This was only for a moment, for the next minute Mr Fosset gave the signal to "hoist away," the falls having been hooked on beneath the thwarts in a jiffey, and up we all went in mid air, "between the devil and the deep sea," as we say afloat sometimes!

"Bravo!" cried the skipper when we reached the level of the gangway and were all able to step out on to the deck. "That's very handsomely done, my lads! Now let us see about lifting the poor fellows out. That chap there in the bows seems in a very bad way! You'd better carry him into the cuddy at once and let Mr O'Neil look after him."

"Indade, I will, sor," said our doctor-mate, who was standing near by with a spirit flask in one hand and a medicine glass in the other, ready to give immediate succour to the rescued men. "Carry the poor beggar along an' I'll be afther ye in a minnit; for this other misfortunate gossoon here looks as if he wouldn't be the worst for a dhrop of good brandy, an' faith, I'll say to him fourst, avic!"

So saying the Irishman poured some of the contents of the spirit flask into the glass, which he held to the lips of the man. Mr Fosset and I were supporting him in our arms against the side of the boat, whence we had just removed him.

The poor fellow's strength returned to him almost as soon as he had sipped a drop or two of the brandy, and, starting away from the first mate and myself, as if no longer needing our aid, he stood erect on the deck.

"Mil gracias, amigos," he said, with a polite inclination of his head, in apology like for shaking himself free from us. "Estoy major!"

Captain Applegarth stepped up to him.

"I am sorry I can't speak Spanish, sir, though I understand you to say you're better. We're Englishmen all on board this ship, sir, and I'm glad we've been able to pick you up."

The eyes of the man glistened and a pleased expression stole over his face.

"What! You are English! he exclaimed excitedly. But—but I'm an American! Only I've been so long in Venezuela amongst Spaniards that I sometimes forget my own language."

Our skipper was equally delighted.

"By George!" he said. "I was sure you were no blessed foreigner, in spite of your lingo, sir! Welcome on board the Star of the North."

The stranger looked round and his manner changed at once, and he pointed towards our funnels anxiously and their escaping steam.

"A steam vessel, eh!"

"Yes, sir," said the skipper. "I command her, sir. Cap'en Applegarth, at your service!"

"The deuce! I was forgetting. We passed you last night, I remember now! and you're the captain?"

"Aye!" replied the skipper, not quite making out what the other was driving at. "I'm captain of this ship!"

"Merciful Heavens!" cried the rescued man, falling on his knees on the deck and bursting into a passion of sobs. "Thanks be to God! Yes, thanks be to God! You will save her, captain. You will save her?"

The skipper thought the evident suffering he had gone through had turned his brain.

"Save who?" he asked, adding in a kinder tone: "Of course, we'll do anything and everything we can for you, but I must know my bearings first, my friend."

The man was on his feet at once.

"I am not mad, captain, as you appear to think. I can see from your manner you think so," he said. "I want you to save my Elsie, my only child, my little daughter, whom those villains, those black devils, are carrying off!"

"Your only child, your daughter—black devils," echoed Captain Applegarth, astonished at the poor man's speech and at his wild and agonised look. "What do you mean, sir?"

"Heavens! We're losing time while those scoundrels are getting away with the ship!" exclaimed the other frantically and walking to and fro in a most excited state. "Fire up the engines, pile on the coals and steam like the devil! and go in chase of her, my good captain, you will? For Heaven's sake, captain, for the love of God, start at once in chase of her!"

"In chase of whom?" asked Captain Applegarth, still believing him to be out of his mind. "In chase of whom?"

The man uttered a heart-rending cry, in which anger, grief and piteous appeal were alike blended.

"In chase of a band of black miscreants who have committed murder and piracy on the high seas!" he ejaculated in broken accents. "The blood of a number of white men massacred by treacherous negroes calls for vengeance, the safety of a young girl and the lives of your brother sailors still on board the ship calls to you for help and rescue! Great Heaven! Will you stand idly by and not render the aid you can? Think, captain, a little girl like your own daughter—my Elsie, my little one! Yes, and white men, your brothers, and sailors, too, like yourselves, at the mercy of a gang of black ruffians! Sir, will you help them or not?"



CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

WE START IN CHASE OF THE SHIP.

The effect of this appeal was electrical, not only on the skipper, but on all of us standing by.

"Great heavens, man!" cried the captain, staring at the other in wild astonishment. "What do you mean? I cannot understand you, sir. Your ship, you say—"

"My words are plain enough, captain," said the stranger, interrupting the skipper. "Our ship, the Saint Pierre, is in the possession of a gang of Haytian negroes who rose on us while we were on the high seas and murdered most of the officers and the crew. They then threw poor Captain Alphonse, who commanded her, overboard, after they had half killed him, and the rest of the unfortunate sailors and passengers, amongst them my little daughter, are now at the mercy of the black devils!"

"My God!" exclaimed the skipper, confounded by this lucid statement. "And you, sir?"

"I am an American!" said the other with a proud air, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet and more, and with his eyes flashing, while a red flush mounted to his cheeks, which had formerly been deadly pale. "I'm a white man, captain, and it's not likely I would stand by and see people of my own colour butchered! Of course, sir, I went to the poor captain's assistance, but then the murderers served me almost as badly as they did him, chucking me overboard after him."

"I beg your pardon, sir, I'm sure, for appearing to doubt your story," cried the skipper, stretching forward his hand, which the other eagerly grasped. "The fact is, sir, I thought at first your sufferings had set your head wrong; but now I need hardly say I believe thoroughly every word you've told us, and you may rely on my aid and that of every man aboard here to help you and yours. There's my hand on it, sir, and my word you'll find as good as my bond, so sure as my name is Jack Applegarth!"

"And mine, captain, is Vereker, Colonel Vereker, at your service," returned the other, reciprocating the skipper's cordiality as he looked him straight in the face, holding his hand the while in a firm grip. He let go the skipper's fist, however, the next moment and a puzzled expression came into his eyes as he glanced round occasionally, apparently in search of some one or other. "Heavens! Where's my unfortunate comrade who was in the boat with me—poor Captain Alphonse? Alas, I had forgotten him!"

"We have not forgotten him, though, colonel," said the skipper smiling. "He has been carried below to the saloon on the maindeck, where my second mate, Mr O'Neil, who is a qualified surgeon, is now attending to his injuries. He has been terribly mauled, poor fellow; we could see that!"

"Aye, terribly!" repeated the other with a shudder, as if the recollection of all he and his fellow-sufferers had gone through suddenly came back to him at the moment. "But, great Heavens! captain, we're losing time and that accursed ship with those scoundrels and our remaining comrades, and with my darling child on board, is speeding away while we're talking here. You will, will you not, Senor Applegarth, go in pursuit of her, my friend?"

"By George I will, colonel; I will at once—immediately—if you'll tell me her bearings," cried the skipper excitedly. "When was it this terrible affair happened? When did you leave the ship, and where?"

"The revolt of the blacks, or mutiny, I should call it, captain, broke out four days ago, on last Friday, indeed, sir," said the American promptly in his deep musical voice, and whose foreign accent obliterated all trace of the unmelodious Yankee twang. "But we kept the rascals at bay until last night, soon after sundown, when they made an ugly rush and overpowered us. Captain Alphonse had just sighted your vessel in the distance and was burning a blue light over the stern to attract your attention, so as to get assistance at the time this happened."

"Was yours a large, full-rigged ship?"

"Yes, sir, the Saint Pierre is of good size and had all her sails set," replied the other to the skipper's question. "We were running before the wind with our helm lashed amidship, as it had been since the previous Friday, for we were all too busy defending our lives to think of attending to the ship."

"Steering about nor'-east, I suppose?"

"Confound it, captain!" said the colonel impatiently. "We were drifting, I tell you, sir, at the mercy of the elements, and heaven only knows how we were going! Fortunately, the weather was pretty fair, save the very day the mutiny broke out, when it blew heavily and our canvas got split to pieces as there was no one to go aloft and take it in. Otherwise we must have gone to the bottom!"

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper, turning round to old Masters and myself, who were still standing by with the hands who had come aft to haul up the boat. "Then my bo'sun here, and this young officer were right when they declared they saw a large full-rigged ship to the westward of us, though I only noticed the light of your flare-up. You were too far off for me to make you out."

"Ojala!" ejaculated the American, reverting again to the familiar Spanish tongue in his emotion. "Would to God, captain, you had seen us!"

"It would have been useless if I had, my friend," said the skipper soothingly. "We couldn't move to come to your assistance if every soul on board had seen you and known your peril, sir; for our engines were broken-down and we were not able to get up steam again until late this afternoon, when we ran down to pick you up!"

"But, sir," hastily whispered the colonel, suppressing a sob of emotion, "you can and will steam now?"

"Why ask?" replied the skipper. "The moment we know where to go in search of your ship, that very moment we'll start and try to overhaul her. You say you quitted her last night?"

"Quitted her? We were thrown overboard, sir, by the black devils!"

Captain Applegarth in reply said calmly, "Yes, yes, of course," accepting the correction and trying by his manner to soothe the infuriated man. "But what time was that?"

"I can't say the exact hour," replied the American, whose vexed tone showed that the captain's methodical mode of setting to work did not quite harmonise with the excited state of his feelings. "I think, however, it must have been nearly seven o'clock, as well, sir, as I can remember."

Then I chimed in. "Ah!" I exclaimed quickly, "that was just the very time that Masters and I heard the shooting in the distance to win'ard, and it was six bells in the second dog watch!"

"So it were, Master Haldane; so it were," agreed the old boatswain, looking from me to the skipper and then at Colonel Vereker. "Well, I'm blowed! and I'm glad, then, for that there ghost-ship wor a rael ship arter all said and done. Now who was right, I'd like to know?"

"Of course it was a real ship, you old dotard!" said the skipper gruffly and looking angrily at him. "Of course it was," he added, while our new acquaintance looked at us, unable, naturally, to understand the mystical allusion; but Captain Applegarth soon turned his roving thoughts into another direction by asking him a second question. "How long did you keep in sight of your vessel after leaving her, colonel, do you think?"

"She was in full view of us at sunrise this morning," replied the American. "The boat in which we were adrift kept near her all night as there was very little wind, if any. A slight breeze sprang up shortly after the sun rose and she then steadily increased her distance from us as the day wore on, finally disappearing from my gaze about noon, and taking with her my little darling, my pet, my Elsie."

The poor fellow broke down again at this point throwing up his hands passionately and burying his face in them, his whole frame convulsed with sobs, though not a man present thought his emotion a thing to be ashamed of, all of us being deeply interested in his narrative, and as anxious as himself for the skipper to start off in pursuit of the black mutineers and pirates.

We were not long kept in suspense, the colonel's last words and violent burst of emotion apparently touching our "old man's" feelings deeply, and hastening his decision.

"Cheer up, sir, cheer up," said he to the other, whose shoulders still shook with his deep hysterical sobs. "And we'll find your little girl yet for you all right, and restore her to you, and we'll settle matters too, with those scoundrels, I promise. Now tell me how far off do you think the ship must have drifted from us by now, Mr Fosset."

"Between twenty and thirty miles, sir," replied the first mate. "She was lighter than us, and of course she had the advantage of what wind there has been, though, thank goodness, that has been little enough!"

"Away to the nor'-east, I suppose?"

"Aye, aye, sir," said Mr Fosset. "The breeze, what there was, has been from the sou'-east and the current trends in the same direction."

"Then if we steer east-nor'-east we ought to pick her up soon?"

"Not a doubt of it, sir. We have four good hours of daylight left yet!"

"Precisely my opinion," cried the skipper. "Mr Stokes, will the engines stand full speed now, do you think?"

"Oh, yes, sir," replied the old chief, who with the rest of us was all agog to be after the strange ship again, now that he had heard the colonel's explanation of her true character, "if you'll send some one below to tell Stoddart what you want. I would go myself, but I'm rather shaky in getting down the hatchway as yet. I twisted my arm just now when I went down."

"That's all right. Stoddart, I am sure, will excuse you," said the skipper kindly, and turning to me he added: "You, Haldane, run down and tell Stoddart we want all the steam we can get. He won't spare the engines, I know, when he knows the circumstances of the case, and you will explain matters!"

So saying, the skipper started off forwards in the direction of the bridge, while I dived down the engine-room hatchway, reaching the machinery-flat just as the "old man" sounded the gong to put on full speed ahead, the telegraph working quick as if he were in a great hurry!

Ere I could tell my story Stoddart sent an answering blast up the steam pipe to let the skipper know his signal was being attended to; and then, pulling back the lever of the throttle valve, the piston began to go up and down, the cylinder oscillated from side to side and the crank shaft revolved at first slowly, but presently faster and faster until we were now going to the utmost of our pace.

All this while I was yarning away, though I had to shout to the top of my voice in order to overcome the noise of the machinery, as I described all that had occurred.

I did not speak to unheeding ears.

"By Jove, Haldane!" cried Stoddart, who was a man of action if ever there was one. "The cylinder is all right again and will bear any pressure now, and I tell you what it is, the old barquey shall steam along in pursuit of those demons faster than she ever went in her life since she was launched and engined!"

"I am with you there, old fellow," said Grummet, our third engineer, hastening towards the stoke-hold. "I'll go down and see the firemen and stir them up and put some more oilers to work in the screw well, to lubricate the shaft so as to prevent the bearings from overheating."

"That's your sort, my hearty," said Stoddart. "So you can return on deck, Haldane, and tell the skipper and Mr Stokes that everything shall be done down here by us to overhaul your 'ghost-ship.'"

He laughed as he uttered this little piece of chaff at my expense, the story being now the common property of everybody on board, and I laughed, too, as I ran up the hatchway with my clothes nearly dry again, even drying in the short space of time I had been in the hot atmosphere below, although, goodness knows, they had been wet enough when I had gone down, having had no time or opportunity to shift them after my dip overboard when taking the line to the drifting boat.

On reaching the main deck I met Spokeshave.

He was coming out from the saloon, and from his puffy face and corpulent appearance generally, he looked as if he had been making a haul on the steward's pantry, although he had not long had his dinner and it was a good way off tea time.

"Hullo!" he cried out on seeing me. "I say, that chap O'Neil is having a fine go of it playing at doctoring. He has got a lot of ugly long knives and saws laid out on the cuddy table and I think he's going to cut off the chap's leg!"

"Which chap do you mean?" I asked; "not the colonel?"

"Aye," said he. "The chap with the moustache and long hair, like Hamlet, you know!"

"My good chap," said I, "you seem to know a good deal about other chaps, or think you do, but I never heard before of Hamlet having a moustache like a life-guardsman! Irving doesn't wear one when he takes the part, if I recollect right, my joker. You think yourself mighty knowing!"

"Quite so," replied Master Spokeshave, using his favourite phrase as usual. "But you don't call Irving Shakespeare, Haldane, do ye?"

"I don't know anything of the matter, old boy. I am not so well informed as you are concerning the dramatic world, Spokeshave. I know you're a regular authority or 'toffer,' if you like, on the subject. Don't you think, however, you're a bit hard on poor Irving, who, I've no doubt, would take a word of advice from you if you spoke kindly to him and without that cruel sarcasm which you're apt to use?"

The little beggar actually sniggered over this, being of the opinion that I was paying a just tribute to his histrionic acumen and judgement in things theatrical, on which he prided himself on account of his having appeared once behind the footlights in a theatre in Liverpool, as a "super," I believe, and in a part where he had nothing to say!

"Quite so, Haldane; quite so," chuckled Spokeshave, as pleased as Punch at the imaginary compliment. "I do believe I could teach Irving a thing or two if I had the mind to!"

"Yes, you donkey, if you had the mind to," said I witheringly, by giving an emphasis he did not mean to his own words. "'Very like a whale,' as our old friend Polonius says in the play, the real Hamlet, I mean, my boy, not your version of it. 'Very like a whale,' indeed!"

"I'm sure, Mr Haldane," he answered loftily, cocking his long nose in the air with a supercilious sniff, "I don't know what ye mean."

"And I've no time to waste telling you now," returned I.

At that moment we emerged on the open deck from under the back of the poop, where we had been losing our time and talking nonsense; and, looking towards the bridge forward, I saw Colonel Vereker, the very person about whom we had been speaking, standing by the side of the skipper.

"O, Lor', Spokeshave, what a crammer!" I cried. "You said not a moment ago that Garry O'Neil was about to cut off the colonel's leg, while there he is standing there, all right!"

"I didn't say he had cut it off yet," he retorted; "I said he was going to cut it off. O'Neil told me so himself."

"Then," said I, "instead of cutting off the poor colonel's leg, he was only 'pulling your leg,' my joker!"

The cross-grained little beggar, however, did not seem to quite understand the term I employed thus in joke, though it was used at sea to express the fact of "taking a rise" out of any one, and a common enough saying.

"I'm not the only fellow who tells crammers," he grimly muttered. "How about that yarn of yours of the blessed 'ghost-ship' you saw the other night, I'd like to know. I believe, too, that the colonel, as you call him, is only an impostor and that the skipper is going on just such a wild-goose chase after this ship of his, which he says was captured by pirates, as he did that Friday hunting your Flying Dutchman! wasting our time with your idiotic story. Pirates and niggers, indeed! Why, this chap, I'll bet, is a nigger himself, and more of a pirate than any one we'll come across if we steam from here to the North Pole. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Dick Haldane; you and your confounded 'ghost- ship' together! Such utter humbug and nonsense, and thinking you take people in with such yarns in these days!"



CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

FULL SPEED AHEAD.

I was so indignant at what the spiteful little brute said that I incontinently turned on my heel and left him without another word, going forwards towards the bridge to give the skipper Stoddart's message.

Here, the sight of Colonel Vereker's grand figure—one that would be remarkable anywhere, towering above the rail and almost herculean in its massive proportions, coupled with the sad look in his noble face, and which reminded me somehow or other of one of the pictures of the old Cavaliers of the Stuart days, made me resent the more the baseless imputation of his being an imposter.

The idea of such a thing being possible could only have occurred to an ignoble mind like that of Spokeshave; for one single glance at the distinguished-looking gentleman's speaking countenance, with its finely- chiselled features and lofty open brow, would have satisfied any unprejudiced person that his was a nature incompatible with deceit and meanness, even in the most remote degree.

"Well, young Haldane!" exclaimed old Mr Stokes, whom I found with Captain Applegarth and the colonel when I reached the wheel-house.

"What do those smart chaps of mine down below say, hey, my boy?"

His face beamed as he spoke and he looked as if he would have liked to have rubbed his hands together in his old way when he felt particularly jolly, but unfortunately his crippled arm, which was still in a sling, prevented that!

"Oh, that's all right, sir," I replied in an equally cheery tone, the old chief's genial address making me forget at once my anger at Spokeshave's contemptible nonsense. "Mr Stoddart directed me to tell the cap'en that he may go on ahead as usual, as he likes, for everything has been made taut and secure below and there need be no fear of another mishap. He says he intends driving the engines as they were never driven before, and he has put every fireman and oiler in the stoke-hold on the job."

"Bravo!" cried the skipper, sounding the gong again and yelling down the voice-tube that led below like one possessed. "Fire up, below there, and let her rip!"

"Dear, dear," panted Mr Stokes, whose fears for his engines, which he regarded with the affection which a young mother might bestow on her first baby, began to overcome his interest in the chase after the black pirates. "I hope you and Stoddart, between you, won't be rash, cap'en. I hope—I do hope you won't!"

"Nonsense, Stokes, you old croker; just you shut up!" said the skipper. "Keep her steady, east-nor'-east, helmsman! Now, my dear colonel, at last we really are after those infernal rascals in earnest; and, sir, between you and me and the binnacle, we'll be up to them before long before nightfall, I'll wager!"

"I hope to heaven we will, Senor Applegarth," replied the other sadly, but eagerly. "But, alas! the ocean is wide, and we may miss the ship. I cannot bear to think of it!"

"Oh, but we won't miss her!" said the skipper confidently, and he was the last man to give up hope. "Take my davy for that, sir. She must be within a radius of from twenty to thirty miles of our present bearings on the chart, somewhere here away to the eastwards, sir; and if we make a long leg to leeward and then bear up to the north'ard and west'ard again, we'll overhaul her—I'm sure of it—yes, sure of it, in no time. Look, colonel, look how we're going now. By George, ain't that a bow wave for you, sir, and just see our wake astern!"

The old barquey was certainly steaming ahead at a great rate, the sea coming up before her in a high ridge that nearly topped the fo'c's'le, and welling under her counter on either hand in undulating furrows that spread out beneath her stern in the form of a broad arrow, widening their distance apart as she moved onward, while the space between was frosted as if with silver by the white foam churned up by the ever- whirling propeller blades, beating the water with their rhythmical iteration, thump-thump, thump-thump, thump-thump!

There was no "racing" of the screw now, for Neptune was in one of his quiet moods and there were no big rollers to surmount, or deep wave valleys to descend into; consequently the old barquey had no excuse for giving way to any gambolling propensities in the water of pitching and tossing, steaming away on an even keel and using every inch of power of her engines, with not an ounce to waste in the way of mis-spent force!

And so on we went, tearing through the water, a blue sky overhead unflecked by a single cloud, a blue sea around that sparkled in sunshine and reflected harmonies of azure and gold, save where the bright fresh western breeze rippled its surface with laughing wavelets that chuckled as they splashed the spray into each other's faces, or where we passed a stray scrap of gulf-weed with its long yellow filaments spread out like fingers vainly clutching at the wavelets, as if imploring them to be still, or where again the dense black smoke from our funnels made a canopy in the sky athwart our track, obscuring the shimmering surface of the deep with a grim path of shadow that checked the mirth of the lisping young wavelets and even awed the sunshine when it came in closer contact anon, as the wind waved it this way and that at its will.

"Hi, bo'sun!" shouted out the skipper presently, after carrying on like this for a goodish spell, the deck working beneath our feet and the Star of the North seeming to be flying through water and air alike by a series of leaps and bounds, quivering down to her very kelson with the sustained motion and the ever-driving impulse of her masterful engines spurring her onward. "How is she going now, eh?"

Old Masters was away aft on the poop hauling in the patent log, which had been hove over the side on our beginning the run, and the next minute, as soon as he was able to look at the index of the instrument, he answered the skipper's question.

"Sixteen knots, sir!" he sang out, and then we could hear the old sea dog add his customary comment, whether of approval or discontent, "Well, I'm blowed!"

"By George, colonel!" cried Captain Applegarth to our melancholy-looking guest at his side. "We're going sixteen knots, sir; just think of that! I didn't believe the dear old barquey had it in her!"

"It is a good, wonderful speed, captain," replied the other, who, I noticed, was looking even more exhausted now than when we removed him from the boat. "Remember, though, sir, the Saint Pierre is sailing on all this time before the wind, as she was this morning, and must be miles ahead of us!"

"Aye, I know she's going; or at least, I suppose so, and I've made every allowance for that in my calculation of her whereabouts," returned our skipper, in nowise daunted by the colonel's argument. "But if she had every rag set that she could carry, she couldn't go more than three or four knots at the most, in this light breeze; and for every foot she covers we're going five!"

"That is true," said the American, with a very weary and absent look on his face. "But—but I'm afraid we may be too late after all! I—I'm— God protect—my—my—"

"The fact is, my dear sir," cried the skipper abruptly, interrupting him as the other hesitated in his speech, turning a deadly white and clutching at the bridge rail in front of him, as if to save himself from falling or fainting. "You're completely worn out and your nerves shaken! Why, you can't have had much, if any, sleep the last three or four days—not since that rumpus broke out aboard your ship, eh?"

"Heavens!" ejaculated the other. "I don't think I have closed my eyes, senor, since Friday, excepting when I was drifting in the boat, part of which time I must have been senseless; for though I recollect seeing your vessel, and trying to signal her by holding up a piece of the bottom planking of the boat, as we hadn't oar or sail in her, I have no remembrance of seeing your vessel steaming up to help us, or of this brave young gentleman here jumping into the water and swimming to our assistance, as you tell me, captain, that he gallantly did. Believe me, sir, I shall never forget you, and I shall be ever and eternally grateful to you for that noble act of yours!"

He half-turned and bowed to me politely as he said this, but I was too much confused, by his exaggerated estimate of what I had done to say anything at the moment in reply. And, after all, it was only a very simple thing to do, to swim with a line to a boat; any other fellow could have done the same, and would have done it under the same circumstances.

The skipper, however, spoke for me.

"Come, come, sir," he said. "Haldane only did his duty, like the brave lad he is; and I'm sure you only make him uncomfortable by your thanks. I want you, colonel, to go below and have a little rest and some refreshment. Besides, I promised Mr O'Neil to send you down to have your wounded leg dressed and seen to, more than half an hour ago, when he came up on deck after attending to that other poor chap, and yet here you are still, talking and exciting yourself. How is your leg now, colonel? Easier?"

"Confound it! No, no!" replied the other, with a writhe of torture as he changed his position so as to relieve the strain on the wounded limb, which I had quite forgotten about, the brave follow having stoically repressed all indication of pain while urging on the pursuit of the black mutineers. "It's hurting me like the devil! But, sir, I cannot rest or leave the deck till we come up to that accursed ship and save my poor child, my little darling—if we be not too late, too late!"

"This is nonsense, sir," said the skipper bluntly, and rather angrily, I thought, and he continued:

"The ship, we know, must be a goodish bit ahead of us still, and we can't possibly overhaul her for an hour or more at the earliest. So come, cheer up, and come along with me and have your leg attended to at once. I insist, colonel; come."

"But," persisted Colonel Vereker, evidently trying to make out the time in arguing, and loth to leave the scene of action, though apparently ready to drop now from sheer pain and exhaustion combined, "Who will— who will—"

"My first officer here, Mr Fosset, will remain on the bridge during our absence below," interposed Captain Applegarth, anticipating his last, unuttered objection. "He's quite competent to take charge, and I'm sure will let us know the moment the ship comes in sight, if she appears before we return on deck."

"Aye, that I will, sir," cried out Mr Fosset. "I'll keep a sharp look- out, and I'll hail you, sir, sharp enough, as soon as she heaves in sight on the horizon."

"There!" exclaimed the skipper in an exultant tone, taking hold of the colonel's reluctant arm and placing it within his own, so as to lead him away and to give him the benefit of his support down the bridge-ladder. "Won't that satisfy you now, sir, and you see you'll lose nothing by going below for a spell? Come, come, my good friend, have the leg seen to and eat something, for you must require it. Why, colonel, unless you keep up your strength and spur yourself up a bit, you won't be able to tackle those black scoundrels when we get up to the ship and catch them, and it comes to a fight, as I expect it will. So come along, my hearty; rouse yourself and come!"

This concluding remark of the old skipper affected more than all his previous persuasion, the colonel at once allowing himself to be helped down the laddering without further demur, and so along the gangway on the upper deck, towards the lower entrance to the saloon under the beak of the poop, I lending the aid of my shoulder for the crippled man to lean on as he limped painfully onward, having to pause at almost every step, his wounded leg dragging now so much, now that excitement no longer sustained his flagging frame; the skipper gave aid too, his arm propping him up on the other side.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

DOCTOR AND PATIENT.

"Faith, it's moighty glad I am, sor, to say you at last!" cried Garry O'Neil, starting up from his seat at the cuddy table, on our ultimately reaching the saloon, where the Irish mate was having a rather late lunch with Mr Stokes, who had preceded us below. "I was jist comin' after ye ag'in, colonel, whin I had snatched a bit mouthful to kape the divvil out of me stomach, sure. I want to inspict that game leg o' yours, sor, now that I've sittled your poor f'ind's h'id. Begorrah, colonel, somebody gave him a tidy rap on the skull whin they were about it!"

"It was done with a hand-spike," explained the other, groaning with pain as we assisted him to a seat at the further end of the table, where the skipper's armchair was drawn out for him to fix him up more comfortably. "One of those treacherous niggers came behind his back and dealt him a terrific blow that landed on the side of his head partly, nearly cutting his ear off!"

"Aye, I saw that, sor, of course," put in Garry, pouring out some brandy into a tumbler which he proceeded to fill up with water—"aqua pura," he called it. "I've shtrapped it on ag'in now, and it looks as nate as ninepins. But jist dhrink this, colonel, dear. It'll warrm the cockles of your heart, sure, an' put frish loife into you!"

The American took a sip first at the glass proffered him, and then drained off the contents with a deep sigh of satisfaction.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, "I feel a little better. But how is poor Captain Alphonse now?"

"Bedad, he's gitting on illegantly," replied Garry, sniffing at a soup plate containing some steaming compound which Weston, the steward, had just brought in, and directing that worthy to place it in front of our poor invalid guest. "There was a nasty paice of bone sphlinter sticking in the crayture's brainpan; but, first, I trepanned him an' raymoved the impiddimint, an' the poor chap's now slayping as swately as a babby, slayping in the cap'en's cot over yonder! But come, colonel, I want ye to take some of this pay soup here afore I set to work carving ye about. Begorrah, it's foine stuff, an'll set ye up a bit to roights!"

"Thank you a thousand times," returned he, taking a mouthful or two of the soup which Weston had placed before him, eating very sparingly at first like one who had been deprived of food for some time. "I'm not afraid of your handling me, sir. I have undergone too many operations for that!"

"Faith, colonel," cried the Irishman, laughing in his usual good- tempered racy manner, "you'd best spake well of the craft or I'll be afther payin' you out, sure, alannah, whin I get your leg in me grip! Jist you stow some more o' that illigint soup inside your belt, sor, before I start on the job, an' while ye're aitin' I'll tell you how I once sarved out an old woman whom I was called in to docther, whin I was at ould Trinity, larnin' the profession, in faith!"

"That's right, O'Neil," said the skipper, seeing his motive in trying to set our sad guest at his ease and to try and distract his thoughts from the awful anxiety and grief, under which he was labouring. "Have I heard the yarn before, eh?"

"Faith, not that I know of, cap'en," returned the doctor pro tem in his free and easy manner. "Begorrah, the joke's too much ag'inst meself, sor, for me to be afther tillin' the story too often!"

"Never mind that; it will make it all the more interesting to us," said the skipper with a knowing wink to Mr Stokes, both of them knowing Garry's old stories only too well, but at such a time as this they would have listened to anything if it would only serve to distract the poor colonel's thoughts for a few minutes, and they chuckled in recollection of the many jokes against himself that Garry had perpetrated. "Fire away with your yarn."

"Bedad, then, here goes," began O'Neil with a grin. "Ye must know, colonel, if you will have it, that I was only a 'sucking sawbones,' so to spake, at the toime. Faith, I was a medical studint in my first year, having barely mastered the bones."

"The bones!" interrupted the skipper. "What the deuce do you mean, man?"

"Sure, the inthroductory study of anatomy, sor," explained Garry rather grandiloquently, going on with his yarn. "Well, one foine day whin I an' another fellow who'd kept the same terms as mesilf were walking the hospital, wonderin' whin we'd be able to pass the college, sure the hall porter comes into the ward we were in an' axes if we knew where Professor Lancett, the house surgeon, was to be found, as he was wanted at once.

"'Faix,' says Terence Mahony, my chum, the other medical studint who was with me. 'He's gone to say the Lord Lieutenant, who's been struck down with the maysles, an' the divvle only knows whin he'll get back from the castle, sure! What's the matter, O'Dowd? Who wants ould Lancett at this outlandish toime of day?'

"The hall porter took Mahony's chaff, faith, in all sober sayriousness. 'It's moighty sorry I am,' says he; 'Master Lancett's gone to the castle, though proud I am for ould Trinity's sake, sayin' as how the Lord Lieutenant has for to send to us, sure, bekase them murtheren' 'sassa docthers that he brought from over the say with him from Inkland ain't a patch on our chaps! But, faix, sor, a poor woman as the professor knows is took moighty bad in her inside, some of her neighbours says, an' wants help at onst!'

"'Who is it, O'Dowd?' I asks. 'Do you know where she lives?'

"'Mistress Flannagan's her name,' says the porter. 'She's Mistress Lancett's ould la'ndress, sor; a cantankerous ould woman, too, an' wid the divvle of a temper! She lives jist out of Dame Strate, sure, in Abbey Lane. Any one'll till ye the place, sure!'

"'What say you to goin' to say the poor crayture?' says I to Terence Mahony. 'We'll lave word where we're gone, an' I'm sure Mr Lancett will be plaised to hear we're looking afther the ould lady!'

"'Begorrah, that he will, sor,' agreed O'Dowd, the porter. 'It's moighty kind of you two young gintlemen going for to say her, an' I'll make a p'int of lettin' the docther know whin he comes back from the Lord Liftinnint!'

"'All right, O'Dowd,' says I. 'Mind you till the professor, an' he can thin follow us up on his return to the college—that is, if he loikes!'

"With that off the two of us wint on our errind of mercy, though it was lucky I lift that message with O'Dowd, as ye'll larn prisintly!

"It didn't take us long to find the house where the sick woman was, for as we turned into the strate, a dirty ould hag, smoking a short pipe, came up to us with a smirk on her ugly phiz.

"'God save Ireland!' says she, addressing Terence. 'Be yez the docther jintlemen from the hospital, avic?'

"'Faix, we're that,' says my companion; 'the pair of us!'

"'Thin come along,' says she. 'Mistress Flannagan is dyin' to say you, sure. The soight of yez is good for sore eyes!'

"'Begorrah!' says Terence, 'I wouldn't have come at all at all if she hadn't been dyin', the poor crayture! Where is she?'

"'In the corner there,' returns the old hag, removing her dirty little black dhudeen of a pipe for a minnit from between her teeth, in order to spake the bether. 'She's a-sottin' in that cheir there, as she hav' been since the mornin', widout sayin' a worrd to mortial saol afther she tould us to sind for the docther. May the divvle fly away with me, but Peggy Flannagan can be obstinate in foith, whin she likes!'

"Terence Mahony and I then poked our noses into the corner of the room, the old hag stirrin' the turf fire on the hearth to give us a bit of loight; an' then we saw the ould crayture, who looked as broad as she was long, sittin' in a big armchere, an' starin' at us with large, open eyes. But though she was breythin' hard loike a grampus, she didn't spake nothin'!

"'What's the mather, my good woman?' says Mahony, going up to her an' spaking kindly to the poor crayture. 'Let me feel your pulse.'

"He caught hold of her hand, which hung down the side of the chere and fumbled at the wrist for some toime, the ould woman starin' an' sayin' nothin' at all at all!

"'Faith, Garry O'Neil, I can't foind any pulse on her at all at all. She must be di'd, worse luck!'

"'Och, you omahdaun; can't ye say her eyes open?' says I. 'Git out o' the way an' let me thry!'

"Begorrah, though, I couldn't fale any pulse at all aythar.

"'She's in a faint, I think,' says Terence, pretendin' for to know all about it. 'We had jist sich a case in hospital t'other day. It's oine of suspended animation.'

"'Blatheration, Terence,' I cried at hearing this. 'You'll be a case of suspended animation yoursilf by-and-bye.'

"'Faith, how's that?' says he. 'What do you mean?'

"'Why, whin you're hung, me bhoy! for your ignorance of your profession. Sure, one can say with half an eye the poor crayture is sufferin' from lumbago or peritonitas on the craynium, faith!'

"As we were arguin' the p'int, the ould hag who had introduced us brought our discussion to an end jist as Terence made up his mind that the case was cholera or elephantiasis or something else equally ridiculous!

"'Bad cess to the obstinate cantankerous ould crayture,' cried she, catching the poor sick woman by the scruff of the neck an' shakin' her violently backwards an' forrads, afther which she banged the poor thing violently on the sate of the chere. 'Will ye now spake to their honours, or will ye not? Won't ye now? She be that stubborn!' said she, turnin' to us; 'did ye ivver see anythin' loike it afore?'

"Mahony then tould her to put out her tongue, but the divvle a bit of her tongue saw we! Nor would she say a worrd as to her ailment, to give us a clue, though I believe on me oath, colonel, we mintioned ivery complaint known in the Pharmacopaia, Terence even axin' civilly if she had chilblames in the throat, for it was the depth of winter at the toime, to prevent her talkin'!

"But our coaxin' was all in vain, loike the ould hag's shaking!

"Faith, not a worrd moved our patient. She was that in all conscience, sure.

"'Begorrah, I'll sind a bucket of could wather over her an' say if that'll tach her manners!' said the ould hag, who tould us her own name was Biddy Flynne, on our giving her an odd sixthpence for a dhrop of drink. 'It's a shame to bring yez honours out for nothin'!'

"She was jist going to do what she had threatened, sure enough whin, providentially, in walked the professor from the college.

"He'd been listenin' outside the door, I believe, all the toime Terence an' mesilf were talkin' an' arguin' about the ould dame's complaint, puzzlin' our brains to find out what was the mather with her, for the baste of a man had a broad grin on his face, loike that you say on a mealy petaty whin the jacket pales off of it, whin he toorned round to us afther examinin' poor Mistress Flannagan, now all a heap on her chere.

"'Faith, I must complimint you, jintlemin, on the profound skill an' knowledge you have shown in your profession,' says he. 'I don't think I ivver heard a more ignorant or illeterate diagnosis of a case since I've been professor at Trinity College!'

"He was a moighty polite man was Professor Lancett. Terence an' I both agrayed on his sayin' this, an' thought our fortunes were made an' we'd git our diplomas at once, without any examination, sure!

"But his nixt remark purty soon took the consate out of both of us.

"'It's lucky for you two dunder-headed ignoramases!' he went on to say in a nasty sneerin' way the baste had with him whin he was angry and was any way put out. 'Preshous lucky for you, Misther Terence Mahony, an' you, too, Garry O'Neil, that I chanced to come afther you, thinkin' ye'd be up to some mischief, or else ye'd have put your foot in it with a vengeance an' murthered between you this poor, harmless ould woman lying here. I am ashamed and disgusted with you!'

"He thin prosayded to till what the poor crayture was sufferin' from, an' what d'ye think her complaint was, colonel? Jist give a guess, now, jist to oblige me, sure."

"Great Scot!" cried the American, smiling at O'Neil's naive manner and the happy and roguish expression on his face, our guest's appearance having been much improved, by the food of which he had partaken as well as the stimulant, which had put some little colour into his pale cheeks. "I'm sure I can't guess. But what was it, sir, for you have excited my curiosity?"



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A BLACK BUSINESS.

"Be jabers, sor!" exclaimed the Irishman in his very broadest brogue and with a comical grin on his face that certainly must have eclipsed that of which he complained in the professor of his college who had caught him and his fellow-student trespassing on his medical preserves. "To till the truth an' shame the divvle, colonel, the poor ould crayture, whose complaint we couldn't underconstumble at all at all, sure, was sufferin' from a fit of apoplexy—a thing aisy enough to recognise by any docther of experience, though, faith, it moight have been Grake to us!"

We were all very much amused and had a good laugh at this naive confession, even Colonel Vereker sharing in the general mirth, in spite of his profound melancholy and the pain he felt from his wounded leg, which made him wince every now and again, I noticed, during the narration of the story Garry O'Neil had thus told, with the utmost good humour, it must be confessed, at his own expense, as, indeed, he had made us understand beforehand that it would be.

"By George!" cried the skipper, after having his laugh out, "you'll be the death of me some day with your queer yarns, if you can't manage to do for me with your professional skill, or by the aid of your drugs and lotions, poisons, most of 'em, and all your murderous-looking instruments, besides!"

"No fear of that, cap'en; you're too tough a customer," rejoined the doctor with a knowing look in the direction of Mr Stokes, who had made himself purple in the face and was panting and puffing on his seat, trying to recover his breath. "Faith, though, sor, talkin' of medical skill, the sooner I say afther that leg of our fri'nd here, the better, I'm thinkin'."

"With the best of wills," assented the colonel, who had finished his luncheon by this time and certainly presented a much improved appearance to that he had worn when entering the saloon. "I am quite at your service, doctor, and promise to be as quiet as that first patient of yours of whom you've just told us!"

"Belay that, colonel; none o' your chaff about the ould leddy, if you love me, sure!" growled Garry, pretending to be indignant as he knelt down on the cabin floor and slit up the leg of the colonel's trousers so as to inspect the wound. His nonsensical, quizzing manner changed instantly, however, on seeing the serious state of the injured limb, and he ejaculated in a subdued tone of voice, "Holy Moses!"

"Why, sir," said the patient quietly, "what's the matter now?"

"Ah, an' ye are axin' what's the mather?" cried Garry in a still more astonished tone. "Faith, it's wantin' to know I am how the divvle you've iver been able to move about at all, at all, colonel, with that thing there. Look at it now, an' till me what ye think of it yoursilf, me darlint. May the saints presairve us, but did any one iver say such a leg?"

It was, in truth, a fearful-looking object, being swollen to the most abnormal proportions from the ankle joint to the thigh, while the skin was of a dark hue, save where some extravasated blood clustered about a small punctured orifice just above the knee.

Colonel Vereker laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"The fortune of war," he explained. "One of those brutes shot me where that mark is, but I think the bullet travelled all round my thigh and lodged somewhere in the groin, I fancy, for I feel a lump there."

"Sure, I wonder you can fale anythin'!" cried Garry, who was probing for the missile all the time. "A man that can walk about, faith, loike an opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can't have much faling at all, at all, I'm thinkin'!"

"Ah!" groaned his patient at last, on his touching the obnoxious bullet near the spot the colonel had indicated. "Whew! that hurts at any rate, doctor!"

"Just be aisy a minnit, me darlint," said the other soothingly, exchanging his probe for a pair of forceps and proceeding deftly to extract the leaden messenger. "An' if ye can't be aisy, faith, try an' be as aisy as ye can!"

In another second he had it out with a triumphant and gleeful shout.

"Ah!" ejaculated the colonel, the excessive pain causing him to clench his teeth with an audible snap.

"Faith, you may say 'ah' now as much as you please," said Garry, as he held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps. "For there's the baste that did you all the damage, an' we'll soon pull you up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief out of the way, sure!"

"Oh! dear me!" the poor colonel exclaimed as the doctor went on dressing the wound and afterwards set-to to bandage the whole leg, swathing it round like a mummy with lint, and then saturating it with some liniment to allay the swelling. "Would to God all the mischief could be as easily made good! Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!"

"Cheer up, colonel, cheer up," whispered the skipper, coming in from the state room on the starboard side of the saloon, whither he had gone to hunt up some special cigars while Garry O'Neil was accomplishing his surgical operation. "We're going ahead as fast as steam and a good ship can carry us, and we'll rescue your child, I'll wager, before nightfall. Have a smoke now, my friend; and while you're trying one of the Havanah's, which never paid duty and are none the worse for that, you can tell us how it all happened from the beginning to the end. I should like to hear the account of your voyage right through, colonel, and how those blacks came to board you."

"Certainly!" said Colonel Vereker, leaning back in his easy chair when Garry O'Neil had made an end of bandaging his leg, and accepting one of the choice cigars the skipper offered him. "I will tell you willingly, captain, and you, gentlemen, turning round and bowing to us, the sad story of our thrice ill-fated voyage."

"Thrice ill-fated?" repeated Mr Stokes inquiringly, the chief being rather argumentative by nature and possessing what he called a strictly logical turn of mind. "But how's that, sir?"

The colonel had his answer quite ready.

"I said 'thrice ill-fated' advisedly, sir," he replied, removing his cigar from his lips to emit a cloud of perfumed smoke, and then restoring the fragrant roll of tobacco to the mouth again. "In the first place, sir, from my having been unlucky enough ever to start upon the voyage at all. Secondly, from the fact of a calm delaying us when passing between Puerto Rico and San Domingo, thereby enabling those treacherous negro scoundrels to see our ship in time to put out for us from the shore; and thirdly, because Captain Alphonse would not take my advice and use strong measures when the mutiny originally broke out, which might have prevented the terrible events that afterwards occurred! But, sir, if you will allow me, I shall get along better by telling you what happened, just in my own way!"

"Certainly, sir," immediately replied Mr Stokes, profuse in his apologies. "Pray pardon my interruption!"

The colonel bowed in token of his forgiveness and then resumed his yarn.

"Our ship, the Saint Pierre, of Marseilles, Jacques Alphonse master and part owner, sailed from La Guayra on October 25, barely a fortnight ago!" said he. "In addition to her captain, of course, she carried two mates and a crew of twenty-five hands all told, and she was bound for Liverpool, with a general cargo of cocoa, coffee and hides, besides a mixed assortment of indigo, orris root, sarsaparilla and other raw drugs for the English market."

"Were you and your little daughter the only passengers?"

"No, Senor Applegarth," replied the other. "There were also on board Monsieur and Madame Boisson, from Caracas, returning home to Europe after a lengthened residence in the Venezuelan capital, where they had carried on a large millinery business, supplying the dusky senoritas of the hybrid Spanish and native republic with the latest Parisian modes; Don Miguel, the proprietor of an extensive estancia in the interior; and little Mr Johnson, a Britisher, of not much account in your country, I guess, not a gentleman—at all events, in my humble opinion. He was travelling for some mercantile house in London connected with the manufactory of chocolates or sweets, or something of that sort. I cannot say I cared much for the lot, as they were not people of my class, so I did not allow my Elsie, my darling, my pet, to associate with them more than could be helped, save with Madame Boisson, who was a kind, good-natured sort of woman, though decidedly vulgar. Oh dear me! It was a thousand pities we ever started on that disastrous voyage. It was unlucky from the very first!"

"Faith!" interposed Garry O'Neil. "But how was that, sor?"

"We were too late in reaching La Guayra in the first instance," replied Colonel Vereker. "I had planned, my friend, to take the French steamer for Brest, but on arriving at the port I found she had already left, and while deliberating about what I should do under the circumstances—for there would not be another mail boat for a fortnight at least—I met Captain Alphonse. He was an old friend of mine, a friend of long standing, so, on his telling me that his vessel was going to sail on the following day, and would probably convey me to Brest, where he said he would have to report himself prior to proceeding to Liverpool with his cargo, quite as soon as I should arrive if I waited for the next steamer, I made up my mind to accompany him."

"But, colonel," suggested Captain Applegarth, "you might have gone direct to England by one of the West India mail steamers which touch at La Guayra on their route homeward from Colon."

"I know that, my friend," said the other. "I could have caught one of them the following week. This would not have suited my purpose, however, sir. I wished to proceed direct to Brest, for I could get easily on to Paris, where I intended placing my little Elsie at school in the convent of L'enfant Jesu, at Neuilly, under the guardianship of some good nuns, by whom her poor mother was educated and brought up. It was a promise, my friend, to the dead."

"I see, colonel," rejoined the skipper apologetically, lighting his cigar again, having allowed it to go out while listening to the other; "I see, sir. Go on; I'm all attention."

"Well, then," continued the colonel, "these preliminaries being all arranged, Elsie and I went aboard the Saint Pierre, a full-rigged sailing ship of some eight hundred tons, the morning of the twenty- eighth of last month; and on the evening of the same day, as I have already told you, we made sail and quitted the anchorage where the ship had been loading—abreast of San Miguel, a port that guards the roadstead to the eastward, where it is open to the sea."

"Aye, I know La Guayra well, colonel," put in the skipper at this point, showing that he was following every detail. "I was in the Royal Mail Line when I was a nipper, before joining my present company."

"I recollect the night we sailed," resumed the other, paying no attention to Captain Applegarth's remark, but speaking with his eyes fixed, as if in a dream and seeing mentally before him the scenes he described. "The moon was shining brightly when we got under way, lighting up the Trinchera bastion and making the mountains in the background seem higher than they were, from the deep shadows they cast over the town lying below. This latter lay embosomed amid a mass of tall cocoanut trees and gorgeous palms, with other tropical foliage, and had a shining beach of white sand immediately in its front, stretching round the curling bay, on which the surf broke in the moonlight, with a phosphorescent glow and a hollow sound as if beating over a grave. Heavens! It was the grave of all my dearest hopes and plans, for that, sir, was one of the few last peaceful nights I have of late known, and very probably ever shall know again!"

"Faith, don't say that now, sir," cried out Garry at this. "You'll have a peaceful one to-night, sure, or I'm no prophet. Begorrah, though, I niver was, so far as that goes!"

The skipper grinned at this sympathetic interpolation, and the colonel's sombre face lighted up a bit as he turned his pathetic eyes on the speaker, as if wishing to share his hopefulness.

"Ah, doctor, you do not know what grief and anguish are like!" he said mournfully. "But to go on with my story. I may tell you that, had our voyage progressed like our start, I should have nothing to deplore, for, the land breeze filling our sails, we bore away buoyantly from the Venezuelan coast, the ship shaping a course north by west towards the Mona passage, as the channel way is called, from a rock in its centre, lying between Hayti and Puerto Rico. This route is held to be the best, I believe, for passing out into the open Atlantic from the labyrinthine groups of islands and innumerable islets that gem the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. It is a course, too, which by its directness and the northerly current and westerly wind there to be met, saves a lot of useless tacking about and beating to windward, as you, no doubt, captain, very well know."

The skipper nodded his head.

"You're quite a sailor, colonel," he said approvingly. "Where did you manage to pick up your knowledge of navigation and sea-faring matters, if I may ask the question, sir?"

"In the many voyages I have made during a somewhat adventurous life," replied the other. "I have invariably kept my ears and eyes open, captain. There are many things thus to be learnt, I have found out from experience, which, although seemingly unimportant in themselves, frequently turn out afterwards to be of very great use to us, sometimes, indeed, almost unexpectedly so!"

"Aye, aye, colonel. My opinion, sir, right down to the ground," said the skipper, looking towards me. "Just you put that in your pipe, Dick Haldane, and smoke it!"

"Yes, young sir," added Colonel Vereker, emphasising this piece of advice. "That rule of life has stood me in good stead on more than one occasion, both on land and on shipboard. Had I not learnt something of the ways of your sailors, for instance, I might not have thought of lashing the Saint Pierre's helm amidships on the breaking out of the mutiny, and so prevented all our going to the bottom subsequently, when it came on to blow; for all of us were then fighting for our lives and no one had time to attend to the ship, save in the way of letting go what ropes were handiest."

"Aye, that may be well enough, colonel," observed the skipper in his dry fashion. "But your argument cuts both ways. If your helm hadn't been lashed down, remember, the ship would have been yawing about and drifting in this direction and that, and we should probably have come across her long ago, like that boat from which we picked you up, instead of her bearing away right before the wind and our having to go in chase of her, sir, as we are now doing."

"It is true! I did not think of that!" returned the colonel impulsively, half-starting from his seat in his excitement. "We must be near her now, captain, though, surely. We must find them, and I must see my little girl again!"

"Kape aisy, me darlint; kape aisy," here interposed Garry O'Neil, before Captain Applegarth could answer the question. "Sure, Mr Fosset promised to give us the worrd whin she hove in sight, an' you're only distarbin' yoursilf for nothing, colonel! More's the pity, too, mabruchal, whin your leg is progressin' so illigantly an' the swillin' goin' down as swately as possible. Now kape aisy, if only to oblige me. Faith, colonel, me profissional reputation's at shtake!"

The Irishman, all the time he was talking, was carefully attending to the injured limb, loosening a bandage here, tightening another there, and keeping the lint dressing moist the while with a lotion which he applied gently to the surface by means of a sponge. So, impressed alike by his tender solicitude thus practically shown on his behalf as much as by his opportune admonition, the colonel was forced to remain quiet.

"I wish he'd be quick about it!" he muttered to himself. "Well, doctor, as you will not let me move, I suppose you will let me go on with my tale; that is, if it interests you!"

"Aye, aye; I want to hear everything," said the skipper. "And fire away, colonel; there's plenty of time for you to reel off your yarn before we overhaul the chase."

"All right,—then, I will proceed," replied the other. "All went well with us on the voyage until the afternoon of the third day after sailing from La Guayra, when, unfortunately, the weather changed and the westerly wind, which had favoured us so far, suddenly failed us after wafting us through the Mona Passage, and we became becalmed off Cap San Engano, to the northward of Hayti."

"Hayti!" exclaimed old Mr Stokes, waking up from a short nap he had been having on the sly, and pretending to be keenly alive to the conversation. "That's the famous black republic, ain't it?"

"Famous black pandemonium, you mean!" retorted the colonel fiercely, his eyes flashing at once with fire. "Excuse me, sir, but I have seen so much of these negro brutes, who ape the airs of civilisation and yet after a century of freedom are more uncivilised in their habits and mode of life than the African slaves, their forefathers whom Toussaint- L'Overture, as he styled himself, their leader, freed from the yoke of their French masters a hundred years ago, that I feel the glorious name 'republic' to be dishonoured when associated with such vile wretches, wretches a thousand times worse than the Fantees of the West Coast, from whom they originally sprang!"

"My dear sir," said Mr Stokes, aghast at the tempest he had raised by his innocent remark, "you surprise me!"

"Heavens! you would be surprised, sir, if you knew these Haytians as I know them to be," continued the colonel, his indignation still struggling for the mastery—"a race of devil worshippers and cannibals, who confound liberty with license, and have added all the vices of civilisation to the inherent savagery of their innate animal nature. Ah, sir, I should like to tell you a great deal more, but have not the time now. I am afraid I am forgetting myself. Where was I?"

"Becalmed off Cape San Engano," promptly replied the skipper, sailor fashion—"at least, so you said, colonel; but I fancy you must have had a little rougher weather in that latitude than you mentioned at first!"

"We had," said Colonel Vereker meaningly. "Towards nightfall we drifted with the current more inshore, Captain Alphonse not dropping our anchor, as we expected the land breeze would spring up at sunset. This did not come for an hour later, however, for already darkness had begun to surround us and we could see the fireflies illuminating the brush beyond the beach. But this wasn't all observed, sir. Just as our sails filled again and the ship slowly drew out into the offing, we heard the splash of oars in the water astern. It was a boat coming after us, propelled by a dozen oars at least, pulling as hard as those handling them knew how, a shot or two from the shore and the sound of musket balls ripping the water explaining, in some way, the reason for their anxiety to get beyond the range of the firing, on which account they sought the shelter of the Saint Pierre, of course—at least, so we thought!

"'Who goes there?' shouted out Captain Alphonse, who was standing alone with me, close to the taffrail. 'Poor devils! there is probably another insurrection at Port au Prince, and President Salomon up or down again. He is always one or the other every year or so, and these poor fellows may be flying to save their miserable necks. Who goes there? Who goes there?' But, whether wanting all their energy for their oars or for some other reason known to themselves, those in the boat made no reply to our hail, and the next moment, ere the ship gathered way sufficient to gain on them, they were alongside, their long unwieldy craft grating against the ship's timbers beneath her counter.

"'Look-out there, forrads!' cried Captain Alphonse, seeing the boat making apparently for our bows, but before a hand could be raised to prevent them, without asking permission in any way or offering the slightest apology or excuse in advance for their conduct, a number of negroes jumped out of her and began climbing aboard the Saint Pierre.

"Heavens! gentlemen, clad in little beyond Nature's own covering, as the majority of the intruders were, and looking in the dim light as black as the ace of spades, they seemed like so many demons, come to take possession of our unfortunate ship—as indeed they were. Oh dear me!"



CHAPTER NINETEEN.

THE "MARQUIS DE POMME-ROSE."

"A pretty kettle of fish that!" exclaimed the skipper, pitching the butt-end of his cigar through one of the stern ports as he got up from his seat and began to pace up and down the saloon in his usual quarter- deck fashion. "You must have been mad, colonel, to let them come aboard so quietly and in such a manner, too!"

"Stay, you have not heard all," said the other. "As the black rascals tumbled over the side, one of them called out something in the French tongue. This, sir, at once disarmed Captain Alphonse, who had prevented me from teaching them good manners, which I otherwise should have done, for I had my six-shooter ready, with the barrels all loaded, being always prepared for any such little unpleasantness by my experiences in Venezuela, where a man often carries his life in his own hands!

"But Captain Alphonse would not let me fire, though, by heavens! I would have accounted for half a dozen of them, I know, before they had advanced beyond the precincts of the ship!

"'No, no, be quiet!' cried he, knocking my arm up to prevent my taking aim at the leader of the gang, whom I had spotted dead in the eye. 'These are my countrymen!'

"It was no use my talking after that, sir. The sound of the French tongue, which these blacks of Hayti speak with a better accent than the gamins of Paris, gained over Captain Alphonse; while Madame Boisson declared the whole episode truly charming, her fat husband, who was entirely under her thumb, shrugging his shoulders and giving them both encouragement and a welcome.

"These charming compatriots of theirs, therefore, being allowed to take us by storm without let or hindrance, now advanced aft, when their ringleader, a plausible scoundrel who described himself as the 'Marquis de Pomme-Rose,' or some other similar shoddy title belonging to the black peerage of Hayti, to which I did not give heed at the time, beyond in my own mind thinking it ridiculous and that it was probably a name made up for the occasion, this man came up to Captain Alphonse with a smile on his black face and told a wonderful story which he had calculated would excite our pity while allaying our fears.

"There had been another revolution at Port au Prince, he said, as Captain Alphonse had surmised. A band of patriots, of whom he, the speaker, had the honour to be the chief, had attempted to depose the reigning despot Salomon from his post of president, but that that astute gentleman got wind of the conspiracy in time, and as he had a very efficacious mode of quickly dealing with those opposed to him in political matters, the nigger marquis and his fellow-plotters thought it best to seek refuge in flight.

"Salomon, of course, at once despatched his myrmidons after them, but having a few hours' start of the pursuers the runaway revolutionists contrived to clear off from Port au Prince, concealing themselves in the mountain fastnesses at the eastern end of the island.

"Here, while in hiding, they saw the Saint Pierre rounding Cape San Engano. Subsequently observing that she was becalmed, they waited for nightfall, when they stole a boat that lay on the shore and pulled out towards our ship, just avoiding capture in the nick of time; the regiment of black soldiers Salomon had sent after them having hit upon their trail and being so close up behind that they were able to open fire on them ere the boat got into deep water, two of the fugitive patriots being struck by the bullets that came whistling in their rear.

"The 'marquis' was of the belief that we were bound for Cuba, so he declared at all events at the moment, and he asked Captain Alphonse with the utmost indifference to give him and his companions a passage thither, assuring him that he would be handsomely rewarded for so doing by some of their friends belonging to the Haytian revolutionary party, who had established their headquarters at Havana.

"In reply to this request Captain Alphonse declared he was 'desolated,' but that, unfortunately, the Saint Pierre was bound for Europe and not to the greater Antilles; but, strange to say, for I was watching him keenly the while, our friend the 'marquis' did not appear either surprised or dismayed at his supposition as to our destination turning out to be so erroneous, as he would have been, so I thought, had he been speaking the truth in his original narrative, and acting in good faith towards us!

"From that moment, sir, something in my mind seemed to warn me against the black villain, though I had been previously rather prepossessed in his favour by his manner and bearing, in spite of a strong antipathy to republicans of his complexion!"

"Ah, colonel," whispered the skipper. "I suppose it comes from living amongst them too much, but I see you don't like negroes."

"No; you mistake my meaning greatly if you think that, Senor Applegarth. Black, white or yellow, the colour makes no difference to me, providing the individual I may have to deal with be a man in the true sense of the word! In the old days, before our war, I had a good deal to do with niggers, for my father and his father before him owned a large plantation in Louisiana, and long before President Lincoln issued his proclamation of emancipation every hand on our estate was a free man; so, you see, sir, I do not advocate slavery at all events. But between slavery and unbridled liberty there is, Senor Applegarth, a wide margin; and though I do not look upon a nigger in the abstract as either a brute beast or a human chattel, still I do not consider him quite fit to govern himself, nor do I regard him in the light of my brother, sir, nor even as my equal in any way!"

The skipper laughed.

"'What's bred in the bone,' colonel—you know the rest!" said he. "Your old experience in the Southern States prejudices you against the race."

"Pardon me," rejoined Colonel Vereker warmly, "I don't dislike them at all. On the contrary, I have found some negroes more faithful than any white man of my acquaintance, being true to the death; and I know that if I came across, to-morrow, any of the old hands on our Louisianian plantation whom my father made free, I should be as glad to see them as they would be to meet me. But, sir, at the same time, allowing all this, I cannot admit the negro to be on an equality with the white races. They are inferior, I am certain, alike in intelligence, disposition and nature, and I hold him as little qualified for self- government on the European system as a child is fit to be entrusted with a case of razors for playthings. Hayti is an illustration of this, sir!"

"All right, my dear sir," said the skipper good-humouredly, glad to see the colonel taken out of himself and forgetting his grief about his little daughter for the moment in the discussion. "Carry on; we're listening to you!"

His enthusiasm, however, did not last very long.

"Heavens! Senor Applegarth, and you, too, gentlemen," he went on in a changed tone. "I have cause to love those Haytian scoundrels well, I tell you! Well, sirs, to proceed with my story, the terrible end of which I have nearly reached, this dog of a black rascal, the so-called marquis, seemed quite content, much to my surprise, when Captain Alphonse told him we were not bound for Cuba, but for Liverpool.

"It was all the same to him, he said, and as they were going the longer voyage, perhaps Captain Alphonse would allow him and his companions to work out their passage by assisting the crew in the navigation of the ship.

"Captain Alphonse was delighted at this, for we had only half a dozen good seamen on board, the rest of the hands being a lot of half-bred mulattoes and niggers—some of the scourings of South America whom he had picked up at La Guayra, most of whom knew how to handle a cutlass better than a rope—so the proposed addition to the strength of our ship's company was a very acceptable one, particularly as the 'Marquis' pointed out two of his companions as being expert sailors and qualified pilots and navigators."

"Ha! You kept your eye on those gentry, colonel, I bet you did?"

"Yes, sir. They were the first I spotted when the row began; but I'm anticipating matters."

"The divvle a bit, sor," interposed Garry O'Neil. "Let me jist change the dressin' of your leg, an' ye can polish off the rist of the rascals as soon as ye plaize."

"A thousand thanks," returned the other, shifting his position to allow his leg to be attended to. "They did not disclose their purpose, though, or 'show their hand,' as they say at the game of monte, all at once; for, moved by their voluntary offer to help work the ship, Captain Alphonse promised the 'marquis,' who when making this offer had urged a request to that effect, calculating on the captain's generosity to put in and leave the lot at Bermuda, should they make a fair passage up to the parallel of that island, but in the event of their being delayed by foul winds or the voyage appearing as if it must be a long one, the Haytians must be contented to cross the ocean.

"The bargain was struck at once, this proviso being accepted with alacrity as it just suited their purpose, and never saw I men work as those Haytians worked in the way of tumbling up at all hours and pulling and hauling, shaking out reefs and setting fresh sail, the next day or two when the weather was contrary, and we had to tack about a good deal to windward in getting out into the open Atlantic.

"Heavens! How they exerted themselves; so much so that I quite shared Captain Alphonse's admiration for them, but, unlike him, I watched them, and I noticed that they and the coloured men of our crew who had been picked up at La Guayra seemed on a more friendly footing than was altogether warranted by the short time they had been on board. Captain Alphonse and the other passengers, however, would not see this.

"But, sir, I had an old negro servant on board with me, who had followed my fortunes from the States to Venezuela after the war, Louisiana then being no longer a fit place for a white man to live in. Poor old Cato; he was the most faithful soul the Almighty ever put breath into!

"Him I acquainted with my suspicions, and sent amongst the blacks, to gather what information he could of their designs, for I was confident, sirs, they had not boarded us for nothing, and were hatching some deep plot with a view, very probably, of getting possession of our ship in order the better to further the interests of the revolutionary party, to which they belonged, that was opposed to Salomon, the president in power.

"Whatever their object might be, however, I distrusted them in every way, believing them, indeed, actuated by other motives than such as might be prompted by their political aspirations, my suspicions being confirmed by the looks and bearing of the gang, who seemed capable of any atrocity, judging them by their villainous faces and generally hang- dog appearance, besides which they were continually whispering together amongst themselves, and consorting and confabbing with the mulattoes and other coloured men belonging to the crew.

"In addition to that, Senor Applegarth, and you too, gentlemen, I noticed that our friend 'the marquis,' although he gave himself great airs, on account of the aristocratic blood and descent to which he lay claim, pretending to think himself much superior in position to both Captain Alphonse and myself, and regarding poor Cato, my servant, as mere dirt under his feet, albeit the faithful negro was of a like colour to himself—did not esteem it beneath his high dignity to associate with the scum of the forecastle and bandy ribald obscenities, when he believed himself unobserved, with his fellow scoundrels.

"Aye, I watched my gentleman carefully, and so, too, did my poor faithful Cato!"



CHAPTER TWENTY.

THE SEVENTH OF NOVEMBER.

"My faithful negro, however," continued the colonel, pausing at this point to puff out another cloud of smoke from his fragrant cigar,—"well, he was unable to learn anything of the Haytians, though he tried to make friends of them, for they always stopped their talk amongst themselves on his approach, and would only reply to his overtures in monosyllables expressive of distrust, accompanied by contemptuous gestures that angered poor Cato greatly, for, as he considered that he belonged to me, he felt the insult to be directed not only at himself but at the whole family.

"'Golly, massa!' he said to me after a couple or so of attempts that proved fruitless to ingratiate himself into the confidence of the gang, 'you just wait; I catch dem black raskils nappin' by-an'-bye, you see, massa. You see, "speshly dat tarn markiss!"'

"He managed this sooner than he thought, and pretty smartly too, for the very next day he caught the noble scoundrel, who was his particular aversion, walking off with a pair of pistols from Captain Alphonse's cabin. On Cato coming up and stopping him in the very act, the 'marquis' put down the pistols quickly, saying in his off-hand manner that he was merely examining the locks, remarking how well they were made. 'But,' said Cato, 'guess he no bamboozle dis chile!'

"The following day, sirs, was the seventh of November, last Friday, that awful, that terrible day!

"Cato, who had been away forward early in the morning to see about our breakfast, came back aft with a terrified face.

"'Yay, massa,' said he, 'guess dose tam niggars up to sumfin'! I'se hear um say dey smell de lan' an' de time was 'rive to settle de white trash, dat what dey say, an' take ship. One ob de tam raskel see me come out of gully, an' say cut um tongue out if I'se tell youse, massa!'

"Of course on hearing this I put Captain Alphonse immediately on his guard, and we locked up all the spare arms and ammunition until we should require the same, excepting our own revolvers and three other pistols, which we served out to the two mates and the boatswain, all of whom were good men and brave Frenchmen. Monsieur Boisson, when he was asked if he would have one, shrugged his shoulders and said he was a simple passenger, he did not understand fighting—it was not his affair; while little Mr Johnson said he was an Englishman and preferred using his fists. Don Miguel had a pistol of his own.

"Jingo! The emergency we dreaded came soon enough, sir; indeed, sooner than we expected, and it was fortunate we had been forewarned!

"It was just after the noontide hour, I recollect that well, for Captain Alphonse had just taken the altitude of the sun to ascertain our position, when, as he came up from his cabin where he had gone to consult his chronometers and work out 'the reckoning,' as you sailors call it, that that black devil the 'marquis' mounted the poop with a simpering and fawning air.

"'Ah well, captain,' said he, with a very polite bow, 'where do you make us out to be, monsieur? Near the Bermudas yet?'

"'My word, yes,' replied Captain Alphonse. 'We are some ten leagues or so the westward of the islands, but we're bearing up now, as you see, to reach them.'

"'And what time, monsieur,' said the 'marquis,' speaking louder so that some of the other niggers who were on the deck below could hear what he said. 'Do you think it will be possible for us to land? My companions and myself, monsieur, as you can well imagine, are most anxious to get ashore as soon as possible, so that we may procure a ship to take us on to Havana.'

"'But, yes, your anxiety is natural enough,' responded poor Captain Alphonse, suspecting nothing from this. 'I hope to approach near enough to Port Saint George to put you ashore some time in the afternoon.'

"'Ohe, below there!' cried out the Haytian in reply to this, addressing his companions in the waist, who, I noticed, were gradually edging themselves more and more aft. 'Do you hear that, my brave boys? We are going to land at last. Get the boat ready!'

"This was evidently a signal, for he shouted out the last words in a still higher key than that in which he had been speaking.

"'You need not hurry, my friend!' said the captain, surprised at this order and smiling at the Haytian's impulsiveness, as he thought it. 'There will be plenty of time for lowering the boat when we come in sight of land.'

"'I think differently, monsieur,' rejoined the other, scowling and assuming an arrogant tone for the first time. 'I say the time is Now!'

"This he yelled out at the top of his voice.

"Instantly the gang of blacks made a rush at the poop on both sides at once, and Captain Alphonse clutched at his revolver, which he had in his pocket, but was unable to get it out in time.

"Mine, however, was in my hand and ready cocked."

"Houly Moses!" ejaculated Garry O'Neil, his Irish blood making him all attention now at the mere mention of fighting. "I hope ye let 'em have it hot, sor!

"Guess I did!" replied Colonel Vereker grimly, dropping unconsciously into his native vernacular, which up to now he had almost seemed to have forgotten from his long residence amongst a Spanish-speaking race. "You may bet your bottom dollar on that, sir! I aimed at that scoundrel the 'marquis,' but he jumped backward in his fright and his foot catching in one of the ringbolts, he tumbled right over the poop-rail on to the deck below; the shot I had intended for him dropping the black pilot, his constant companion, and who was invariably behind him. He dropped down as dead as a herring!

"Don Miguel, who luckily had just come up from the saloon, being handy with his revolver from the rough times he had experienced, like myself, in Venezuela, settled another darkie; while little Johnson, the Englishman, caught up a long hand-spike, bigger than himself, and with it knocked down two of the Haytians to his own cheek.

"Madame Boisson, meanwhile, was screaming for her husband, her brave Hercules, to come to the rescue; but the 'brave Hercules' had locked himself in his cabin, as my little Elsie told me afterwards; for fortunately the poor child was not feeling well and I had desired her to remain below during the hot noontide heat of the sun; and, she also said, she could hear him crying and sobbing and calling down imprecations on everybody, including 'my wife' and himself for both being in such a position, Madame Boisson hammering at the door all the time, and, after finding he would not reopen to her appeal for help, apostrophising him as a coward! a pig!

"During this time we were pretty busy on deck, the second mate, Basseterre, and another French seaman, who was with him in the crossjack yard, having come down from aloft to our assistance. Captain Alphonse got his revolver out, when he and Don Miguel and I giving them a volley altogether, and the others supporting us with what weapons they had, we rushed the rascals off the poop quicker than they came up, the lot returning to the forecastle along with the 'marquis,' who, I was very glad to see, had cut his face considerably by his tumble.

"Captain Alphonse thereupon, seeing the coast clear, sang out for Housi, his second officer, and the boatswain, who he thought were away forward, to come up aft and join us, so that we might all be together, but instead of these men, Cato, my own black servant ran up the poop-ladder and told us in much trepidation that Monsieur Housi, with the boatswain Rigault and one of the French sailors, were imprisoned in the forepeak, while the two white sailors and the steward were hard and fast in the main hold, whither they had descended to get some provisions, the mutineers slipping on the hatchway cover over them, on the 'marquis,' that devil, giving the signal!"

"Ah, my poor fellows!" cried Captain Alphonse. "That, then, means there are only ourselves left. Good heavens! What shall we do?"

"Why, hoist a signal of distress," I suggested at once. "We are near Bermuda, on the cruising ground of the English men-of-war; and as these scoundrels have no friends or assistance, I daresay we'll be able to hold out here until some vessel bears up to our aid!"

"'Good, my friend,' replied Captain Alphonse, who with Basseterre, the second mate, and Don Miguel, remained to keep guard with their revolvers, both seated on top of the skylight hatchway, which commanded the approaches to the poop by way of the ladders, while I, with the last of the white sailors, ran aft. Then I called out, 'Hoist the French flag!'

"I knew that the locker with the flags was in the wheel-house, close to the taffrail, and there being no one to interfere with us, the negro who had been attending the helm having bolted the moment I pulled out my revolver at the first alarm, the traitor flying to join the other mutineers, my sailor and I soon ferretted out an old ensign, the Tricolour; when, binding it on to the signal halliards, we hoisted it about half-way up the peak of our spanker, whence it could best be seen by a passing ship."

"Did you know what that signal meant, colonel?" said Captain Applegarth in an inquiring tone, "that you had a death aboard, eh?"

"Si, senor. Oh yes, of course," repeated the colonel, correcting himself almost as soon as he spoke for his lapse again into the Spanish tongue. "There were half a dozen dead Haytians there, whom, by the way, Captain Alphonse and I presently pitched over the side! But, beyond that, sir, I believe all sailors regard a flag hoisted in that way, 'half-mast high,' as it is termed, to be a signal of distress!

"Without doubt, sir," answered the skipper. "I was only testing your nautical experience, that's all!"

"I am glad then, I did not make a blunder about it, as I thought I had done from your question," returned Colonel Vereker, quite seriously, not noticing that the skipper was only poking fun at him in his way and did not mean anything beyond a bit of chaff. "Well, sir, after hoisting the flag the French sailor and I seized the opportunity to lash the helm amidships so as to keep the Saint Pierre on her course, for we could not spare him to do the steering, and Captain Alphonse and Don Miguel, with the plucky little Englishman and myself, had all our work to do watching the mutineers with our revolvers!

"After a time, as the rascals kept pretty quiet in their part of the ship, and as my poor little daughter Elsie had been a long time now shut up below, I thought she might come up on the poop to get a breath of fresh air while it was still light; there being no fear of the blacks assailing us again so long as they knew we could see to shoot straight and had our weapons handy!

"So I sent Cato down to fetch her on deck, and she came up the next moment, all full of curiosity and alarm, as you may imagine, the little one wanting to know what had occurred; for the reports of my revolver and the subsequent stillness had occasioned her great fright, Madame Boisson and her husband, the 'brave Hercules,' being but poor comforters.

"All at once, while I was explaining to her about the flag, telling her that we had hoisted it in order to summon any passing ship to our assistance, she suddenly went to the side and looked over the bulwarks towards the north.

"The next moment she gave vent to a cry of joy.

"'Oh, my father,' she suddenly exclaimed. 'You have only just hoisted the flag in time. There's a big steamer! Look, look! there it is, and coming up to help us!'

"'Where? where? Where is it? I cannot see it. Nonsense, Elsie; you are dreaming, my child!' I said, looking out eagerly to where she pointed, but could see nothing. 'There's no ship there, little one!' and I felt angry at the false alarm.

"'But, my father, you are wrong,' still insisted the child, as positive as you please. 'I can see the vessel there in the distance quite plainly. See how the black smoke comes puffing out of the chimneys.'

"I laughed at this.

"'Little darling,' said I, 'there was no ship, and there are no "chimneys" on board ships at sea. Sailors call them funnels, my dearest one.'

"She pretended to pout on my thus catching her tripping in her talk.

"'Well, my father,' said she, with a shrug of her shoulders, as is her habit sometimes, 'I may be wrong about the chimneys, but I am not wrong about seeing a ship. Why, my father, there she is now, coming closer and closer, and quite near; so near that I can see—yes, I can see—I am quite sure—a big boy there. Look, look, father, dear! There he is in front of the smoke. He has quite a pleasant face.'

"Elsie turned in my direction as she spoke, and, though I was still gazing all the while, I could see nothing, and I was vexed, very vexed with my little girl for her persistency in the matter.

"'Why, it has gone—quite disappeared!' she cried out the instant after, on rushing to the side and looking over. 'What does it mean? Why did she not come and help if she saw the flag?'

"'You have dreamt it, little one,' I replied shortly, as I had done before. 'It's a freak of the imagination, and you fancied it, you funny little woman.'

"But it was a curious incident, though, sir, was it not, at such a time, with our hearts all full of expectancy and hope?"

Captain Applegarth was greatly excited by the narrative, and so, it may readily be believed, was I.

He asked abruptly, "When did this happen? Tell me, colonel, at once. It is strange—very so!"

The other looked up with surprise, while Mr Stokes stared at him with wonder, and the Irishman opened his big blue eyes wide to the full.

"I have already told you, sir," replied Colonel Vereker very quickly. "As I told you before, it was the seventh of November—last Friday."

"Yes; but I mean what time of the day, sir?"

"Oh, I should think about five o'clock in the afternoon. Perhaps a little later, as the sun was going down, I recollect, at the time."

I could not restrain my astonishment at this.

"It must be the very ship I saw!" I thought to myself.

"Is the young lady slight in figure, and has she long golden-coloured hair hanging loose about her head, sir?" I eagerly asked, almost breathless in my excitement. "And, tell me too, did she have a large black Newfoundland or retriever dog by her side that same evening, sir?"

Colonel Vereker seemed even more astonished by this question of mine than I had been by his reply to Captain Applegarth the moment before.

"My brave young sir," said he, using this somewhat grandiloquent form of addressing me, I suppose, in remembrance of the slight service I had done him by swimming with the line to the drifting boat when we picked up him and his companion. "My little Elsie is tall and slight for her age, and her hair is assuredly of a golden hue, ah, yes! like liquid sunshine; though, how you, my good young gentleman, who, to my knowledge, can never have seen her face to face in this life, can know the colour of her hair or what she is like, I must confess that passes my comprehension!"

"But the dog, sir?"

"That is stranger still," remarked Colonel Vereker. "I had forgotten to mention that I brought with me on board the Saint Pierre from my old home at Caracas a splendid Russian wolf-hound, as faithful a creature as my poor negro servant Cato. His name is Ivan, and he is now, I sincerely hope and trust, guarding my little darling girl, as I would have done if I had remained with her, for not a living soul would dare to touch her with him there. Ivan would tear them limb from limb first. He is a large greyish-black dog, with a rough shaggy coat, and in reply to your enquiry, I must tell you he was on the poop of the ship, by the side of my child, at the very time that she declared she saw that steamer, which I, myself, could not see anywhere!"

For the moment I was unable to speak. I was so overcome at this unexpected confirmation of the sight I had seen on that eventful Friday night, though I had afterwards been inclined to disbelieve the evidence of my own senses, as everybody else had done, even the skipper at last joining in with the opinion of Mr Fosset and all the rest, save the boatswain, old Masters. Yes, yes; every one them imagined that I had dreamt of "the ghost-ship" as they called my vision, and that I had not seen it at all!

But this statement from the colonel absolutely staggered the skipper, and he looked from me to the American and back again at me in the most bewildering manner possible; the old chief, Mr Stokes, and Garry O'Neil staring at the pair of us with equal amazement.

"By George, the girl and the dog, the girl and the dog. Why, it's the very same ship, as you say, Haldane; it must be so, and, by George, my boy, you were right after all! By George, you were!" at length exclaimed the skipper in a voice, the genuineness of whose astonishment could not be doubted. "Colonel Vereker, I would not have credited this had any one told it me and sworn to the truth of it on oath, but the proof is so strong that I cannot possibly disbelieve it, sir, though it is to my mind a downright impossibility according to every argument of common sense. It is certainly the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to me, and the most wonderful thing that I have ever heard of since I have been at sea!"

"Heavens!" cried the other. "But why? You surprise me, sir."

"Aye, colonel," rejoined the skipper. "But I am going to surprise you more. Now don't laugh at me, and don't think me an idiot and gone off my head, sir, when I tell you that this lad, Dick Haldane, here, whether by reason of some mirage or other I cannot tell, for it's beyond my understanding altogether, distinctly saw your ship with her signal of distress, and says he saw your little daughter with the dog by her side, aboard her, last Friday night at sunset. More than that, sir, he described to me at the time, exactly as you have done now, colonel, everything he saw, even to the very hue of the young girl's hair and the colour and texture of the dog's coat! It is altogether marvellous and, indeed, incredible!"

"Well, but—" said Colonel Vereker slowly, and pausing between every word as if trying to comprehend it all. "Why, how is that, sir?"

"Your ship, colonel, must have been more than five hundred miles away from ours at the time—that is all!"



CHAPTER TWENTY ONE.

BUTCHERED.

"Dios!" exclaimed Colonel Vereker. "Are you—certain of this, sir?"

Captain Applegarth shrugged his shoulders.

"Ask Mr Stokes here and your doctor there, Mr O'Neil, whether they did not hear Haldane's yarn about your ship five days ago, sir, before we ever clapped eyes on you," said he in a slightly aggrieved tone, as if he thought his word was being doubted. "Why, colonel, this poor lad was becoming the butt for everybody's chaff on board on account of it!"

"Gracious!" cried the other. "This is indeed really wonderful!"

"Aye, colonel, and more than that! But for the lad seeing this mirage, or whatever else it was, and telling me about it, we would not have gone off our course in search of you to render what assistance we could— yours being the 'ship in distress' Haldane reported having sighted to the southward. This divergence from our track, sir, took us into the very teeth of the gale which we encountered later on, that same evening, and conduced to our breaking down."

"Faith," put in Garry O'Neil, "that's thrue for sure, sor!"

"This breakdown of ours, colonel, led to our drifting to the southward into the trail of the Gulf Stream," continued the skipper, following up the strange sequence of events as they occurred, one by one. "Your ship—the real ship, I mean—was drifting north and east meanwhile, carried along by the same current, and then it came about that, although apparently going in opposite directions and acted on by different causes, our tracks crossed each other on the chart last night—at least, that is my opinion."

"I see, I see," cried Colonel Vereker quickly, interrupting him, and in a state of great excitement. "Thank God! But for that you would never have sighted our drifting boat and picked up myself and poor Captain Alphonse! Thank God, Senor Haldane saw us in that mysterious way. It seems to have been an interposition of heaven to warn you of our peril and bring you to our aid!"

"Just so, colonel; that's what I think myself now," said the skipper impressively, taking off his cap and looking upward with a grave reflective air. "Aye, and I thank God, too, for putting us in the way of helping you, with all my heart, sir!"

"Ah!" observed old Mr Stokes, who had remained silent the while. "The ways of Providence are as wonderful as they are mysterious!"

There was a pause after this in our conversation which no one seemed anxious to break till Garry O'Neil spoke.