had built his wonderful citadel, the tragic erection of which cost a life for each stone laid.

This black prince lived in the greatest luxury and, as far as his light shone, in unbounded magnificence. No refusal was ever brooked by him. If a workman was ordered to accomplish the impossible, and the article desired was not forthcoming at the time set by the despot, the unfortunate being was dragged from his hiding place and hurled off the precipice of the citadel. I had heard that thirty thousand men had perished in this way. I remember now the words of a historian whose book I have lately read:

"As long as a stone of this wall shall stand, so long will there remain a monument to one of the greatest savages and murderers who has ever disgraced God's earth."

Christophe's palace at "Sans Souci" was one of the wonders of the world. It would have graced any country; have reflected glory upon any people. The earthquake of '42 damaged its fair beauty, but its remains stand to-day a proof of the power, the determination, and the inventive genius of that terrible black king. Seated under a camaito tree, which spread its green shade over the marble terrace, this absolute monarch held court. No one dared to look upon his face. Officers, soldiers, and prisoners alike trembled and hid their eyes as they knelt before him. If any one displeased or unconsciously thwarted the king, he was haled away to a dungeon, which generally meant death.

Is it wonderful, then, that I regarded our going to the interior of the island as little less than suicidal? We were in danger of lawless bands from the West and from the East, for there was discontent with the black king Henri, and irresponsible parties of griffes and mulattoes, not to speak of outlawed whites who had no standing at home, were in hiding among the rocks and caves of that extraordinary formation known as the island of Santo Domingo. I had wondered how Captain Schuyler had dared to bring his niece with him on this cruise of the Yankee Blade, for the buccaneers were still pursuing helpless craft upon the high seas. They usually feared a close proximity to civilized lands, but carried on their nefarious business upon the open ocean, making sudden and unexpected dashes from the Isle of Pines, which was their stronghold.

I think that I have written enough without going further into detail to show why, though we had been ashore barely twenty-four hours, I was anxious to escape from this place of horrors. These reflections ran through my brain in the space of a very few seconds, as thoughts will, and I trailed my oars and spoke.

"Captain Schuyler," I said, "why did you run the risk of bringing your niece on such a dangerous voyage?"

The Skipper looked up at me for a moment, as if not comprehending my question.

"God bless your soul! Dangerous? Dangerous? What do you mean, Mr. Jones?"

"I consider it a very foolish thing, Captain, to——"

"What! Mr. Jones, do you know who you are speaking to, sir? This is mutiny, Mr. Jones, rank mutiny! Rank——"

"No, Captain," I answered calmly and slowly, "it is no mutiny. I must speak my mind. I can not understand your action, with pirates still roaming the high seas——"

"Yes, yes, high seas," broke in the Skipper; "but who ever dreamed of their coming so close to shore? Why, I've been sailing these waters now for seven years, since I gave up the Calcutta trade, and I never so much as saw a pirate craft. I've hugged the shore pretty close, it's true, and—— Pshaw, Mr. Jones, you're nervous! I recognise the signs. A man's always nervous when he's in love. I used to be; I——"

"I am not unnecessarily nervous," said I. "Your niece is a very beautiful young girl——"

"Do you think so?" said the Skipper in a surprised tone. "Why, do you know, Jones, I never thought her even good-looking. You should have seen her Aunt Mary 'Zekel at her age!"

"I regret my loss," I said. "But that's neither here nor there——"

"You are foolish, Jones! You imagine things."

"I suppose the loss of the Yankee and the balls of those pirates are all in my fancy."

"Good God! No! I wish they were. I can't say that," answered the Skipper, "but——"

"Hardly, I fancy," said I impatiently, "with the old Yankee sunk and our party ashore, half of them dead, some of them buried, the others——"

"Don't go on so, Jones. Those men may not have been pirates. Sometimes people pretend they are pi——"

"Don't split hairs, Captain. I think if a Britisher or an American should capture them, and knew what they done, they would give them a short shrift. I can't see how you can be so unimpressed with our dreadful situation."

I looked up at the Skipper and saw the tears welling over from his eyes.

"Don't scold me, Jones," he said in a broken voice. "God knows I can't see my way clear to anything! Tell me what you think best, and I'll do it."

I saw that the old man's nerve was gone, and I suspected that with it had departed some of the good judgment for which he had been noted, I had heard, in years gone by. Had I started from Coenties Slip with the ship, I should have remonstrated with him, if possible, for taking a young girl on so hazardous a voyage; but I had joined the ship at Martinique, my own vessel having been lost off that island in a hurricane, of which more another time. The Captain had quarreled with his Mate, he had deserted, and I had taken the job, and glad to get it, too. My surprise was great when I found Miss Archer on board. I had always been pessimistic about her presence there, and now something like what I had anticipated had happened, and here was I left to care for a Captain who was broken and old, and a young girl of my own nation, for whose welfare I found that I cared more than was good for my peace of mind, and a boy who was of no use except to give us an occasional laugh, and a Bo's'n who went off into strange, mysterious attacks, and talked at such times miles over my head, as well as his own—a sublimated Bo's'n, who, though entirely illiterate in his normal moments, in attacks such as I have described spoke like a professor; who one moment was soaring in the skies, and raving of things spiritual and supernatural, and the next moment was talking like the veriest old Jacky that ever came out of a forecastle. I, too, was feeling upset with all that we had gone through, but I must keep my courage up if we were to escape from that accursed island.

"Jones, what do you say to rowing back up along the beach and seeing if those fellows are alive? We ought to bury them decently if they have died since yesterday." The Skipper seemed suddenly to have developed a fancy for the rôle of Chaplain. Having tasted the pleasure of being in close communication with Heaven, on a confidential footing, so to speak, with Providence, the apologist and recommender of the dead of his crew, he hated to give up the job. I have noticed the same sort of frenzy in my wife at times. She (to speak mildly) used to dissipate, at certain seasons, in church meetings, going to Wednesday evening and Friday evening meetings, to noon prayer meetings, and three times to church.

On Sundays many's the time I've walked the floor with little Adoniah Schuyler second, while she was listening to Reverend Vandenwater thunder hell and damnation at the unrepentant. She has come in with an uplifted look on her face and an air of holy calm, which assured me that the next world held no place for such degenerates as myself. The Reverend Vandenwater demanded all her time and attention for the "Refuge for the Progeny of the Bondsman." But the Reverend Vandenwater disappeared with the funds of the Refuge, and she has not dissipated so extensively since. I used to tell her when she talked about the love of the Lord that it was spelled with a "V," which at times created a coolness in the family. But I have digressed.

I told the Skipper that I thought we had been enjoying ourselves long enough away from the camp, and that we should now return as soon as possible. As I spoke, I rested for a moment on my oars and turned my head in the direction of the camp.

"Strange!" said I; "there's no one on the beach." The Skipper stood up in the boat.

"No," he said, "there isn't. Perhaps they have gone a little farther into the shade." There were no figures moving about, no Cynthia, no Bo's'n, no Minion. One never knew what Lacelle would be up to, so I did not worry myself at not seeing her. I turned again to face the Skipper, and all at once I perceived a strange vessel coming rapidly toward the coast, and as I looked, the French flag which she bore was supplemented by another. I could not believe my eyes. I did really rub them and look again. Yes, it was true. The Jolly Roger fluttered for a moment at the masthead, and as suddenly was lowered to the rail. It confirmed my suspicions as to the pass to which the island had come, that a pirate craft could sail openly along the coast in broad daylight, displaying her signal of murder and death! That it was a signal to some one in waiting on the shore, I could not hesitate to believe. Then, in what terrible danger were we and our party from an assault both on the land and on the water. We were, indeed, between the devil and the deep sea.

"Captain," said I, scrambling hastily over the middle seat, "take the other pair, for God's sake!"

"What's the matter with the man?" exclaimed the Captain, as I tumbled hastily into the bows and picked up the extra pair of oars. "Just when one begins to feel peaceful and calm, communing with his Maker, as it were, you——"

"You'll commune with your Maker sooner than you care to, Captain," said I, "if you don't pick up those oars. That pirate's come back, or else it's another one. I saw the Roger——"

The Skipper had by this time turned about, deliberately removed his coat, and taken up the oars.

"What! that vessel? She's no more a pirate than you are."

"I tell you I saw the crossbones as plain as I see your back. Pull, Captain, for the love of God!"

The Skipper did bend to his oars, but his mutterings were proof that he had little confidence in my judgment or eyesight.

"Just thinking peacefully of my latter end——"

"You'll have your latter end closer in view, Captain," said I, "if you don't pull like hell."

My violent word brought him down from his heavenly flight, and pull he did, but we had quite a distance yet to go.

"She's a beauty," said the Skipper. "She's so long and low and rakish, but so was the Yankee Blade. Not quite so much free board as the Yankee, has she, now?"

"Captain, excuse me, but if you would pull more and talk less——"

"Well, I'll pull, Mr. Jones, I'll pull, but I'll remember your language, Mr. Jones, and when I get——"

I looked over my shoulder as I rowed.

"Our people are nowhere to be seen, Captain. Do you think they could have noticed that signal?"

"You are crazy, man, utterly and entirely out of your head. I told you that men in love were insane. They would never show that flag if they had it."

"They know what they are about, sir," said I. "They wouldn't do it for fun. Let us beach the boat and run for it."

The Skipper suddenly seemed to catch my fear. We beached the boat some hundred yards from the camp.

"Which way, Jones?"

"For the camp, Cap'n, the camp! If you ever ran in your life, run now."

I sped along the beach, taking it just where the retreating water had left the sand hard and firm, the Skipper pounding along after me on his fat, short legs. I did not think of the danger of being seen by those on board the vessel, and, had I done so, I should have been sure that they were busy with their signals and their rounding to. As I ran, I turned my head now and then to watch the approach of the craft. She was a beautiful sight, the long, low schooner, all sails set, pointing directly for the shore. She ran so far in, that one would think that they meant to run directly up on the beach, but I argued that their confidence bespoke their knowledge of these waters. The wind had risen, and the trades were blowing freshly along, parallel with the shore line. We had reached the camp now. No one was to be seen. I turned for one more glimpse of the dreadful vessel, and as I looked she began to haul down her jibs. She rounded to, shot up head to wind, and lowered her foresail and dropped anchor pretty nearly together.

"You see, she knows her ground," said I.

The Skipper looked blankly about him. There was no sign of any of our party. There was no trace of any of the provisions or of our occupation of the place except a broken leaf or two and the remains of the fire, and that was heaped with wet sand, which was fast drying between the embers and the sun. I called "Cynthia! Cynthia!" frantically, regardless of the proprieties or of what the Skipper would think, or of her resentment if she heard me. There was no response. I ran here and there. I hallooed, I shouted, with no thought of whom else might hear. The four living, breathing human beings whom we had left at our camp had vanished out of life as if they had never existed! I ran anxiously through the undergrowth, and as I ran I stumbled over the one thing which the party in their flight or imprisonment, I knew not which, had forgotten.

It was the spyglass, lying closely hidden under some large leaves that grew upon the bank of the stream. I took it up and pointed it at the strange vessel. Her decks seemed alive with men. I saw that they were lowering some boats. They were coming ashore, then! We took turns in watching the movements of the crew, and discovered that they had got down two boats, and were preparing to lower a third. The first two were pulling directly for the cove or mouth of the stream.

"Comin' ashore for water, probably," said the Skipper. "Bo's'n has seen 'em probably, and has come down from his high horse long enough to hide the party. We're all right, Jones. Don't be so dreadful scared. They won't stay above half an hour."

I devoutly hoped not.

We now ran up the bank of the stream toward the face of rock which rose precipitately from the grass-grown valley. As I looked toward it, I could not fail to admire the beauty of its vine-covered precipice. On either side the hills sloped backward, but the cliff stood bold and vertical, like a verdure-covered fortress. Behind those leafy hiding places the guns of an enemy might lie secure until the day of need.

"Cynthia! Cynthia!" I shouted again. I never thought of calling any other name. "Cynthia" was all that I wanted to find. As we neared the face of the rock we perceived that the stream ran exactly out from its centre, through which it had made in the ages past an archway for itself. We stooped and drank of it. It was cold, as if it had emerged from a glacier. I bathed my head and my hands. The Skipper did the same. And then I took up my cry of "Cynthia! Cynthia!" I had begun to call now as a matter of habit, not at all as if I expected to obtain a response, and was looking around for a place where the Skipper and I could secrete ourselves until the pirates had procured their water, when I heard a whistle or sort of chirrup from somewhere above. I raised my eyes toward the sheer straight wall of rock, and saw a human face looking down. It was forty feet over my head, but I knew it better than I knew any face in the world. It was the face of Cynthia, smiling down on me as if we had never had any tiffs, as if no danger threatened, as if it were the most natural place for her to be, and, above all, as if she were glad to welcome me.

I could see nothing of Cynthia's body. Her head only protruded from a mass of vines which covered the face of the rock, from vines rooted in a spot a hundred feet above her head, and falling to the ground where I stood. The Skipper looked upward at the signal from Cynthia.

"Always knew you was a tomboy, Cynthy. But for the Lord's sake, how did you climb up there?"

"Better hurry, Uncle," answered Cynthia; "they're getting near land."

"But how?" asked the puzzled Skipper. "How? I don't see any vine that'll hold my weight. Besides, they'd see me climbin' up the face."

"Round to the right, your right, and up the hill!" It was Cynthia's voice again, and we eagerly obeyed. We skirted the base of the ragged cliff. The last words that we heard from Cynthia were, "the ceiba tree," and we took them as our guide. We pushed through the low underbrush and climbed the broken shale, sending down shovel loads of small stones at every step. It was hot work. I panted and dripped, and the poor Skipper's face was the colour of fire. I was glad for both our sakes when we reached the ceiba tree and stood leaning against it, fanning ourselves with our hats. Here we were concealed from the men in the boats by the trees that fringed the shore, and felt in no hurry to start on again. We were at a loss as to how to proceed farther when, as I looked about for a continuing path, a hand protruded from the bushes which grew against the cliff, and I saw some beckoning fingers. I pushed the Skipper forward. He grasped the hand in his and disappeared. I heard what sounded like "Atton." This might mean anything. I took it to be an order from Lacelle, and that the word was spoken in her Haïtien French, and was intended for "attendez." I was not and never have been a scholar of the French language, but one who follows the sea for a livelihood picks up more or less of the words of various nations, and I thought that I must be right in my surmise. So I waited. I did not think that they would leave me alone, and, if they did, I had no fear of the strangers coming up the hill in that blazing sun when they had landed merely for the purpose of securing water. As I leaned against the rock waiting for developments—for that developments of some kind must come I was certain—the hand was put forth again, and I was drawn within the recess. The bushes grew so close to the face of the cliff that I had left them behind me and had entered an archway of rock before I realized the change. The darkness and the cold of this strange interior were the more obvious because of our exertion under a fierce tropical sun, and they told me that I was treading a passage well surrounded by rock masses within the deep interior of the great cliff. I could see absolutely nothing, and I groped stumblingly along. As I walked I dragged the fingers of my left hand against the wall upon that side of me. The other was clasped in the hand of my leader. We proceeded some distance in this way upon a level, and then began to descend a sharp declivity. Here my feet would have gone too fast for safety had not my guide restrained me with a grasp of iron. At the foot of this incline we found a level, along which we proceeded for some distance, and then we began to ascend again. Our footsteps resounded hollowly as we felt along the mysterious way.

Among the strange feelings that surged like a flood through my being, the one which impressed me the most was the fact that one of my hands was held in a cold, moist grasp. It was held firmly and steadily. I withdrew my other hand from the wall and endeavoured to lay it suddenly upon the wrist of the leader. But it was as if my guide could penetrate the gloom, for as I attempted this my fingers were at once released, and I was left to grope alone. I struggled miserably for a moment, fearing to stand still, fearing to move, not knowing into what black abyss I might plunge at any moment; and then I shouted, "Come back! Come back!" Terrible echoes answered me; but the hand, the horrible moist hand, was again laid upon mine, and I was being led somewhere, as before.

My wish was to slide my fingers up along the arm of my guide and discover, if possible, what manner of being this was who led me. My manoeuvre had been foiled, however, and after two of these attempts I heard the words whispered softly in my ear, in tone of warning it seemed to me, "Pe'nez gar'." Then I resigned myself to being led blindly onward, feeling that I must trust to my leader or be lost.

I wondered if I were to meet Cynthia, or if this were some ghostly trap into which I had fallen. The air was full of mystery. I had heard weird tales of the old caves of Santo Domingo, of which Haïti was a part, and of strange disappearances—of men with a spirit for adventure groping their way in those caverns and appearing never more to human eye. Strange odours arose. The air seemed heavy and weighed down upon my head. I seemed to breathe the atmosphere of a charnel house. The blackness of darkness was upon me, but I resigned myself hopelessly to the leadership of that ghostly hand. I shudder now when I recall that mysterious contact. The very memory of it strikes a chill to my heart. My head whirls when I remember my stumbling and halting movement through that passage of dread, shivering with fear that the next step might dash me into an unfathomable pit. Perhaps the Skipper had already met his fate! Cynthia was safe; at least, we had heard her voice. But was she not perhaps reserved for some terrible future, when we, her protectors, should be gone? With these agonizing thoughts in my mind, I groped and stumbled on.

The ghostly presence was as elusive as the soap in the bath tub. When I endeavoured to clasp the hand with both of mine, and thought that I had my fingers on something tangible, they closed together upon themselves. I felt a pressure against my side, my back. My hand touched a cold form that it gave me a chill to feel, and I tried to prove to myself that it was no delusion; but even as I groped in the darkness the form eluded me, and I was alone.

CHAPTER VI.
THE PIRATES RETURN.

Suddenly my guide had released my hand, and I was left to myself. I saw a faint glimmer of light ahead. And now I was conscious that there was no one in front of me. I faced quickly about. The blackness of darkness met my gaze.

I hoped to discover what manner of guide mine had been, but I looked into the depths of an inky funnel, whose grim background outlined no mysterious or other form against its dreadful perspective. I turned in the direction of the ray again, and walked a few steps. As I proceeded, the light grew stronger. I heard voices and laughter, intermingled with the ripple of one gentle voice that I knew, and I walked ahead now with confidence, and emerged at last into a large open room. I perceived at once that all our party were assembled here. I thought that Cynthia greeted me with some degree of pleasure. She held out her hand to me and asked me if my walk through the passage had not been intensely interesting.

Interesting!

I found that my entrance had interrupted Cynthia's explanation to the Skipper, which she now resumed.

"We had nowhere to leave a message," said Cynthia. "You know, Uncle, that I should never have run away from any ordinary boat. I knew that you thought that we ought to hide if strangers came, and I was willing to go, of course, only I did hope that we might stay our week out, or at least while the pork lasted. When I saw the Stars and Stripes I called to the others and waved to you. You paid no sort of attention to me. You had your back to me, and were leaning over the boat so far that I thought you would go over into the water. I told the Minion that you were looking, I thought, to see if there were any clams in these waters. And then the Bo's'n came running and begged me not to wave to you, or to make any sign until we found out what sort of craft that was."

"Beg the lady's pardon," said the Bo's'n, "but I have cruised in these waters before, and we didn't have no ladies, either."

"Well, well, Cynthy, go on! go on! How did you find this place?"

"Well, then, I took up the glass. The Bo's'n was flying round hiding our things. He rolled the casks some distance back among the underbrush. Meanwhile I was looking through the glass, and when I saw the Stars and Stripes I must confess that I was a little disappointed, because I knew, Uncle Tony, you would want to leave at once. But, Uncle, while I was looking, right across my field of vision there floated that horrible skull and crossbones. It was only for a second, but that was long enough for me. When I told the Bo's'n what I had seen he could hardly believe me. He told Lacelle that we must hide ourselves until we saw what the people in the boat intended to do. She took my hand and said, 'Li negue pas peu',' and drew me into a running step along the bank of the stream."

"Yes, yes, Cynthy; but how did you find this hiding place? It seems just hollowed by natur' a purpose."

"That I can't tell you, Uncle. We ran up the bank of the stream, and when we reached the straight face of the cliff Lacelle turned to the right. She hurried along the base of the rock and skirted it. Round the corner we went, and up that hill we flew. Lacelle got over the ground like a young fawn, but it was rough climbing for me. Then I asked the Bo's'n to take my hand, and the Minion took the other, and they pulled me up to the level under the ceiba tree."

"And how did you find——"

"Wait, Uncle, I can't tell all at once. She parted the bushes and pushed me some distance into the darkness, and then some one took my hand and led me along. I don't know who that was. I was so confused.—Was it you, Bo's'n?—And then——"

"Begging your pardon, miss," said the Bo's'n, "I followed you."

"We walked along the passage, Uncle——"

"So did we," said the Skipper. "It's all very curious. Did that girl—. By the way, why don't you ask the girl how you——"

"How can I ask her anything, Uncle?"

"Then how did you know her name?"

"Oh, I wish there was no more difficulty in learning her language than in learning her name. She just pointed to herself and said 'Lacelle,' 'Lacelle,' over and over. Then she ran away. I called 'Lacelle!' and she came running back, smiling. I'm sure that's very easy."

"Yes," said I. "I wish that we had no more difficult problem to solve."

"Well, it's a pretty nice kind of a hole," said the Skipper, beaming upon us all contentedly.

One who has not explored the island of Santo Domingo, with its western division of Haïti, can form no idea of its wonderful formation. Its gigantic cliffs rise in perpendicular grandeur from grassy or thickly wooded plains, in whose caves and recesses bandits have made their homes. There even the redoubtable Captain Kidd is said to have found a refuge!

The place in which I found my friends was a grand chamber of about sixty feet in depth, measuring back from the face of the rock, and about forty feet in width. There was an opening across the front of perhaps twenty feet in width and nine or ten feet in height, but no one looking at it from the shore would perceive that the vines which trailed their masses of leaves across the opening concealed anything but the simple face of the rock. We had not dreamed that there was any opening in the cliff until we heard Cynthia's whistle. The vines seemed to start from the top of the rock, fifty feet overhead, perhaps, from where we were concealed, and grow directly downward. When they reached the ground they fastened themselves in the rich earth with long-reaching fingers; then having made their holding good, began to climb upon themselves again to the very top of this lofty natural fort. There they had started fresh roots, and again the vine began to descend, making a new pilgrimage to earth. So back and forth it ran, its green vines hardening to woody stems, and then to the thickness of branches, curling and twisting upon one another, until the leaf screen had become hardly penetrable. I suppose that it would have been quite safe to have leaned one's entire weight against this natural lattice work, but prudence, the Skipper, and I forbade.

I looked around the interior of the chamber, and saw that it was formed like most caverns which I had seen in my time. There were projections of rock upon the sides and around the base of the walls, which might have been the work of Nature or of man. Perhaps Nature, somewhat aided by man. As I stood facing the opening and the small hole which Cynthia had made in the screen, I turned to scrutinize the wall upon my right, opposite where we had entered the cavern. It was about twenty feet in height. Along the very top there were some small openings, or natural embrasures, and through these a faint light percolated. I should much have liked to climb to the top and see what was on the other side of our party wall, but I was helpless. There was no possible way of getting up there, and I withdrew my eyes disappointedly. At the back of the chamber in which we had taken refuge there were some large natural pillars of stone, grand, ragged, and uneven. As I glanced at these I saw that Lacelle leaned thoughtfully against one of them, her gaze fixed upon Cynthia with a tender and earnest expression, as if she wondered what could be done to save this beautiful and beloved creature. As I looked, I thought that I saw the skirt of the girl's dress twitched gently, as if some power other than I knew was urging her backward into the gloom; and as I gazed, the girl, obedient to the mysterious summons, melted from my sight.

"The boats are getting nearer," called Cynthia. "Look, Uncle, they are probably coming for water from our bathing place."

The Skipper took the glass from Cynthia and rested it on one of the strong vines which twisted across the window of the cave.

"Two boats are pushing into the stream," the Skipper informed us. "Did you ever see such a fiendish looking lot of ruffians?"

"Do let me see, Uncle. This is the most delightful thing that I ever experienced."

"God grant that we can keep her in that frame of mind!" I whispered to the Skipper.

He gave me a look full of anxiety as he handed to Cynthia the eagerly desired glass.

"They are pulling up against the current. Now they'll come to our bathing place for water," said Cynthia. "Oh, how I wish I had some!"

"If they find our provisions we're done for," whispered the Skipper in my ear. But, as Providence willed, the men did not disembark upon our side of the stream, or rather the side where we had made our camp, but upon the other, or right bank, if the right bank of a stream is the same as that of a river, the one on your right when you are looking toward its mouth. They hauled their boats up on the shelving beach, and then the man in the stern stood up and gave orders. We could hear him now. He spoke in a singularly musical voice, in a sort of broken English. The others called him Mauresco, as near as we could understand.

It seems incredible that but a few years before the time when I was cast away the United States Government, and the other reputable nations of the earth as well, were paying yearly tribute to the Dey of Algiers. And although peace had been declared in the year 1805, it was a hollow one so far as the roaming bands of pirates were concerned. Many of them made their refuge on the Isle of Pines, and were so strongly intrenched there that it seemed that no one had ever thought of trying to dislodge them. Vessels started from American ports hoping to arrive at their destinations in spite of these maurauders, and that Captain Schuyler had not been annoyed by them in his southern voyages argues in favour of his luck, and not of his prudence.

The Skipper looked again.

"Those ain't empty casks," he said. He talked slowly, moving the glass about as he followed the movements of the landing party. "See how that one thumped down on the beach. I believe I heard it. Bet a red herring to a sperm whale there's something in those casks!"

"Good Santo Domingo or Jamaica rum, probably," said I.

"Maybe, in some of 'em."

I wish that I could describe the strange appearance of those lawless men as they surrounded the casks and rolled them up on the beach. I thought it strange that blue, yellow, green, and purple predominated. There was also the shade which my wife calls pink, but of a rich or darker colour, red or crimson, there was none to be seen. I discovered the reason of this, however, when the third boat put her nose against the beach.

"Those fellows mean to make a night of it," said the Skipper. "Call me a soldier if they don't."

"Oh, I am so thirsty!" said Cynthia again. She stood leaning against the wall of the cavern close to the opening, peering down, more, I thought, upon the water glancing below than at the strangers. I have been reading of late a very pretty tale written by a gentleman of the name of Irving, and as I read of that wonderful palace of the Moors called the Alhambra, and of the lattice work across the windows from which the court beauties gazed forth, themselves unseen, my mind ran back over fifty years, and I saw Cynthia again, as I saw her that morning, a fairer, sweeter beauty, looking down from her latticed window, than any houri who ever graced the court of Boabdil of Grenada.

"Don't worry about water, Cynthy, child," said the Skipper. "Sorry you're thirsty, but they'll go away presently, and then you can have all you want. If they would only go off a little way, we could make a dash for the boats and row to Floridy."

"Begging your pardon, sir, you forget the schooner, sir," said the Bo's'n.

"Seem to have a good many men for the size of the schooner." The Skipper remarked this as the boats were pushing into the stream. "I don't believe they are all crew." And one could see that they were not. The crew were well-fed-looking ruffians, dressed in picturesque fashion after the manner somewhat of their masters, but there were six or eight of the men in the boats who had little clothing, and that of the simplest sort. They looked sad and downcast, and one could see that they must be prisoners, even without discovering the ropes or heavy cords which tied their wrists to the rowlocks where they were seated. They gazed anxiously at the shore, as if they would be glad to rest for a while upon the sweet green grass.

"How can they live so far off!" said Cynthia, gazing down at the piratical crew in wonder.

"Far off from where?" I asked.

"Why, from Belleville, of course."

For the moment I had forgotten that Belleville was the axis of the earth.

"I wish to God they were nearer Belleville and farther from us at this moment!" said I fiercely.

"I wish that fool girl had never come away from Belleville at all," whispered the Skipper to me. He shook his head anxiously as he stood gazing at Cynthia with a puzzled expression, as if to say, "What will become of her?"

I could not withdraw my eyes from those strange men. From the moment my eye fell upon the one they called Mauresco I hated him with a deadly hatred, and yet I think I never looked upon so comely a man. Tall, well formed, with shoulders like an athlete, you did not take him for a large man, and yet after looking at others and turning again to him he seemed like a giant. After letting your gaze rest on him for a time, and then turning to the others again, they looked like pigmies, their heads contracted, their colour faded, their eyes small and dull. What there was in this man to so fascinate every one with whom he came in contact I do not know. I never got very near to him but on one occasion, and then but for the space of a few tragic moments, but I found that he left behind him wherever he passed a memory that would not die. Mauresco was the finest of his boat's crew, as far as we could see. His coat, of some greenish colour, was thrown aside, and his fine white shirt was apparently his only covering above the waist. He wore trunk hose and half boots. Upon his head was the broad straw hat of the tropics, and around his waist was a wide green sash, in which were stuck two or three knives. Some pistols lay on the seats in the bows. I suppose that the men had disburdened themselves of these because of the heat of the day. In each boat there seemed to be a leader, or captain, who was dressed much as was Mauresco. The costumes of the sailor men were a modification of his.

"He's very handsome," said Cynthia, her eyes glued to the glass.

"For God's sake, don't speak so loud!" said I.

"He looks like that picture of the Moor we have at home, Uncle. His voice is very sweet. I don't believe he would do us any harm. Now suppose we throw ourselves upon his mercy, and——"

"Fool!" ejaculated the Skipper, and, snatching the glass, he turned his back upon her. "If you speak a loud word," he whispered fiercely, "I'll throw you off the cliff."

"I don't see how that would save my life," whispered Cynthia to me; but her Uncle's rough words and tones had the desired effect, and we spoke no more aloud.

From the second boat there stepped a young boy of perhaps fourteen years. He had, I thought, a dazed, cowed look. The leader in the second boat was a bluff, red-faced Englishman. He limped and was awkward in his movements, and I saw that he had a wooden leg. He got over the ground, however, as fast as most of the men, and his strength and power even with this drawback made him seem uncanny. He whistled and sang by snatches in a fine barytone voice, which would not have disgraced a concert stage. When this man was not whistling and singing, he was laughing and swearing, which proved a diversion, if not an agreeable one.

As soon as the young man stood up in the boat, he looked anxiously at the burly man.

"After you, my lord," said the burly man, bowing low. "I am nothing but plain Jonas—Captain Jonas, at your service. It's so long since we had a real lord among us that we don't quite know how to treat him.—Mauresco, rise up and greet my lord."

The man we now knew as Mauresco half arose and said in his musical voice, as he smiled and showed his handsome teeth:

"I salute you, Lord George."

The boy had a rope round his wrist, which trailed after him as he walked.

"Let me remove that darby, my lord," said Mauresco.

He drew a crooked cimetar from his belt and rose into a sitting posture. The boy looked shrinkingly at the knife and advanced, trembling and pale.

"Oh, come, come! Have courage, my lad!" said Mauresco. He cut the rope and the boy was free.

"Am I to be left upon this island?" asked the boy, looking at Mauresco anxiously.

"And why should we leave Lord George Trevelyan upon this island? To wander to the interior, and tell King Christophe that this is one of our stopping places?"

"How am I to be killed, then? Am I to be made to walk out upon that dreadful plank?" The boy shuddered, as if he had lately witnessed that dread execution. "Tell me my fate, Captain. I can bear it, only tell me."

"No, no! We have another plan for you, Lord George. We will take you back to the coast of England. We will stand in near the estate of your mother, the countess, some late evening. Then you shall write her a letter asking the ransom that I shall dictate, unless, indeed, the Admiral of the Red demands more."

"You mistake my position," said the boy. "My mother is not a rich woman, even though she has a title. She is not a countess, she——"

"But your brother is a lord."

"Yes, but I am not. I have no money in my own right, and never shall have. If I had, I would promise it all to you if you would take me home or to any civilized land."

"Lady Trevelyan could raise the money, and then——"

"She could raise next to nothing, Captain. The estates have been encumbered for years. She is trying to pay off the indebtedness before my brother comes of age; she——"

"What would she say to sixty thousand pounds?"

The boy's face blanched.

"I may as well be frank with you, Captain; she could not procure anything like that sum."

"Well, well, say forty thousand; we won't be particular about a little less. Suppose, now, I should leave you here, Lord George, with provisions for a certain length of time, in a safe place which I know of in this neighbourhood, and you give me a letter to your mother the countess, saying——"

"It is useless," said the boy, hanging his head. "She could not give it to you."

"I'm afraid, then, we'll have to do with you as we have with many a fellow twice your size. It would never do to let you go home and set the English law working against Captain Jonas, plain Captain Jonas."

Jonas laughed his burly, fat laugh.

"Not to speak of Mauresco," he said, "handsome Mauresco!"

"But if I promise never to say a word to a soul of where I have been, whom I saw, what was said, when we——"

"We've heard those promises afore," said Captain Jonas. "Remember, Mauresco? When we caught that damned Spanish don, and all the promises he made, and then that infernal chase! No, no, boy—Lord George, I should have said. We know too much about the faith of a prisoner of war."

"My family have always been noted for their honour and faith!" The boy drew himself up with pride as he said these words. "I would die before I would tell if I promised not——"

"That will be the case anyway," said Mauresco with a careless laugh.

"Will you shoot me? Will you make me walk that horr——"

The boy shuddered and turned paler than he had been.

"No, no, boy, on the word of the buccaneer, we have no such intention. We shall neither shoot you, hang you, nor make you walk the plank. Don't be so anxious. You have got some fine stories into your head about us, but really at bottom we are the most humane of men.—Aren't we, Jonas? I beg pardon, Captain Jonas."

"So they tell me," said Jonas pleasantly.

The third boat had now come into the cove, and had landed near the first two. The Captain of the third boat was a squat, little red-faced man, with a hump on his back to make him seem smaller—in fact, he was a dwarf. His legs were bowed, his arms long. He had small ferret eyes and an ugly grin.

"Your fate will be decided by the Admiral of the Red," said Mauresco, with a wave of the hand toward the newcomer.

As the third boat grounded, in answer to the punting oars, the men on the bank, Mauresco and Captain Jonas among them, arose from, their sitting postures and stood with an air almost of respect. The little man scrambled over the seats and tumbled himself down on the beach.

"Some of you fellows come and carry me," he said. "It's too damnably hot to walk."

At a glance from Mauresco three or four of the strongest of the men ran to the help of the Admiral of the Red and lifted him upon their shoulders. Some one else ran to the boat and seized a boat cloak which lay in the stern sheets and placed it in the shade under a mahogany tree. The Admiral of the Red, or the Red Admiral, as he might better be called, gave each of the bearers a vicious kick as they deposited their share of him upon the ground; at which they laughed as if it were a delightful joke, and ran down to the boat to help land the Admiral's belongings.

"Broach a keg!" squeaked the Admiral.

"We have just broached one," answered Captain Jonas.

"It was rum," whispered the Skipper to me. "I told you so. I'll take that sperm whale, if you please."

I was glad that the Skipper could joke under such horrible circumstances; it seemed to make our situation less hopeless.

The Admiral now squeaked for his horse pistol, and, while some one was concocting a drink for him out of various fiery compounds, he laid under the tree and amused himself in taking aim at the prisoners in the different boats. The men turned pale and shook as each shot flew over their heads or about their ears, and watched the Admiral with apprehensive eye, and dodged as they saw him pull the trigger. They kept their hopeless gaze fixed upon him, not knowing at which boat or which man he intended to aim.