"O si, si, compadre! it is as I state, and you know it is true; but, nevertheless, a few dozens of ounces more or less makes no difference; and, to make short work, I am ready to pay. But," said Captain Brand, laying a hand on the heavy bag of money beside him, "though I am quite ready to cancel my debts in hard cash here on the spot, yet, as I am bound on a long cruise—Heaven only knows where—I would prefer to keep the gold and pay you in something else."

Don Ignacio threw his head back and fixed his eye like a parrot on the captain, waiting to hear farther.

"What have I on hand besides gold? Well, there are a few bales of Mexican cochineal, and English broadcloths, and some cases of French silks, which you can have at a fair market value; then there is all that collection of silver table-service, which you can take by weight; and, besides, lots of rare furniture, which you may set your own price upon—altogether much more than enough to pay Moreno and you both. What say you, compadre? is it a bargain? or shall I carry the stuff with me, and run the chance of disposing of it on the Spanish Main?"

It was a long time before the crafty old Spaniard could make up his mind whether to receive his pay in a simple portable currency, or take more bulky matter, with the hope of making double the money by the operation. Finally, however, his greed overcame his prudence, and he accepted the last proposition, with the understanding that the articles should be transferred to the felucca the next night.

"Ah!" said Captain Brand, with another sniff of disgust, as he spat on the dirty floor of the cabin, "I am glad the affair is settled, for I wouldn't remain another hour in this filthy hole for all the money you have cheated me out of, you old rascal."

He said the last portion of this sentence to himself as he emerged from the cuddy.

"But listen, amigo!" he continued, as they both reached the deck. "You will give me duplicate receipts on the part of Senor Moreno, so that I can forward one to him from the next port I visit. And, by the way, suppose you come on shore this afternoon for a stroll, and in the evening we will have a little game of monte—eh?"

"Cierto! (certainly!)" returned the commander of the felucca; when Captain Brand, with his bag of gold intact under his arm, got into his boat and was pulled to the shore.



CHAPTER XXI.

TREASURE.

"Gold! gold! gold! gold! Bright and yellow, hard and cold, Molten, graven, hammered, and rolled; Heavy to get, and light to hold; Hoarded, bartered, bought, and sold; Stolen, borrowed, squandered, doled; Price of many a crime untold— Gold! gold! gold! gold!"

It was long past noon when the pirate returned to his island home, and the day was hot, for the sea-breeze had not made, and the tropical sun was pouring down its burning rays until the sand was roasting as in a furnace; the very rocks throwing off a trembling mirage of heated air, and the lagoon almost boiling under the fiery influence. The sailors, with aching heads and parched mouths, were swinging in their grass hammocks beneath the sheds; and, save the watchful vigilance of the men at the look-outs and battery, the little island was wrapped in repose.

Captain Brand, however, was as cool as a cucumber; and regardless of the heat, and indifferent about siesta, he drew the curtains of the saloon, and took some active exercise. First, however, he desired his faithful Babette to get out some camphor trunks and pack the contents of his splendid wardrobe. This operation was performed under the critical eye of Captain Brand himself, to which he personally lent his aid by stowing away, here and there, his caskets, trinkets, and treasures—those which had been presented to him by the unfortunate people who had the ill luck to make his acquaintance on the high seas, or in midnight forays on shore. Then the captain opened and rummaged cabinets, bureaus, and bookcases, making liberal presents to his trusty housekeeper; and, turning from that occupation, he had all his table furniture spread before him, when he made careful estimates of the value of the silver, china, and glass. This concluded, Captain Brand ordered Babette to furnish him a slight repast; and while it was preparing—the captain taking the precaution to bolt his handmaiden in her kitchen—he went quietly into his bedroom, and when he came out he bore heavy burdens in his muscular arms, all of which he laid conveniently near the trap in the floor. Then letting the hatch swing softly down, he lowered the heavy articles by the silk rope, as he had Master Gibbs, though not so suddenly, going down himself as nimbly as a rat after them. In the vault beneath, Captain Brand struck a light and set fire to a torch, which blazed out luridly, and illumined the dark excavation and passages like day. Going slowly on, with his burden in his arms, by the path by which we traced the padre, he came to the outer door, which opened into the fissure in the crag; and, after a vigorous effort, the beam was raised, and he passed out. Once outside, he felt his way cautiously, stepping clear of the stagnant pools beneath, and guarding his head from the jagged rocks above; and then, lighting his way over the stones which had upset the equilibrium of Don Ricardo, he crept slowly into an aperture on the right.



No serpents or venomous reptiles disturbed the pirate's progress; for, though there were plenty of them coiled or crawling near, yet their instinct probably taught them that he was a monster with a more deadly poison than themselves, and whose fangs were sharper, though his tongue did not hiss a note of warning. Captain Brand put down his burden and crept forward on hands and knees, the blazing torch lighting up the damp and dripping rocks, all green and slimy from the tracks of the snake and lizard. Where the narrow fissure seemed to end by a wall of natural rock, the pirate rolled aside a large stone at the base, and scratching away the sand, a large copper lock was displayed, in which, after pushing aside the hasp, Captain Brand touched a spring, and it opened. Then, exerting all the force of his powerful frame, a rough slab of unhewn rock yielded to the effort, and rose like a vertical door slung by a massive hinge at the top. Placing the large stone at the opening, so as to prevent the slab falling to its place, the captain stood the torch within the opening, and went back for his burden; then he returned, and squeezed himself with it into a small excavated, uneven chamber, where he sat down.

"Nasty work," communed the pirate with himself, "but a safe place to lay up a penny for a rainy day! Let me see. These two bags of doubloons, and the small one my Gibbs brought me, with those three, there, of guineas, and those sacks of dollars, will make about ten thousand pounds. That will make me a nest-egg when I retire from the profession and return to Scotland. They will have forgotten all my boyish follies by that time."

Captain Brand alluded to forging his father's name, and other little peccadilloes of a similar nature.

"And I may be elected to Parliament—who knows? It is something of a risk, perhaps, to leave all this pretty coin here, but then it's a greater risk to carry it in the schooner"—he argued both ways—"and then, again, damp does not decay pure metal. But," thought Captain Brand, "suppose somebody should discover this little casket in the rock. Ah! that's not probable, for no soul besides myself knows of it, and even the very man who made the door did not know for what it was intended; besides, he died long ago."

Captain Brand had forgotten, in this connection, that the man who cut out the stone chamber and door, and fashioned the hinge and lock, took too much sugar in his coffee the morning the job was finished, and died in horrible convulsions before night. Oh yes, that incident had entirely escaped his memory!

Captain Brand, having now thoroughly reasoned the matter out, gave each of the bags lying on the sand a gentle kick to get a responsive echo from the coin; and then creeping out of the treasure-chamber, he withdrew the torch, removed the stone, and the heavy slab fell again into its place. Then clasping the lock, covering it over with sand, and rolling back the stone, he seized the torch and quickly returned to the vault beneath his saloon. There, putting out the torch by rubbing it against the stone pavement until not a spark was left, by the sunlight, streaming through the loopholes around, he passed to one side and began removing the cases of cochineal, silks, and what not, near to the strongly-barred portcullis door, which opened toward the basin fronting his dwelling. It was hard work, but Captain Brand seemed to enjoy it; and even after he had arranged the packages intended for shipment in his compadre's felucca, he began again. Going to the farther corner of the vault, he stopped before a strong mahogany door, and taking a key from his pocket, unlocked and threw it wide open. It was as black as night inside, floored and lined with wood, and emitting a choking atmosphere of charcoal and sulphur. Piled around the walls were some fifty or a hundred small barrels with copper hoops, and branded on the heads with the word "powder." Unmindful of the odor and the rather combustible material around him, Captain Brand again resumed his work, and rolled a large number of the little barrels toward the doorway, near the merchandise already there, saying to himself the while,

"I think that will about fill the 'Centipede's' magazine, and we must make a proper disposition of the remainder."

Hereupon Captain Brand, actively bent upon the work of disposing of his treasures, rolled out a dozen or two more of the little barrels. Strange to say, among the very few articles that were never presented to him, but actually bought of Senor Moreno, was this highly useful and indispensable material of powder, and he therefore set much store by it. And it was with a sigh of regret that the pirate stood the little barrels on their ends in a line across the great vault of the building, beneath kitchen, bedrooms, and saloon, and especially beside the square upright stanchions on which the interior of the building rested. Not content with this, he took a copper hammer and knocked in all the heads of the little barrels, and then, with a scoop of the same metal, he dipped out large quantities of the black material, and poured thick trains of it from barrel to barrel, sometimes capsizing one, but always particularly cautious not to rasp a grain of it beneath his grass slippers and the pavement. Then he took a piece of match-rope, and sticking one end deep into a barrel, he just poked the other end out of a loophole, to be in readiness whenever Captain Brand should deem proper to touch his lighted cigar to it.

"There," said Captain Brand, "that piece of tow will burn about thirty or forty minutes, and then—stand from under!"

Ascending the hatchway again with the agility of a cat, he drew up and secured the trap, and in ten minutes afterward he was freshly attired in a nice pair of India panjammers, a grass cloth jacket and vest—with, of course, the usual knickknacks in his pockets—and seated at table, where his busy housekeeper had placed a broiled chicken and a bottle of old Bordeaux before him.



CHAPTER XXII.

PLEASURE.

"But ever, from that hour, 'tis said, He stammered and he stuttered, As if an axe went through his head With every word he uttered. He stuttered o'er blessing, he stuttered o'er ban, He stuttered, drunk or dry; And none but he and the fisherman Could tell the reason why."

"Babette," said Captain Brand, as he tapped a spoon against his coffee-cup and puffed his cigar, while the stout dumb negress was removing the remains of the light dinner, "Babette, old girl, you know that we are going to leave here in a few days, and I should like to know whether you care to go with us or remain here on the island."

The negress made a guttural grunt of assent, and nodded her head till the ends of her Madras turban fluttered.

"Ho! you do, eh? Well, my Baba, I shall be sorry to leave you, for you will be very lonely here, and it may be a long, very long time before I come back."

Babette jerked her chin up this time, and did not grunt.

"It's all the same, eh? old lady! Well, I shall leave enough to eat to last you a lifetime; but you will have to change your quarters, my Baba, and live in the padre's shed, for I—a—don't think this house will be inhabitable long after I am gone."

The negress gave another grunt and nod of assent.

"Yes. Well, old lady, the matter is decided, then; but, in case you should have any visitors here after we have gone, you won't take any trouble to describe what you have seen here? No! That shake of your head convinces me—not if they roast you alive?"

The hideous sign of understanding that the woman expressed in her dumb way would have convinced any body without the trouble of uttering a word.

"Bueno!" said Captain Brand; "that will do for to-day."

Rising as he spoke, he stepped to a cabinet, slipped a large handful of doubloons in his trowsers pocket, put on his hat, and walked out.

The sea-breeze swept over the island with its full strength, making the lofty cocoa-nuts bow their tufted tops, the palm-trees rustle their broad flat leaves and clash the stems together. The mangroves bent, too, before the wind, and the sand eddied up in tiny whirls amid the great expanse of cactus, while the vessels swung with taut cables to their anchors. Even Captain Brand's hat nearly was blown off his dry light hair as he joined his compadre, Don Ignacio, at the landing; and the sandy dust blinded—though only for a moment—that one-eyed individual's optic, and put out his cigarette as they struggled against the influence of the breeze. But yet they walked on in the direction of the sheds, and as they passed through the court-yard, where the men were lounging about in yawning groups or sitting under the piazza, playing cards—getting up and touching their hats as their chief passed—Senor Pedillo accosted him thus:

"Capitano, the people are thirsty, and desire a barrel of wine."

"Not a drop, Senor Pedillo—not so much as would wet the bill of a musquito! To-morrow at daylight let all hands be called, for we have work to do, and we must be quick to do it."

Pedillo slunk away, abashed by the positive tone of his commander; and Captain Brand, with his companion, passed on to the domicile of the padre and doctor. Pausing at the open door of the shed, they looked in. The padre was lying flat on his back on his narrow bed, with his mouth wide open, and snoring like a key-bugle with leaky stops; while his beads and crucifix—misplaced emblems in contact with drunkenness and debauchery—were reposing on his ample chest. The doctor was sitting beside his own couch, whispering words of childish comfort to the little boy, whose pale cheeks and brown curls reposed on the pillow of the bed. The poor child's thin, limp fingers rested like the petals of a drooping lily in the dark, bony hand of his friend, and his dim hazel eyes were turned sadly toward him.

"Holloa, amigos!" shouted Captain Brand, in a hearty voice. "We are losing the glorious sea-breeze. Vamanos! let us take a stroll to the Tiger's Trap."

Hereupon Captain Brand entered the room, and gave the padre a violent tweak of the nose, at the same time puffing a volume of cigar-smoke into his beastly mouth, which combined effort brought the holy father to life in a trice, choking and sputtering, as he arose, a jargon of paternosters, which an indifferent hearer might have mistaken for a volley of execrations, so savagely were they uttered.

"Take a sip of Geneva, my padre. There it is on the table. Ah! do you call half a bottle a sip? Well! Come, doctor, let us be moving."

Down by the narrow gorge of the inlet, and over the smooth rocks and shelly shore, the party took their way, Don Ignacio leading with the amiable priest, on whom he glared with his malevolent eye as if—he not being a person from whom money or its equivalent could be squeezed—the greedy old Spaniard would like to transfix him with a glance. In the rear came Captain Brand and the doctor, the former as gay as a bird—of the vulture species—and his companion grave, severe, and preoccupied. Stopping as they reached the Tiger Trap Battery, where, after Captain Brand had made a close inspection of the guns, and held sharp confabs with the men who rose to receive him, he moved away a few steps, and, resting his body against the lee side of a projecting rock, removed the cigar from his frozen lips, and said,

"The arguments you have urged, monsieur, and the views you entertain, have a certain amount of reason in them. It is true you were deceived in coming here, but yet you swore to remain and not betray us when you did come. Well—ah! don't interrupt me; I divine what you are going to say—you did not know what our real character was. Perhaps not. Nevertheless, I can not consent to your going away with that old rascal, Don Ignacio, there—that is, if he would take you, which I think he would not, as your presence on board might compromise him with the Cuban authorities; and," went on Captain Brand, as he crossed his legs, and held his fine Panama hat on his head as a ruffle of the sea-breeze shot around the rock, "with respect to your remaining here on the island, you will only have that dumb old beast of a Babette for company; and it is highly probable that the English or American cruisers will be down upon you before a change of the moon, and they might—a—hang you, perhaps, for a pirate. Ho! ho!"

"If Don Ignacio declines to take me, Captain Brand, of course I can not go in the felucca; but, let come what will, I am resolved not to sail in the 'Centipede.'"

The pirate regarded the doctor for a moment with a cold, freezing look, not wanting, however, in a partial glimmer of respect and admiration, as he thus resolutely stated his determination; and then, putting his finger lightly on the doctor's arm, as he saw Don Ignacio and the padre draw near, he said impressively, in a low tone,

"Monsieur le Docteur, do not make hasty resolutions. I command here, and my will is law. I will turn the matter over, however, in my mind, and give you a final decision before we part to-night. Now let us return. The sun is down, and the rocks are slippery."

"Well, caballeros, let us have a little social amusement," said Captain Brand, as he sat down at the table in the padre's and doctor's quarters, and wound up his splendid watch, the present from the Captain General of Cuba. "But bear in mind that we must break up at midnight, for our compadre here has a multitude of articles to get on board his felucca to-night, and I must be astir at daylight."

Did Captain Brand think, while he turned the key of that gold repeater, of the bloodstained wretch he had put to death in the morning, who was lying stark and still in his narrow, damp resting-place, or of the poor little sufferer who had been torn from his heart-broken mother sleeping near him? Oh no, certainly not. Captain Brand was thinking of a little game of monte.

The padre lugged out a small store of dollars, and a gold ounce or two, and other stray bits of gold, down to quartitos or eighths of doubloons—all of it donations made him for remission of sins and absolutions, presented at one time and another from the pirates of his flock, such donations falling in pretty rapidly after a successful cruise, but dwindling away to most contemptible gifts long before his flock took to sea again.

Captain Brand was very liberal to his crew, dividing a great deal of money with them, but, since he rarely visited any foreign ports, they had little chance of squandering it; and in the end it served merely as a gaming currency to play with, and eventually coming back to him as contributions for stores, ammunition, rigging, and so forth. The captain, therefore, was a large gainer by the operation, as most of the articles in eating and drinking, and the vessel's outfit, were—as we know—generally presented to him, so that he was enabled to stow away the cash for future gratification.

Don Ignacio Sanchez was likewise a moneyed man, and came provided with a long pouch of solid gold, which he made into little piles before him of the exact size of those of the captain. The doctor, however, declined to play, and sat an indifferent spectator of the game.

"Let us begin, senores!" exclaimed the Don, as he rapidly shuffled the cards, and his keen, black spark of fire lit up with animation at the rich prospect before him. "We are losing precious time. I'll be banquero! Vamanos!"

So they began. The cards were dealt, and the betting went on. The padre forgot breviary and beads in his excitement, and as his little pointings were swept away, he forgot, too, the sacred ejaculations he was wont to lard his discourse with, and he became positively profane. The captain won largely in the beginning, and jeered his compadre with great zest and enjoyment; but that one-eyed, rapacious old Spanish rascal was not in the least disturbed, and bided his time. At first the conversation was light and jovial, Captain Brand insisting upon the doctor describing minutely how he had hacked his friend Gibbs's leg off with a hand-saw, laughing hugely thereat, and wiping the icy tears from his cold blue eyes with his delicate cambric handkerchief. Then the fascinating game began to fluctuate, and the luck set back with a steady run into the piles of the banker. Captain Brand liked as little to lose his money as any other gambler in cards, stocks, or dice, and he was somewhat chafed in spirit; but what especially irritated him was losing it to that wrinkle-faced, one-eyed, greedy old scoundrel, with no possible hope of ever seeing a dollar of it again. As for the padre, he was dead broke; and since his friends would not lend him a real, and the banker did not play upon credit, he sat moodily by, and gloated over the winnings of the Tuerto, cursing his own luck and that of his companions likewise.

"Ho!" growled Captain Brand, "maldito a la sota! I have lost my last stake!"

Even while he spoke the poor little boy murmured in a sobbing voice, "Mamma, chere mamma!" and turned uneasily in his little nest from his fitful slumber.

"That crying imp again!" said the now angry pirate, as he hurled the padre's half empty gin jug in the direction of the couch, which crashed against the wall, and fell in a shower of glass splinters over the little sleeper.

The child gave one terrified shriek, and, starting from the bed in his little night-dress, now soiled and torn, he ran and threw himself on his knees before the doctor. Another bottle was raised aloft by the long muscular arm of the pirate; but, before you could wink, that arm was arrested, and the missile twisted from his grasp.

"For shame, you coward! Don't harm the boy. He will die soon enough in this awful den without having his brains dashed out."

"Ho, Monsieur le Docteur!" muttered the villain, looking as if he would like to taste the heart's-blood of the resolute man who stood before him, as he pushed a hand into his waistcoat pocket, "do you presume to call names and oppose my will?"

But, controlling his passion with a violent contortion of face that would have made one's blood run cold to see it, he changed his tone and said,

"Nonsense, doctor; you seem to take rather a strong interest in the brat—possibly an injudicious one; but, since he is my prize, you know, by law, come—what will you give for him? Ah! happy thought, we will play for him! There, deal away, compadre. Sota and cavallo! I take the knave again, and you ten doubloons against the boy on the horse."

The doctor said not a word, but nodded assent, and seemed absorbed in the game.

"Presto! Turn the cards, you old sinner! Quick! Por dios! horse has kicked me, and the knave loses! Monsieur, the brat is yours!"

Then starting up, Captain Brand hastily pulled out his watch, and said, "Hola, caballeros, the time is up! I must say good-night."

Don Ignacio's brown thin fingers, like a dentist's steel nippers, laid down the cards, and carefully picked up his winnings, even to the smallest bit of the precious metal, and dropped it piece by piece into his long pouch, following them each with his glittering eye, like a magpie peering into a narrow-necked bottle, and smiling with his wrinkled old lips as the dull chink of the coin fell upon his ear. When he had performed this operation, he tied up the mouth of the bag as if he was choking somebody to death; and then, twitching something which was partly hidden in his sleeve, he arose in readiness to go out.

As, however, Captain Brand turned to follow his compadre, he looked carelessly toward the doctor, and said,

"By the way, monsieur, I have made up my mind with respect to our conversation to-day, and you shall remain on the island. No thanks. Adieu. Now, Don Ignacio, if your men and boats are at the cove, we will make sharp work with your business. Vamanos!"



CHAPTER XXIII.

WORK.

"Skeleton hounds that will never be fatter, All the domestic tribes of hell, Shrieking for flesh to tear and tatter, Bones to shatter, And limbs to scatter, And who it is that must furnish the latter, Those blue-looking men know well!"

When the pirate stood in his saloon on the morning subsequent to the pleasurable events of the Sunday previous, he, as well as his saloon, presented altogether a different aspect. The apartment had been stripped of all its rare and costly furniture, cabinets, candelabra, plate, china, and glass, and nothing of value was left save the camphor trunks on the floor, the cane-bottomed settee, a few chairs, and a table. All the beautiful things, ornamental as well as useful, had disappeared, even to the rich packages of merchandise in the great vault beneath. The late possessor, however, of all that worldly wealth did not appear to be at all discomposed, or to cherish the faintest pang of regret at his loss. In truth, he seemed to be relieved from an uncomfortable load of responsibility; and feeling assured, perhaps, that in roaming about the world he could collect a still more valuable collection—only give him time—and he would exercise his critical taste with every pleasing variety. It was thus he consoled himself as he stood there in his now denuded room, attired in a pair of coarse canvas trowsers, a red flannel shirt, with a short sharp hanger on his hip, and a double-barreled pistol in his belt—quite the costume in which he so singularly shocked Dona Lucia, whose lovely miniature once hung there on the wall in company with the other miserable victims of his lust.

Captain Brand had just entered his dwelling, having been up and actively occupied ever since we last parted with him. Now he had come for a cup of tea and dry toast; and, while Babette was bringing that simple breakfast, the pirate stood, tall, erect, and powerful, with one muscular arm resting high above his head on the side of the doorway, and the other lying lightly on the shark's-skin hilt of his cutlass, looking out to seaward—a very model, as he was, of a cool, prudent, desperate villain.

"Ah! there you go, you crafty old miser, in your guarda costa! Take care, my compadre, of that reef. If that felucca's keel touches one of those coral ledges there won't be a tooth-pick left of her in ten minutes. San Antonio! but that was a close shave! How the sharks would rasp your bones, for there's no flesh on them! Grazed clear, eh? Bueno! now you're in blue water, you rapacious scoundrelly old wretch, and make the most of it."

Captain Brand waved his hand in adieu to the felucca, which, with the wind off shore, had crept through the coral gateway, and, with her great lateen sail and green glancing bottom, was rising and falling on the long swell as she slipped away to the eastward. He then gulped down his tea, made one or two savage bites at his toast, and again walked out to the veranda, descended the ladder, and took his course toward the basin.

There, too, the scene had changed; and instead of the tranquil, shelly shore, only agitated by the musical rippling from the pure little inlet, the faint cry of a sea-gull, or the chirps of the lizards in the crevices of the rocks across the basin, those sounds had given place to the nimble feet and voices of busy sailors. The "Centipede," also, had been towed from her moorings to a jetty which projected into the water from the shore, and there she lay, careened down, her keel half out of the water, with a dozen of her crew scrubbing her lean sides till the green-coated copper came flashing out in the sunlight like burnished gold. With her slanting masts lashed to the jetty, carpenters were engaged reducing the length of the fore-mast, and trimming out a spar for a new bowsprit. The long gun, with its carriage, lay near, and artisans were at work at a temporary forge, hammering out bolts and straps to replace those which were weakened by long service. On the shore, too, were a score or more of the piratical gang—Spaniards, negroes, Indians, Italians, and who not—ferocious-looking scoundrels, busy as bees, splicing and knotting ropes, stretching new rigging, cutting running gear from the coils of hemp or Manilla-grass rope, or making spun-yarn and chafing-mats; while beneath the low mat sheds hard by, sail-makers were stitching away with their shining needles, making a set of square sails for the changed rig of the "Centipede," or repairing old sails. But this was not all; for in a shed beyond was the armorer, with a few hands, grinding pikes and cutlasses, and cleaning small arms; while farther still was the gunner and his mate, filling powder-cases for the long gun and swivels, and making up musket and pistol ball-cartridges.

In the midst of all these busy throngs moved Captain Brand, hither and thither, from vessel to forge, from sails to rigging, giving clear, sharp directions in various languages—commendation here, reproof there—inspecting with his own cold eyes every thing; judging of all; quick, active, ready; never at a loss for an expedient, and urging on the work like a thorough-bred seaman as he was, who knew his own duty and how to make others do theirs. So went on the refitting of the "Centipede," all through the burning hot tropical day; and while the half-exhausted crew took a respite in the scorching noon for dinner, still their leader toiled on. Or, if he took a rest, it was in closely scrutinizing the progress made by his men, in puffing a cigar like to a small high-pressure engine, or in clambering up the steep face of the crag to the signal-station, where he would peer away in all directions around the island—never missing the glance of a pelican's pinion or the leap of a fish out of water. Then he would return to the cove and begin anew the work. It was no longer the elegant Captain Brand, in knee-breeches, point-lace sleeves, and velvet doublet, seated at his luxurious table, groaning under splendid plate, fine wines, and brilliant wax-lights, and dispensing a profuse hospitality, but Captain Brand the pirate, in tarry rig, amid sailors, sails, and cordage, munching a bit of hard biscuit at times, or a cube of salt-junk out of a mess kid, but ever ready, never weary, and always up to the professional mark.

At the first gray blush of dawn on the following day Captain Brand was astir again, and before the sun went down behind the waves the schooner "Centipede" had been transformed into a brigantine, her fore-mast reduced, new standing rigging fitted for it, with a new bowsprit and head-booms, her rail raised four or five feet by shifting bulwarks, and a temporary house built on deck over the long gun. She was also painted afresh, with a white streak; and, with false head-boards on her bows to hide her snakelike snout of a cutwater, no one, unless in the secret, could have known that the clumsy box of a merchantman lying there was once the low, swift, piratical schooner which had made so notorious a name in the West Indies. Still the work was driven on with scarcely any intermission—a few hours' repose for the crew at night, and an hour for dinner in the day; but as for Captain Brand, he never slept at all—a doze for an hour or two, perhaps, on his settee in the saloon, and a cup of tea in the morning, with cigar-smoke, satisfied his frugal requirements. The next day, by noon, the water and stores were got on board the brigantine, her magazine stowed, the dunnage of the crew transferred from the sheds, the captain's camphor trunks on board and cabin in order, the sails bent, anchors on the bows, and, swinging to a hawser made fast to the rocks, the vessel was ready to put to sea at any moment.

"Pedillo," said Captain Brand, as his vigilant gaze took in all around him and then rested on the "Centipede"—"Pedillo, you may warp the vessel down to the mouth of the Tiger's Trap so soon as you've strewed some fagots ready for lighting in the sheds. When you get to the Trap, tell the gunner to take a gang of hands and give that battery a good coat of coal tar, plug the vents of the guns, and bury carriages and all in the sand beside the magazine. Tell him to destroy the powder, and pitch overboard all he can't conceal; and let him bear a hand about it, for we shall sail with the last of the sea-breeze toward sunset.

"And, Pedillo"—here the pirate's voice dropped to a whisper—"come back after the vessel is secured, and bring that Maltese fellow without a nose with you. It will be as well, perhaps, for you to provide yourself with a few fathoms of raw-hide strips, as we may have occasion to use it. Quien sabe?"

Senor Pedillo's black wiry beard fairly bristled as he grinned understandingly at his superior; and, getting into a bit of a canoe at the jetty, he paddled off to the brigantine to execute his orders.

Meanwhile Captain Brand slowly bent his steps toward the house under the crag, and entered his spacious saloon for the last time. On the bare table, too, was his last dinner, served on a few odd dishes and cracked plates.

"Babette, old girl!" said he, as he sat down to this repast, "you have a bottle of good Madeira, and a flask of Hock left? No?"

The negress shook her head violently, made the sign of the cross, and by other telegraphic motions gave her master to understand that Padre Ricardo had dropped in, drained both bottles, and then had reeled off on board the brigantine.

"The drunken selfish beast!" muttered Captain Brand; "it will be the last taste of wine he will swallow for a long time."

The pirate was quite correct in his schemes for the padre's reform, for the next copious draught the holy father imbibed was the briny salt water from the Caribbean Sea.

"Well, my Baba, a drop of water, then! Thank you, old lady. Here's to your health while I am gone. There—you need not blubber so over my hand—good-by!" And so passed away from Captain Brand's sight the only creature in the wide world who loved him.



CHAPTER XXIV.

CAUGHT IN A NET.

"I closed my lids and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky, Lay like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet."

Captain Brand did not linger long over his frugal dinner, and when he had finished, as if he had not had enough exercise for the last three days, he began to walk with long nervous strides across the saloon.

"He called me coward, did he? and dared to lay his hands on me! By my right arm, my Creole doctor, I'll teach you not to call hard names again, and I'll paralyze your hands for all time to come."

The pirate's jaws grated like a rusty bolt as he hissed out these murderous threats; but as his eye caught the squirming green silk rope as he swung round on his heel in his walk, he paused and muttered,

"That bit of stuff may be of use. I'll take it by way of precaution."

Hereupon he rapidly unrove the cord and coiled it away in the bosom of his shirt. Then looking at his watch, he said, "Ho! the time approaches, and here comes Pedillo."

Lighting a cigar, he left his dwelling for the last time; and, after pausing to hear a report from Pedillo that his orders had been executed and the vessel all ready for sea, and whispering a few precise directions in return, Captain Brand mounted up the steep face of the crag again, and accosted the signal-man at the station.

"Any thing in sight?"

"Nothing to the eastward, capitano; but it has been a little hazy here away to the southward since meridian, and I can hardly see through it."

"Bueno, my man! give me the glass. You can go on board the brigantine. I'll take a last look myself."

While the signal-man scrambled down the crag, Captain Brand rested the spy-glass on the trunk of the single cocoa-nut-tree, whose skeleton-like fingers of leaves rattled above his head like a gibbeted pirate in chains, and then he searched steadily along the hazy horizon. As he was about, however, to withdraw his eye from the tube, something—a mere dim speck—arrested his attention. Quickly dropping the glass, and as rapidly rubbing the large lens and carefully adjusting the joints, he raised it again, as a backwoodsman does his rifle with an Indian for a mark. For full five minutes the pirate stood as motionless as the crag beneath him, intently glaring through the tube at the speck in the distance. At last he let the glass fall at his side, and pulling out his watch with a jerk, he muttered to himself,

"It is a large and lofty ship; but, should she be a cruiser after me, she will find the bird flown and the nest empty. Ho, now for action!"

Springing down the precipitous declivity as he spoke, he paused a moment at a loophole of the vault beneath his dwelling, and puffing his cigar into a bright coal, he carefully twitched the match-rope which led to the train, opened the loose strands, and placed the fire to it. Waiting an instant till he saw the nitre sparkle as it ignited, he moved away with long, swinging strides toward the sheds. There, glancing through the now deserted halls the crew had occupied, where quantities of fagots, and kindling-wood, and barrels of pitch were standing, he continued on till he came to the quarters of the doctor. The doctor was standing at the open door on the thatched piazza, looking quietly at the brigantine, whose sails were loosed, and the vessel hanging by a sternfast, with her head just abreast the Tiger's Trap.

"Ah! Monsieur le Docteur, I have merely called to bid you a final adieu before I go on board; and as I have a few moments left, and a few words to say, suppose you walk with me toward the chapel. Allons! there is a suspicious sail off there," waving his glass in the direction, "and I wish to take a good look at her."

"Doctor," continued Captain Brand, as they reached the little esplanade facing the graves and church, "you will have no one left here on our island save our dumb Babette, and the chances are rather remote for your getting away, without, perhaps, some of the West India fleet should happen to drop in here, which I do not think probable. I rely, however, upon your keeping your oath, even if they do come, and not betraying the secrets you are acquainted with."

The pirate said this in an off-hand, friendly way, as he had his glass leveled toward the sail he saw in the offing.

"Captain Brand," replied the doctor, "I was deceived in coming here, as you well know; but I shall religiously keep my oath for the twenty years, as I swore to do. After that, if we both live so long, my tongue and arm shall speak and strike."

The pirate stepped back a little as he shut up the joints of the spy-glass with a crash, and, with a scowl of hate and vengeance combined, he said, in a loud voice, while his cold eyes gleamed like a ray of sunlight on an iceberg,

"And I, too, keep my oaths; and, without waiting twenty years, I strike now!"

Even while the treacherous villain spoke, two swarthy, sinewy scoundrels crept stealthily from within the chapel, and, with the soft, slimy movements of serpents, as their leader uttered the last word, they sprang at the back of the doctor, and wound their coils around him, twining strong strands of raw-hide rope about his arms, legs, and body. Bound as in a frame of elastic steel, their victim was thrown, face downward, upon the sand.

"Be quick, Pedillo! the time is flying! Gomez, bring the corpse trestle from the chapel."

In a moment a wooden frame with legs, and stretched across with a bed of light wire, which had been used to carry the mortal remains of the pirates—and the poor women, too, beside them—to their last resting-places, was brought out from the little church. Then the bound victim was laid on it, face upward; again the hide thongs were passed in numerous plaits until the body was lashed firmly to the trestle.

"Place it on the edge of that rock there, with his head toward the cocoa-nut-tree. Take this silk rope, Gomez, and clove-hitch it well up the trunk. There, that will do. I myself will perform the last act of politeness."

Saying this, the pirate widened the noose of the cord, and, slipping it over the doctor's head, he placed the knot carefully under his left ear. The victim gave no groan or sigh, and his dark, luminous eyes were fixed on the blue sky above him in heaven.

"Monsieur le Docteur," said Captain Brand, as he hurriedly looked at his watch and raised his hat, "I have but one word of caution to give you: if you struggle you will have your neck broken before you are stung to death! Talk as much as you like; but, as Babette is a long way off, and hard of hearing, I doubt if she comes to your assistance! Adieu!"



The retreating figures went leaping toward the inlet, and, as they rushed through the sheds, applied a torch to the combustible material deposited there, and then sprang on toward the Tiger's Trap. A few minutes afterward the doctor turned his eyes in that direction, and saw the sails of the brigantine sheeted home and run up like magic; and, taking the last breath of the sea-breeze on her quarter, the sternfast was cast off, and she slipped easily out of the gorge-like channel. Still, as those dark stern eyes watched the receding hull of the "Centipede," a sudden jar shook the island, a heavy column of white smoke rose from below the crag like a water-spout, and, spreading out like a palm-tree, came down in a deluge of timber, stones, and dust, while sheets of vivid flame leaped out from the gloom, and an awful peal, followed by a heavy, booming roar, that shook the crag to its base, announced the ruin of the pirate's den. At the same time the red fires gleamed in fitful flashes from the sheds, and, rapidly making headway, all at once burst forth in wild conflagration, till the whole nest was wrapped in flames. The shock of the explosion and the fires killed the wind, and a lurid pall of smoke and cinders hung like a gloomy canopy over the island.



CHAPTER XXV.

THE MOUSE THAT GNAWED THE NET.

"There passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. A weary time! a weary time! How glazed each weary eye! When, looking westward, I beheld A something in the sky."

As the powder vomited forth its dreadful thunder, and as the stones and timbers from the blasted den were hurled high in air, and scattered by the explosive whirlwind far and near, some of the splinters and fragments came down in dropping hail upon the red-tiled sheds and the doctor's dwelling. At the first shock the lonely child started up in his little bed, and while the earth rocked and the stones came pelting and crashing on the roof, he screamed, "Mamma! mamma!" No loving echo came back to those innocent lips, and naught was heard save the crackling of the flame beyond, licking its tongue along the dry timber and roaring joyously as it was fed. "Mamma! chere mamma!"

Yet no answer, and still the savage flames came careering wildly on till the very stones of the court-yard cracked like slates, while the burning flakes and cinders loaded the air, and the eddying volumes of smoke reeled in dense clouds, and poured their suffocating breath into the room where the forsaken child was crying.

One more panting, helpless cry, and the little fellow instinctively flew through the open doorway, where, blinded and choking with the devastating element around him, he staggered feebly beyond its influence. Yet again a flurry of thick smoke lighted up the forked and vivid flames, and chased the child before it.

Oh, fond mother! in your poignant grief for the loss of your poor drowned boy, you were spared the agony of seeing him, even in imagination, struggling faintly before that tempest of fire and smoke, calling plaintively for her on whose tender bosom his head had rested, while his naked feet were cut and bruised by the sharp coral shingle beneath them. But onward and onward the boy wandered, and fortunately his footsteps took the path into a purer atmosphere which led toward the chapel. Here he looked timidly around at the lurid glare behind him, and then entered the church and sank down exhausted, his feverish, smarting eyes closing in slumber on the hard pavement beneath the image of the Virgin Mary.

Then came the close and sultry night—no murmur of a land-wind to drive the smoky canopy away—the black cinders falling in burning rain on basin, thicket, and lagoon, till even the very lizards and scorpions hid themselves deep within the holes and crevices of the rocks. Midnight came. The dim and silent stars were obscured by a veil of heavy clouds, and with a low, muttering sound of thunder, the vapory masses unclosed their portals, and the rain fell in torrents. The flames, now nearly satisfied with their work, leaped out occasionally from the fallen ruins, but were quenched by the tropical deluge, and smouldered away amid the charred and saturated timbers. Then the thunder ceased, the lizards and scorpions came from their retreats, the teal fluttered over the lagoon, and the noise of the waves bursting over the reef came again to the ear. Still there was no breath of air; the atmosphere was thick and damp; and out from the mangrove thickets and wide expanse of cactus, swarms of insects, musquitoes, and sand-flies in myriads went buzzing and singing in the sultry, murky night.

So dragged on the weary hours until day broke again, and the sea-birds floated off seaward for their morning's meal, and the flying-fish skipped with their silvery wings from wave to wave, as the dolphins glittered in gold and purple after them below the blue water. No bright and blazing sun came over the hills of Cuba to light up this picture, but all was blight and gloom, with murky masses of dead, still clouds hanging low down over the island.

The little suffering boy, lying there on the coral pavement, with his head resting on the thin, delicate arm, with pale, sweet face turned half upward toward the Virgin, gave a feeble cry and opened his eyes. He rose to a sitting posture, with his little hands resting on his lap and little ragged shirt. Then, with his dim hazel eyes fixed upon the painting, while the tears coursed slowly down his pallid cheeks, he put forth his hands in a childish movement of supplication, and murmured again his tearful prayer, "Mamma! mamma!"

Presently rising, he turned his feeble footsteps toward the doorway, and as his eye caught the stone bowl of holy water standing on its coral pedestal near the portal, he bent down his feverish head and slaked his parched lips. Revived by this, he timidly looked out from the chapel, and shuddering as he beheld the gloomy wilderness around, he once more screamed in a thin piercing cry, "Mamma! oh, ma chere mamma!"

That was the last sad wail for help for many and many a long year that those infant lips were destined to utter; and when he again called upon that dear name, his manly arms would clasp a joyful mother to his swelling heart.

"Henri!" came back like an echo in a clear shout to the shriek of the boy. "Henri! Henri!" was reiterated again and again, each time in a voice that seemed to split asunder the canopy of clouds above.

The boy started and listened.

"Henri! Henri! this way to your good friend the doctor! Quick, my little boy!"

Now with the step of a fawn the child ran out upon the sharp sandy esplanade, and following the voice as he tripped lightly through the narrow pathway between the needle-pointed cactus, in a moment he stopped, with a look of horror, beside the trestle on which the bound and nearly naked man was stretched.

Ay, it was a sight to make a strong and stalwart man turn pale with sickness and horror, much less a baby-boy of three or four years old. There lay the man, all through the dreadful night, with swarms on swarms and myriads upon myriads of stinging insects, biting and sipping, and sucking his life-blood with distracting agony away. Ah! think of the hellish torture often practiced by those bloody pirates upon their victims in the West Indies! The bound man's eyes were closed, the lips and cheeks puffed and swollen out of all human proportions, and the inflamed body was one glowing red and angry surface. No needle could have been stuck where the venomous stings of a thousand sand-flies or musquitoes had not already sucked blood. Ay, well might the child start back with horror!

"It is your friend the doctor, Henri," he said in French, still in a strong but kindly voice. "I can not see you, but get me a knife. No, my child, never mind—you can not find one; don't leave me."

Here the child timidly put his little hands out and brushed away the poisonous insects, and then touched the doctor's face.

"Ah! Henri, see if you can not slip that pretty silk rope over my head; yes, that is the way—doucement—easily, my child! Well, now, my Henri, you are weak and sick, my poor little boy; but listen to me—yes, I feel your little hands on my eyes. Well, bite upon that cord that goes across my throat. Bite till it snaps asunder! I am nearly choking, little one; but don't cry."

True, the strips of raw-hide, which had partially slackened in the rain that had washed the body of the victim, now began to tauten again in the sultry heat of the morning, and lay half hidden in the swollen throat, stomach, and limbs of the tortured sufferer.

Henri's sharp little teeth fastened upon the strand, biting and gnawing, until finally it was severed, and the doctor gave a great sigh of relief.



"Blessings on you, my poor boy!" he murmured, painfully. "Now bite away on the strands which bind the arm. There! Don't! don't hurry! Rest a little, my child! Ah! it is well!"

Again those sharp little teeth of a mouse had gnawed through the net which bound the lion-hearted man; the ends of the raw-hide drew back and twisted into spiral curls, and the right arm, though numbed and four times its original size, was free.

"Thanks be to God for all His mercies!" exclaimed the doctor, as with difficulty he raised his released arm to his face and pushed back the swollen lids from his closed eyes—"and to you, my little friend, for saving this wretched life!"

Waiting a few moments to recover his strength, the doctor made a mighty effort, and some of the coils whose strands had been cut by those little teeth yielded and gradually unrove, so as to leave the upper part of his body free. Then, while the child was once more cutting the lashings of his feet, he himself unfastened the knots of his left arm, and by a vigorous effort he tore the net from off him and sat upright. Clasping his numbed and swollen hands together, he turned his face and almost sightless eyes to heaven.

"May this awful trial serve as a partial forgiveness of my sins, and make me a better man!"

He paused, and laid his heavy arms around the child, while warm and grateful tears trickled down his cheeks. Slowly, and like a drunken man, his feet sought the sand, and then, weak, trembling, and faint, he staggered along the path, the boy tripping lightly before him, till he fell exhausted on the floor of the chapel.

"Water, my Henri! water!"

The child scooped it out from the stone bowl with his tiny hands and sprinkled it on his friend's face.

"There, that will suffice, my brave boy! Lay your cheek to mine!"

What a sight it was—that dark, swollen, yet powerful frame lying on the coral pavement, and the innocent child, like a dewdrop on the leaf of a red tropical flower, nestling close beside it!



CHAPTER XXVI.

THE HURRICANE.

"'Twas off the Wash—the sun went down—the sea looked black and grim, For stormy clouds with murky fleece were mustering at the brim; Titanic shades! enormous gloom! as if the solid night Of Erebus rose suddenly to seize upon the light! It was a time for mariners to bear a wary eye, With such a dark conspiracy between the sea and sky!"

Past a September noon. The great canopy of dark, murky clouds fell lower and lower, until they nearly touched the earth, wrapping as in a blanket the single cocoa-nut-tree on the crag, and shutting out the light and air of heaven as they settled over the noxious lagoon, the mangrove thickets, and pure inlet. The sea-birds came screaming in from seaward, fluttering their wide-spread wings in the sultry atmosphere, and alighting on the smooth rocks, where they furled their pinions and put their heads together. The flying-fish no longer skimmed over the waves, and the dolphin and shark sank deep down in the blue water, or lay still and quiet beside the coral groves. The rolling, swelling ocean of the tropic, with its glassy, greasy surface unruffled by the faintest air, rolled heavily on until it struck the coral ledge, when, with a dull, heavy roar, it broke over in creamy foam, and came sluggishly in to the sandy beach. There the tiny waves lashed the shelly strand, and all was still again. No sun; no breeze; and even the birds, and serpents, and insects gasped for breath. The fish below the sea, the animated nature above, and the very leaves and vines of the forests and thickets knew what was brewing in the great vacuum around.

Slowly and painfully the man in the chapel regained his feet, and with the child by the hand, moved on to the farthest corner by the rude altar, where he sank down again, and, clasping the boy to his heart, waited in breathless awe. As if the powder and flames had not done their destructive work, the wrath of heaven was to be poured out over the devoted den of the pirates.

Then came a bellowing roar as a current of wind swept over the sea, cutting a pathway in the blue water, and scooping it up in an impalpable mist, hurrying on to the low beach of the island, and tearing the sand and shells up in heaps—and then a lull. Now, as if all the demons of winds had let loose their cavernous lungs from the four quarters of the earth, and like the shocks of artillery, volley upon volley, came the hurricane. The sea became one boiling, seething, hissing surface of foam, pressed and flattened by the weight of the tempest, which laid the black rocks bare on the ledge, and drove the water into both mouths of the inlet, until, with a crashing shock, it met in the basin, and broke over and over the cove, and high up the wall of rocks on the other side. Two or three streams of whirlwind meeting, too, over the island, drove the lagoon hither and thither, catching up the white pond-lilies by their long stems, twisting off the dense thickets of mangroves by the roots, burrowing holes in the sandy beds of the cactus, and shearing off their flat, thorny leaves and needle points by the acre together; then a rushing whirl around the cocoa-nuts, bowing their tufted tops at first till they nearly touched the earth, when, the stout trunks snapping like glass, they would go pitching and tossing from base to crown, careering and dancing aloft, borne away with sand and mangrove, cactus, flowers, and sticks, into the flying clouds before the hurricane. Then another lull; and from the opposite direction again thundered the terrible breath of the demons, sweeping thousands of sea-birds, with broken pinions, screaming amid the gale, hurling them against the crag, stripping the feathers from their crushed carcasses, and in a moment burying them a foot deep in clouds of sand. No more pauses or lulls now in the hurtling tempest; but with a steady, tremendous roar, which made the earth tremble, the rocks quake, and laid every vestige of vegetation flat to the ground, it came on mightier and mightier, and fiercer and fiercer, with black masses of never-ending clouds sweeping close down like dark midnight, as if heaven and earth had come together. All through the gloomy day and through the night this elemental war, with its legions of careering demons, continued to lash the sea and smite the land; until, as if satiated with vengeance, the clouds belched forth in red lightning, vomiting out peal upon peal of awful thunder as a parting salute, and then, moderating down to a hard gale from another quarter, broke away. The blue sky appeared, and the glorious sun once more came up in his majesty over the distant hills of Cuba.



CHAPTER XXVII.

THE VIRGIN MARY.

"A weary weed, tossed to and fro, Drearily drenched in the ocean brine, Soaring high and sinking low, Lashed along without will of mine; Sport of the spoom of the surging sea; Flung on the foam, afar and near, Mark my manifold mystery— Growth and grace in their place appear."

With the boy clasped to his heart, the doctor sat beside the altar of the chapel during all the direful strife without, shielding his little charge from the clouds of fine sand and rubbish that every few minutes came swirling within the temple, dashing the padre's candlesticks into battered lumps of brass on the pavement, and tearing to atoms the votive offerings hung around the walls by the pirates. But, as if in mercy to the trustful souls lying there, the Virgin Mary still looked down in sweet pity upon them, and the little chapel stood unharmed.

When at last, however, the hurricane's back was broken, and Aeolus had reined up his maddened chargers and curbed their flying wings, and when all the demons of the wind had gone moaningly back to their caverns in the clouds, the doctor arose, and with the boy beside him, knelt devoutly before the altar while he uttered a fervent prayer of thanksgiving.

"Come, my Henri, now we may go out and see if we can find something to eat and drink. You are weak and hungry, my poor little boy; but you shall not suffer much longer."

That strong man, with the heart of a gentle woman, had no thought of how ill, and famished, and thirsty he himself was from the terrible torture he had endured. No, he only thought of the child who had saved him.

In front of the chapel the sand and bushes were piled up in ridgy heaps, the coral wall around the cemetery had been thrown down, while the flat head-stones over the pirates' graves had disappeared entirely. Not so, however, with the white slabs near by where those poor doomed women were lying; for the hurricane had spared their tombs, and a pall of pure white sand was sprinkled evenly over their remains. Bending over them was the trunk of the cocoa-nut, with its top stripped and its leafless branches quivering in the wind; while from below them streamed out the long, thin green silk rope which had so often served Captain Brand, the pirate, for his private executions. Near at hand lay the trestle on which the doctor had been stretched—caught by the base of the cocoa-nut column, and half buried in sand—while the cruel strips of raw-hide which had lashed the victim down were tied and twisted into a maze of complicated knots by the nimble fingers of the winds.

The doctor started, and his half-closed eyes shot out gleams of anger as he beheld the unconscious implements designed for his torturing murder; and leaving the child at the doorway to the chapel, he sallied out, detached the rope, loosened the trestle from its sandy bed, and placed them in a corner of the chapel.

Then carefully picking his way, with the boy in his great arms, over the trees and debris which obstructed the pathway, he speedily reached the site on which had stood the sheds of the "Centipede's" crew. Fire, water, and wind had done their work effectually, though the fire had partially spared the detached storehouse and shed which he had shared with the infamous padre. All else was a ruin of loose blocks of stone, broken tiles, nearly buried in banks of sand. From a well in the once busy court-yard, and which had also escaped the devouring elements, the doctor drew a bucket or two of water, in which he slaked the boy's thirst and then his own, and afterward poured water over their bodies. Then, from a still smouldering beam which puffed out at intervals a thin curl of smoke from beneath one of the sheds, he lit a fire in the court-yard, while from the wreck of the storeroom he succeeded in rescuing some hard biscuit and a ham. This last he tore in shreds, and placing them on sticks before the fire, they were thus enabled to make a hearty meal, first providing for the wants of the child, however—soaking the biscuit for him, as if it were his first duty on earth. Again raising the boy in his arms, he passed from the ruined sheds and bent his steps toward Captain Brand's former dwelling. The road was heaped with shells and sand, strewed with shoals of dead fish and wounded or dying birds, while the wreck of a boat, mingled with the timbers and planks of the jetty to the basin, were lying pell-mell on the beach of the little cove. Casting his eyes around in search of the once spacious dwelling, with its vaults, veranda, and saloon, he could hardly at first trace a vestige of the structure. The powder, more destructive even than the hurricane, had tossed walls and building into a confused heap of rubbish; then came the wind and sand on top of the rocks which had tumbled down by the concussion of the first explosion, and then the water, packing all together as if no habitation had ever existed there. The doctor walked slowly around until he came to the angle where the kitchen once was, and there, three fourths hidden beneath a mass of blackened stones and charred timber, peered forth the white skeleton of a human being. The flesh had been seared and burned from the face and skull by the instantaneous flash of the powder, and there lay the remains of Babette, whitely bleached, as if she had been thrown a lifeless corpse on the sea-beach. A few yards below this frightful spectacle lay a number of shattered boxes and trunks, then a confused bundle of clothes, and a sandy saturated collection of kitchen utensils and crockery. Yes, the poor dumb woman, the creature and witness of many a cruel scene, ignorant or uncertain of the warning given her by the master she loved, had fallen another tribute to his long list of victims.

The doctor only waited long enough to select a few necessary articles from the heterogeneous heap before him, and then, with the child still clinging contentedly to his shoulder, he returned to the chapel.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE ARK THAT JACK BUILT.

"Good heaven, befriend that little boat, And guide her on her way! A boat, they say, has canvas wings, But can not fly away; Though, like a merry singing-bird, She sits upon the spray."

The land wind sighed and murmured; the sea-breeze wafted its rustling influence over the waves; the long swells broke over the ledge; the inlet flowed pure and limpid; and the gulls and sea-mews floated gracefully over the reef, as if a hurricane had never poured its baneful wrath upon it or the lonely island.

Day by day and week by week, the man and boy, getting each hour stronger and better, worked and worked. He with his great arms hewing and sawing, and the child attending upon him like a shadow. By great toil and exertion the doctor had succeeded in placing some of the timbers of the jetty together as launching-ways, and on the cradle he had laid the wreck of the old boat. Then, with an old saw and some tools he found near the site of the mat sheds by the cove, he began to build the frail ark which was to carry him and the child from the hated island. From the storehouse, too, he obtained plenty of provisions to supply their wants, and old sails and rope he found in abundance. Babette's collection of worldly wealth provided them with linen and clothing, together with utensils for eating and drinking; and he had made their dwelling in the little chapel clean and habitable. Here they slept by night on an old sail, and soundly too, the sleep of repentance and innocence. With the early morning the man and the boy arose, and took their way to the cove. The little fellow was clean and tidy now, dressed in a little loose calico frock, and a queer contrivance of an old bonnet fashioned out of Babette's gear, and on his feet were a pair of little canvas slippers, stitched for him by his protector. After a bath in the basin of the inlet the fire was kindled, and the simple breakfast prepared. Then, while the strong man hewed, and sawed, and hammered beneath a temporary awning which covered the open workshop, the boy would pick up shells along the cove, or with a little rod and line, seated on a flat rock near by, jerk out fish from the basin to serve for dinner. Sometimes he would wander about in search of nails and spikes for the boat, or gather sticks for the fire, but never out of hail, and never beyond the watchful eyes of his friend. Yes, those watchful, kind eyes followed his slightest movements; and while the hammer was going in vigorous blows on the planks, or the axe chipping away a timber, his pleasant voice sang Creole songs to the child, or encouraged his innocent prattle. A loaded musket, which, with some ammunition, he had dug out from the wreck of his old quarters, stood leaning against an upright post under the shade, and woe to the man or beast that might have dared to approach the boy! In the burning heat of the tropical day the labor ceased, and the child either lay on his back on the soft sand beneath the awning, kicking up his little legs, watching the small gulls as they skimmed across the basin, or, with his brown curly head resting on the doctor's knees, slept sweetly. Happy and contented he was, too, with the return of health and strength; and if his budding memory looked back to her he had lost, and the recollection of his faithful Banou, it was only for a moment, and, like a childish dream, it passed away.



Every evening at sunset, when the work was done for the day, the doctor, with Henri in his arms and the musket on his shoulder, would climb the crag, and peer all around the island; but never a sail did he see from the hour the "Centipede" spread her canvas, while he lay helplessly bound on the trestle with the green noose around his neck. As the twilight faded, the sole human occupants of the island returned to the chapel, and when they had said a simple prayer, kneeling before the Virgin, they laid themselves down on their canvas bed to rest till the dawn. Many a silent hour in the watches of the tedious night did the doctor lie awake, while the cool sweet breath of the child fanned his cheek as he lay nestling beside him, pondering and wondering on the fate of his charge. He knew absolutely nothing about his history save that he had been pitched overboard from the brig the pirates were robbing; but what was the name or nation of the vessel, where from, or whither bound, he was in utter ignorance. He had questioned the leader Gibbs on that occasion after the chase by the corvette, when he had lopped off the brute's leg; but, what with suffering and drink, the ruffian had either forgotten the brig's name, or feigned to, and all he could impart was the belief that she was an English trader. Even from the boy, too, the doctor could elicit nothing of importance, though day by day he tried every means of leading the child's mind back to the past, but always with the same result.

"Oui, ma chere mama! Bon Banou!" and "Ma petite cousine, Rosalie!" These were the only words the little fellow had to link his fate with the future, and even they became fainter and fainter on his mind and tongue as the time passed on. With this delicate web around the destiny of the child, and that he spoke French, and had evidently been tenderly nurtured, the doctor was forced to be content.

Well, so the days and nights went by, and so the work went on, and the little ark began to assume a wholesome look, and to be capable of plowing the distant main. Then, when she was planked up, with a gunwale on, and half-decked over forward, she was calked, and the seams payed with pitch. When all ready for launching, early one morning the doctor and the boy went gayly down to the cove. There, as the first golden rays of the rising sun shot athwart the inlet, Henri stood up in the bows, and with a large pearl-shell of pure spring water, he waved his tattered bonnet round his curly locks, and with childish delight, as the vessel began to move, he emptied the shell of its sparkling treasure, shouting, as she slid off the ways into the basin, "Ma petite cousine Rosalie!" The builder, too, took off his hat and shouted, in his deep bass, till the rocks gave back the echo of "Rosalie! Rosalie!"

Thus was the ark launched and christened by her captain and crew, and there she rode on the basin, a little pinnace of about ten tons, which had been once used to carry anchors, chains, and stores about the harbor. A week or two more, and she was fitted with a single mast, stepped well in the bows, for a jib and one square lug-sail. Then ballast in bags of sand was laid along her keelson, and a couple of breakers of fresh water got on board, together with a quantity of cooked salt meat and hard biscuit stowed away under the half-deck forward—where, too, was a cozy little nest of spare canvas, with an oakum pillow, for the boy! Yes, there lay the good ship "Rosalie," outward bound, with sails bent and gear rove, cargo on board, and waiting for a wind.

Meanwhile the doctor had tried her under sail, and satisfied himself that every thing worked well, and that she was in proper trim. Then he moored her within a fathom from the shore, and waited for a moon to light him on his voyage. Whither?

Carefully, too—like one who had passed a lifetime on the ocean, from the China Seas to the broad Atlantic, under the suns of the tropics as well as in the dim gloom of high latitudes—the doctor studied the clouds and watched their course, noting the flight of the birds in the air and the track of fish in the sea. At last the trade breezes began to blow regularly and steadily; the land winds, too, in the gray of the morning, fluttered timidly away out to sea, and the round pearly moon shone bright and mellow over rock and water.

"To-morrow, my brave boy, we shall sail away from the island. Ah! you clap your hands, eh? Yes, we shall go to find mamma!" This was said as man and child stood for the last time on the lofty crag, while the former ranged his dark eyes scrutinizingly around the horizon. Nothing in sight!

Once more to their chapel of refuge, where, for the first time in all their association, putting the child to sleep by himself, the doctor sat down on the trestle by the entrance, and, lighted by the brilliant moon, he caught up the tangled mazes of the hide net which had bound him, and sedulously applied himself to a task before him.

Any one who has seen the effect produced by a violent gale upon the tattered shreds of a shivered main-top-sail, bound up into the most tortuous knots that it is possible to conceive of, and so hard and solid that you might saw the canvas balls in slices like boards, may form some idea of the task the doctor had imposed upon himself to loosen the hide strands tied together by the furious fingers of the hurricane. Patiently and quietly, with no sign of temper, he applied himself to the work, and with nothing but a sharp-pointed spike to aid his hands, he began to unravel, bit by bit, the laced knots and bunches of raw-hide, without ever cutting a strand, until, as the moon sank glimmering down, the tangled mass lay in clear coils beside him—though in several pieces, where it had been severed by the teeth of that little mouse purring behind the altar—and the task was done. Then raising the trestle, he bore it within the altar, and with the now unraveled coil of hide, and the softer silk rope for a pillow, he again stretched himself upon what once had been his bed of torture.

For what possible object all this labor had been undertaken, or for what future purpose—vague they must have been—no one but the persevering man who did it can tell; and there he lay, no sound coming from his compressed lips till the day dawned. Then he arose, and, kneeling over the sleeping child, he again solemnly repeated the oath he had before taken in his hut—

"Sleeping or waking, on land or sea, I devote the remainder of my wretched life to returning this lost child to his mother. So help me God!"

The little boy stirred, as if the angels and the sweet Virgin were whispering their protecting power over him, and, with a smile dawning upon his rosy, dimpled cheeks, he raised the lids from his bright hazel eyes, and put his fat round arms around the doctor's neck. If two great drops fell upon that upturned innocent little face from the dark full eyes bending over him, they were not tears of sorrow! Oh, no! It was the dew of hope and trustfulness falling from the soul of a repentant sinner relying upon an all-wise Providence.

"Come, my Henri, say your little prayer of the morning, and we will go." The man had taught the child that little prayer which he himself had learned at his mother's knee.

Up again to the crag, and down to the shelly margin of the shore; and a long look the man gave at the ruin of shed and den, as he gently placed the child on a sand-bag in the stern-sheets of the ark. Then he cast off the rope which held the vessel to the hated strand, hoisted the sail, and, as she bubbled along the inlet with the first sigh of the land wind, he stood at the helm with his bare head lighted up by the beams of the rising sun, and his lips moved in prayer.

On, noiselessly through the Tiger's Trap sailed the little pinnace till she bowed her rugged cutwater in the yielding waves, and with her square lug-sail swelling gently to the freshening breeze, she held her course to sea. I question much if the stanch brigantine, named the "Centipede," which had preceded her through this tiger's gorge, with all the ruffianly crew that manned her, and their villainous captain on her quarter-deck, stood half the chance of a prosperous voyage as the tiny ark, called the "Rosalie," which followed, with her noble, brave commander, and his weak and boyish mate. Who can tell?

END OF PART I.



PART II.



CHAPTER XXIX.

LAYING UP THE STRANDS.

"Ever drifting, drifting, drifting On the shifting Currents of the restless main, Till in sheltered coves and reaches Of sandy beaches, All have found repose again."

It was in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and twenty-two, and in the broad and commodious harbor of Kingston, a great mercantile haven, crowded with shipping from all parts of the commercial globe; landlocked by reef and ridge, with the rocks and heights crowned by frowning batteries of heavy cannon; while beyond were spread the lower and upper town, in masses of low two-story buildings, with piazzas, bright green jalousies, stately palm, tamarind, and cocoa-nut-trees waving above them. At the mouth of the harbor strait, where stands Fort Augusta, lay a magnificent double-banked American frigate, with a broad blue swallow-tailed pennant at her main, standing out stiff, like a dog-vane, from the lofty mast, as the ship rode to the strong sea-breeze.

The stays and rigging came down from trucks, cross-trees, and tops in straight black lines, from the great length of lower masts and enormously square yards fore and aft; and from side to side, till they met the long majestic hull and taper head-booms; while below were two rows of ports, with the guns run out and the brass tompions gleaming in their muzzles. The awnings were spread in one flat extended sheet of white cotton canvas from bowsprit to taffrail, and from the wide-spread lower booms at the fore-chains boats were riding by their painters. Within a cable's length of the frigate's black quarter lay a low rakish schooner, like a minnow alongside a whale, with a thin little coach-whip streaming from her main-mast head, a long brass gun amidships, and looking as trig and tidy as a French maid beside her portly mistress.

The bell struck in twin notes eight on board the frigate, echoed back from the pigmy schooner in a faint, double succession of tinkles; the whistles resounded from deck to deck in ear-splitting notes, surging and chirruping all together, and then suddenly ceasing with a rattling beat of a drum and a short bellow of "Grog, ho!"

Between the guns of the main deck, and about the spar-deck battery forward of the main-mast, sat five hundred lusty sailors on the white decks around their mess-cloths, bolting hot pea soup after their grog, and chatting and laughing in a devil-may-care sort of a strain, as if the grub was good and the timbers sound, as they were, of the stanch frigate beneath them. No noise, no confusion, but just as polite and courteous, in their honest, seamanlike way, as half a legion of French dancing-masters, they whacked off the salt pork before them with their sheath-knives, munching the flinty biscuit, and all as happy and careless of the past and future as clams at high water. Ay, there they clustered, those five hundred sailors, in their snowy duck trowsers and white, coarse linen frocks, with the blue collars laid square back over their broad shoulders, exposing their bronzed and hairy throats, wagging their jaws, and ready at any moment, at the tap of the drum, day or night, to spring to the guns, and make the battery dance a jig as the solid iron food went amid sheets of flame toward a foe. Yes, and ready, too, in the gentle breeze or the howling tempest, to leap at the shrill pipe of the whistle from the busy deck or their snug hammocks, and, like so many monkeys, jump up the shrouds, lie out on the enormous yards while the frigate was plunging bows under in the tumultuous seas, grasp the writhing canvas in their sinewy paws, and wrap it up close and tight in the hempen gaskets. Man-of-war sailors, for battle, or gale, or spree, every one of them.

On board that little consort near were about forty more of the same sort, only older, more bronzed, and more deliberate and methodical in manner, sipping their pea pottage after blowing away the steam, cutting their pork after much reflection, and cracking their biscuit tranquilly. Their conversation, too, was slow and dignified, each word well considered before it came out, and never interrupting one another in a yarn, as did the younger harum-scarum chaps in the big ship near. But yet those weather-beaten old sons of Neptune, who had each one of them seen sights that would make your hair stand on end to think of, could handle that schooner when her low deck was buried waist-deep to the combings of the main hatch in angry water, and make that Long Tom amidships there spin round on its pivot, and never threw away idly one of its solid globular messengers. Ay, trust them for that.

Then honor to them all, those gallant tars who have fought the battles of our country by sea and lake, and upheld those Stars and Stripes until they are respected to the uttermost ends of the earth! Glory to them, ye wise legislators, who sit in council upon the nation's wealth and grandeur! Think of the fearless arms that have shielded your otherwise unprotected shores when circled in a ring of dreadful fire from the guns of a haughty foe.



And you, too, ye rich traders! whose valuable cargoes roll hither and thither over the trackless deep, cared for by those toiling tars who fight and bleed for the flag that waves o'er your treasure—in stinging gale, with frozen fingers, or under burning suns, with panting breasts—think of them when your noble ships come gallantly into your superb ports, and unlade their floating mines of wealth into your spacious warehouses, while you in your lordly mansions sip your wine! Think of those arms grasping the shivering sail in the mighty tempest, in the black night, and the coarse fare they eat, the sometimes putrid water they drink, and the hard beds they lie upon, while you are reposing on downy pillows with your wives and little ones beside you! Ah! take pity on the sailor, and scatter your shining gold over him in his distress.

When the time comes, as come it may, when the cannon of a hostile fleet are thundering at your ports; when your lumbering craft are flying before the rapacious grasp of quick-heeled cruisers, and fiery bombs are hissing through the pure air, bursting in your marble palaces and blasting your stores of wealth to dust, then you will turn with blanched faces to the sea, and wonder why you have so long forgotten the noble hearts and stalwart arms that once were thrown around you. But not before.

On the flush quarter-deck of the frigate, by the raised signal lockers abaft, stood a bronzed old quarter-master, a spy-glass resting on his arm, through which every minute he peered around the harbor, giving an eye, too, occasionally to the half-hour glass, whose sands dribbled steadily into the lower bulb on the locker beside him.

What cared he—no wife or child to cheer him! No cares save but to see that the ensign did not roll foul of the halyards, that the broad pennant blew out straight, that the half-hour glass did not need turning, and that no boat approached the frigate without his reporting it to the officer of the watch. Naught else save, perhaps, whether the other old quarter-master, Charley Holmes, down below there on the gun-deck, had wiped from his lips the moisture of the midday grog, and would be up in time to take the relief while the pea soup was warm. Nothing else.

The lieutenant of the watch briskly paced the solid deck, scrubbed white as milk with lime-juice and molasses, the even seams between the planks glistening like the strands of a girl's raven tresses as his profane and rapid feet pressed upon them. What thought he in his careless walk, with the gleaming bunch of bullion on his right shoulder, sword by his side, white trowsers, and gilt eagle buttons on his navy-blue coat?

He was thinking how his pittance of pay would support, in a scrimpy way, his poor mother and sister, who looked unto him as their only hope and refuge. And he thought, too, as he tramped that noble deck, made glorious by many a battle and victory in which he had borne a humble part, that his rich and powerful country would eventually reward him with increased pay and promotion. Were the single dollar which lay alone in his trowsers pocket, and the light mist which arose off there beyond the Apostles' Battery, opposite Port Royal Harbor, an evidence of one or a sign of the last aspiration? We hope not; but we shall see.[*]

Three or four midshipmen, too, pranced over that frigate's white quarter-deck, on the port side, in their blue jackets and duck trowsers. Little gay madcaps they were, scarcely well into their teens, with little glittering toasting-forks of dirks dangling at their sides, and ready for any lark or mischief.

And what thought those boyish imps of reefers? Did they trace the flight of that tropic man-of-war bird, sailing high up in the heavens, heading seaward, away into the distant future, through clouds and sunshine, rain and storm? And did they think, as they fluttered along the deck, that their own career might lead them in that direction, toward the star of promotion which shone so brightly near at hand, and was never reached; or else, by a chance shot, to come tumbling down with a crippled pinion, and hobble out their lives on shore? No. Those gay young blades, whose mothers were dreaming and sighing for them, had no reflections of that kind. They were chattering about the little frolic they had on their last liberty day, when the captain ordered them off to the frigate at sunset, and planning another for the week to come. Happy little scamps, let them dance their careless thoughts away!

"Two bells, sir," said the quarter-master to the officer of the watch.

"Very good! Young gentlemen, tell the boatswain to turn the hands to, and have the barge manned. Let the first lieutenant and the marine officer know that the commodore is going to leave the ship. There, no larking on the quarter-deck, Mr. Mouse!"

This last command was addressed to a tiny youngster who was hardly big enough to go without pantalettes, much less to wear a jacket and order half a hundred huge sailors about, any one of whom was old enough to be his great-grandfather. But yet that small lad did it, and could steer a boat, too, or fly about like a ribbon in a high wind up there in the mizzen-top, while the men on the yard were taking the last reef in the top-sail.

"Go down to the cabin, sir, and let the commodore and his friend know the boat is ready."

Down the ladder skipped Mr. Mouse, and while he was gone, the guard, in their white summer uniform and cross-belts, stood at ease, resting on their muskets on the quarter-deck, eight side-boys and the boatswain at the starboard gangway, with the first lieutenant and the officer of the watch standing near.

Presently there came up from the after cabin hatchway a fine, handsome man, in the very prime of life, in cocked hat, full-dress coat, a pair of gleaming epaulets, sword by his hip, and his nether limbs cased in white knee-breeches, silk stockings, and pumps. The one who followed him was apparently a much older man, with grizzled locks, a dark, stern face, and without epaulets. The first raised his hat as he stepped on the quarter-deck—not a thread of silver was seen in his dark hair—and then both bowed to the officers, who saluted them as they moved toward the gangway. The boatswain piped, the marines presented arms, the drum gave three quick rolls, and the commodore went over the gangway, preceded by his companion.