This barricade had, however, been now partly removed, probably to allow of little Elsie's exit, and, quickly pitching the remaining obstacles aside, the three of us managed to squeeze ourselves inside the cabin, which was in such a state of confusion, with the long table overturned to serve as a breastwork for the gallant defenders and the settees and lockers turned away from the deck, as well as the glass of the skylight all smashed, that it looked like a veritable "Hurrah's vest" as we sailors say.

On a pile of cushions belonging to the lounge aft—the only piece of furniture that was left intact in the place, I believe—lay the brave men who had stubbornly held the ship to the last against the mutineers.

All were covered with blood and blackened by powder and so utterly worn out from fatigue in battling throughout the night and day that had almost elapsed since the colonel had left them, besides being crippled by the injuries they had received in the fray, that they hardly moved on our entrance, though one—a little chap whom I judged to be the Englishman spoken of by the colonel and Elsie—brightened up as we bent over him, a look of satisfaction and content stealing over his drawn and haggard face, as we cauld see from the rays of the setting sun streaming down through the broken skylight, exposing the utter desolation around.

He was the first to speak.

"I'm afeard you've come too late for us, sirs," said he slowly, with a deep groan of pain. "Those damned niggers have done for me, one of them giving me a dig of his knife in the ribs—did it through the doorway just now, when the fight were nearly over. You might do summat, though, for my companions here, who stood up to the darkies like Britons, in spite of them being only Frenchmen, though that ain't their fault. But how's the little girl? I hope she's all right. Tell her father, if he's alive—and I feel almost sure I heard his voice awhile ago up on deck—tell him that I kept my word, sirs, and fought for her to the last. I think I'm dying now, and—I—must—leave—off. But listen while I've a little breath, for I want to say something. My name is Robert Johnson, and my old mother, God bless her, lives at Camberwell, near London. You'll find all my papers in my pocket and a letter with the address, and if any of you chances to be going back to England as I were, worse luck, you'd be doing a favour by seein' her and letting her know why I didn't turn up home this Christmas as I promised her. I know you will. I'm going now, I'm so tired. Good-night to you all—good- night—good—"

As he said this he gradually fell back on the cushion he was resting against, and his eyes closed.

Captain Applegarth and I both thought him dead.

Not so, however, Garry O'Neil.

"Sure, he's ounly fainted," exclaimed the Irishman; "run, Dick, me bhoy, an' say if there's sich a thing as a stooard's pantry knockin' about anywheres in those latituodes, wid a dhrop of water convanient. That an' a taste of this aqua vitae here, which, the saints be praised, I took the precawshin to put in me pocket afore we shtarted on this blissid and excoitin' skermoish, this will very soon fetch back a little loife into the plucky little beggar ag'in!"

I had no difficulty in finding the steward's pantry and a breaker of water, with a tin dipper attached, speedily carrying some back and, by our joint ministrations, and with it bathing his face and hands and pouring some between his lips, little Mr Johnson at last opened his eyes and began to breathe.

After a time and a certain amount of patience he opened his eyes wider, and became conscious, and later on was induced to swallow down a mixture out of his own special bottle that Garry carried, and we were at last delighted to see quite a broad grin spread over his round good-natured and somewhat comical face.

"By Jingo, sir!" said he, after a pause and rather long silence, and after he had drained off the last drop of the elixir, with a sigh of gratitude that evidently came from his heart, "you've saved my life this time, and no mistake. I never thought I should taste a drop of good brandy again in this world."



CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.

WE PART COMPANY.

While Garry O'Neil and I were attending to the two French sailors who, though they had been a good bit knocked about in the course of the protracted struggle, were not seemingly very seriously hurt, suffering more, indeed, from want of proper food and rest than from the slight wounds they had received, we heard loud cries and a sort of dull moaning that appeared to proceed from the after part of the saloon.

Going thither at once, Captain Applegarth knocked with his knuckles on the panel of the closed door of one of the larger state rooms, running athwart the ship from whence the sounds proceeded.

"Hullo, within there!" he shouted, "what's the matter? What's the row? Come out!"

A shrill scream was the only response to his inquiries.

"What's the matter?" repeated the skipper, speaking in a gentler tone. "You have nothing to fear. We're all friends here!"

The cries and confused noises continued, however, and the skipper thereupon resumed his knocking, this time more forcibly, and with his fists aided by a kick from his heavy boot against the lower part of the still closed door.

At this imperative summons the shrieking ceased, and we heard a feeble voice within, calling out in French— "Mercy! for the love of God!" we could distinguish amidst a plentitude of sobs and violent groans in a deeper key. "Ah! brave Haytians! Have pity, and spare our lives!"

"Hang it all, you cowards, we're not those cursed Haytians, and I wish you could have been left to their mercy! It is only what you deserve!" roared the skipper, infuriated and out of all patience at the Frenchwoman's mistake and her appealing in such terms to the murderous scoundrels, of whom we had made so summary an end. "We're Englishmen; we're your friends, I tell you, true-hearted British sailors, who have come to rescue you, so open the door!"

But Madame Boisson, who, of course, was his interlocutrice behind the door, remained obdurate.

"Ah! the false English," she cried, "down with the pigs!"

At this the skipper laughed grimly, and all standing near him were much amused.

"She's a good specimen of her race," cried the captain. "They always abuse other nations and cry out that they are betrayed when ill luck comes to them, instead of trying to help themselves, as we perfidious Englishmen do."

Finding it impossible to persuade her, though, to open the door of the cabin, which was bolted and barred within, the skipper sang out to me to go on deck and ask Elsie Vereker to come down and try what she could do, thinking that the obstinate prisoner would doubtless recognise the girl's voice and so, through her means, be made more amenable to reason.

No sooner said than done.

Up I went and down the companion-way. I returned anon accompanied not only by Miss Elsie, but by the colonel as well, Garry O'Neil, who hurried up the ladder after me with that intent, insisting on his coming below so that he could the better attend to his wounded leg, which had broken out again and needed fresh dressing, and after some little difficulty Garry got him down in safety.

Thanks to Elsie's pleadings, Madame Boisson at length capitulated, promising to come out of her retreat as soon as she had had time, "to make her toilet."

"By George!" exclaimed the skipper, overhearing this and turning with an ironical grin to the colonel, who had his leg upon a chair, and Garry bustling about him, busy with bandages, "she's a true Frenchwoman, as I said at the first. Fancy, after being imprisoned there in that stuffy cabin for four and twenty hours and imagining herself and husband might be murdered every minute by a lot of pirate scoundrels, thinking of nothing but titifying herself, instead of thanking God for their escape and rushing out at the very first opportunity, eager to be free. Strange creatures!"

"Heavens!" exclaimed the colonel, smiling at the other's outburst. "It is true, but they're all alike, and I've seen a good many of them, my friend."

Presently out sailed Madame Boisson, who I noticed was a middle-aged and well-preserved woman, attired in an elaborate dressing gown with a profusion of bows and ribbons fluttering about it, and with a good deal of pearl powder or some other cosmetic of that sort on her face, and her cheeks tinted here and there with—well, colour.

Despite her screams and hysterics, however, there was no trace of a tear in her twinkling black eyes, although her fat little husband, who ambled meekly in her train, betrayed signs of great emotion, his red face all swollen from crying, and otherwise looking like a whipped cur.

Madame made a most gracious salute to us all, and, glancing at me with a spice of coquetry, to which she was evidently not unaccustomed, was pleased to observe, that I was "un beau garcon."

In returning the skipper's polite bow she happened to notice the poor wounded sailors lying on the cushions by the companion, and the blood all sprinkled about—a sight at which she turned up her nose, declaring very volubly that the place was like a "pigsty," unfit for any lady to enter, and expressing her surprise at those "common seamen" being attended to and allowed to remain in the saloon, she having always understood that that apartment was only for "the use of the first-class passengers."

The skipper, who understood her well enough, as I did too, having learnt the language at a French school near Rouen, was very angry at her remarks.

"Those men," said he in his best Parisian, "are your own countrymen, all that are left of those who died to preserve the lives of you and your husband there, who ought to be ashamed of himself for skulking below while they were fighting on deck."

Monsieur looked foolish, but said nothing in reply to this. Madame sniffed, and flashed her glittering black eyes, as if she could annihilate him at a glance.

"My brave Hercules!" she cried indignantly, "be easy. You have been out in the Bois and have established your reputation as a hero and have no need to notice the insulting remarks of this Englishman. But for you," she added, turning angrily to the colonel, "this would not have happened."

"I? Good Heavens!" exclaimed Colonel Vereker, greatly astonished at her turning on him thus. "Why, it was I who did all in my power to prevent Captain Alphonse from allowing those cursed blacks on board the ship in the first instance, but you and Monsieur Boisson, both of you, persuaded him to the contrary."

"My God! dear Hercules, see how we are calumniated," said the irate Frenchwoman, rather illogically, turning to her miserable atom of a husband, who gesticulated and shrugged his shoulders in response, and looking over the skipper and Colonel Vereker as if neither existed, she went on to remark to Elsie, who, however, did not appear to relish very much her conversation or endearments, that, "some persons whom she would not condescend to name, were, of monsters, the most infamous and ungrateful—men, indeed, of the gutter—but that she, the little one, was an angel."

Here the skipper put an end to the interview. He had evidently seen and had enough of the Boissons, husband and wife, and, ascending the companion-ladder at the same time as Garry and myself, I heard him muttering to himself as he went along and just caught the following words: "To think—brave men—lose—valuable—save such—theirs—too dreadful. She frivolous—he—a—damned coward!" laying a rather strong emphasis on the last words.

We afterwards went down again, Garry and I, and managed between us to bring up little Mr Johnson, the brave fellow having picked up wonderfully after the attention we had given him, and the knife-thrust he had received from the negro was found to have only grazed his ribs, and he was anxious for fresh air, after his long imprisonment below, and to see and judge for himself how things were looking on deck after our scrimmage.

Here the light was waning and there was a good deal to be done.

"I think, Fosset," said the skipper to our worthy first mate, who had been ordering matters forward while the former had come aft, "we had better muster the hands first so as to know who's missing. I'm afraid several of our poor fellows have lost the number of their mess in the fight."

"Aye, sir, they have," replied Mr Fosset. "Poor Stoddart's gone, for one!"

"Poor fellow, I am sorry," exclaimed the captain with much feeling. "We couldn't have lost a better man, for he was about the best we had on board, poor fellow—a good engineer, a good mess-mate, and good at everything he handled, besides being the finest fellow that ever wore shoe leather. How did it happen?"

"He was knifed by one of those black devils, sir, as he led the boarders forrad!"

"Poor Stoddart! I am sorry to lose you! Well, there's no use crying over spilt milk, and all my words will never bring him back again. Mr O'Neil, just muster the men in the waist and let us know the worst at once!"

"Faith, ye're roight, sor; we'd betther count noses an' have the job over," returned Garry, sotto voce, singing out in a louder key to the survivors of the fray, who were grouped in the waist about the mainmast, where the remaining Haytians who had not been killed outright were tied up feet to the wrists, as the skipper had told Colonel Vereker when he came up. "Now all you Star of the Norths that are still alive, come over here to starboard; the chaps that are d'id, sure, can shtop where they are!"

The hands laughed at this Hibernian way of putting the matter to them, and answered their names readily on Garry proceeding to read out the muster roll from a paper he had drawn out of his pocket—all, that is, save those that had fallen, eight in number, including poor Stoddart, our energetic second engineer, and one of his firemen who had volunteered to swell the boarding party, as well as six of our best sailors amongst the foremast hands.

Of the rest of the crew four were badly hurt and a few slightly wounded. Spokeshave was one of these latter, having, unfortunately, the end of his nose—that prominent feature of his—cut clean off by a slash from a cutlass; but the majority, we were glad to find, mostly escaped unscathed.

Seeing old Masters all right, I thought of his morbid forebodings before we came up with the ship, and determined to take a rise out of him.

"I'm awfully sorry about the old bo'sun," I said with a wink to Garry, right behind his back. "He wasn't a bad seaman, but an awful old grumbler, and so superstitious that he funked his own shadow and daren't walk up a hatchway in the dark. Poor old chap, though, it's a pity he's dead; I shall miss him if only from not hearing his continued growling over things that might happen."

"Well I'm blessed!" cried old Masters, completely flabbergasted at this exordium of mine; "I never thought, Mister Haldane, to hear you speak ag'in me like that. I allays believed you was a friend, that I did."

I pretended not to see him, and so too did Garry O'Neil, "tumbling to my game," as the saying goes, while I went on with my chaff.

"How did he die?" I asked. "Was he killed at the first rush?"

"Faith, I can't say corrictly," replied Garry in a very melancholy tone of voice. "I'm afeard care carried him off, somehow or other, as it killed the cat, for he war the most disconsolate, doleful, down-hearted chap I ivver saw piping the hands to dinner. An' so he's d'id! Poor old bo'sun! we'll nivver see his loike ag'in."

"Lord bless you!" cried old Masters angrily, stepping up nearer and confronting us, "I'm not dead at all, I tell you—I tell you I'm not— I'm blessed if I am. Can't you see me here alive and hearty afore you? Look at me."

"Ah, it's his ghost!" I said, with an affected and tremulous start. "He told me, poor fellow, he felt himself doomed, and nothing could save him; and I suppose his spirit wants to prove to me he wasn't a liar, as I always thought he was, the old sinner!"

This was too much for Garry, and he couldn't hold in any longer, and both of us roared at Masters, who looked scared; and, though angry and highly incensed with us at first, was only too glad at its being but a joke, and not a fact that he was dead, to bear us any ill-feeling long.

We were horrified when we were told later on, while we were committing to the deep the corpses of those slain—negroes and white men impartially sharing the same grave beneath the placid sea, at rest like themselves, the breeze having died away again soon after sunset—that Etienne Brago and Francois Terne, the two wounded sailors we had left below with the Boissons, and little Mr Johnson and the colonel and Elsie of course, that these were the only ones left of the thirty odd souls on board the Saint Pierre when she sailed from La Guayra a fortnight before!

After all the bodies had been buried in their watery tomb, not forgetting that of poor Ivan, who we all thought merited an honoured place by the side of his biped brethren of valour—well, after all this had been done the skipper had the pumps rigged and the decks sluiced down to wash away all traces of the fray.

A council of war was then held between us all on the poop, the skipper of course presiding, and the colonel coming up from the cabin to take part in the proceedings, as well as old Mr Stokes from our ship, where he had remained attending singlehanded to the duties of the engine-room, denying himself, as Garry O'Neil remarked, "all the foin of the foighting!"

This conclave had been called for the purpose of deciding what was to be done with the Saint Pierre and the captured black pirates, from whom we had salvaged her, and without much deliberation it was pretty soon decided, on the colonel's suggestion, to send the ship to her destined port, Liverpool, taking the negroes in her, so that they could be tried before a proper court in England for the offence they had committed. "It's of no use your fetching them up to New York," said the colonel, "for though I'm an American myself and am proud of my nationality, I must confess those Yanks of the north mix up dollars and justice in a way that puzzles folk that are not accustomed to their way of holding the scales."

The skipper was of the same opinion as Colonel Vereker; so, the matter having been settled, a navigating party was selected to work the Saint Pierre across the Atlantic, with Garry O'Neil as chief officer. The skipper was unable to spare Mr Fosset, and Garry was all the more fit in every way for the part, as he would be able to look after the wounded French sailors, who would naturally go in the ship as they were the principal witnesses against the blacks on the charges that would be brought against them of "piracy on the high seas."

It was dark when all these details were finally arranged, and all of them went back aboard on our vessel for rest and refreshment, the colonel and his daughter, of course, accompanying us.

Madame and Monsieur Boisson, however, could not be made to leave the ship, saying they would not do so—Madame, that is, said it, and the brave Hercule, following her lead as usual, "would not leave," said she repeatedly, "until they once more touched terra firma," and not wishing they should be starved for their obstinacy, the skipper ordered Weston to look after the happy pair and provide them with food at the same time as he did the wounded and prisoners.

The two vessels remained for the night, still lashed alongside for better security, all hands being too tired out besides to be able to do anything further beyond "turning in" and getting as much rest and sleep as they could after the fatigue and excitement of the day.

Next morning at sunrise Garry O'Neil went back to his ship with his crew of eight men—all the skipper was able to spare him—and by breakfast time they had made her all atauto, bending new sails, which they found below in the forepeak, in place of the tattered rags that hung from some of the yards, and otherwise making good defects, preparing the vessel for her passage home.

We were all sorry to part with Garry even for the short period that would elapse before he would rejoin the old barquey, for he was the life of all us aboard; but the same regret was not felt for Master Spokeshave when we saw him go over the side to accompany the Irishman, the skipper having so decreed, as his assistant navigator, the damage to his nose not necessarily affecting his "taking the sun," though it might interfere with the little beggar's altitudes of another character.

By eight bells all the details necessary under the circumstances were satisfactorily arranged, including the transfer of the effects belonging to the colonel and Miss Elsie, these two preferring to voyage with us, unlike their whilom passengers, the Boissons, who remained in their old quarters, going with "Captain Garry," as we all dubbed our mess-mate on his promotion to a separate command; and half an hour or so later a splendid breeze just then springing up from the westwards and flecking the still blue water with buoyant life, the two ships parted company amid a round of enthusiastic cheers that only grew faint as the distance widened them apart, the Saint Pierre sailing off right before the wind, with everything set below, and aloft, across the ocean on her course for Saint George's Channel, while we braced our yards sharp up and bore away full speed ahead in the opposite direction, bound for New York, which port we safely reached without further mishap four days later.



CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN.

I GO TO VENEZUELA.

"You'd better stick to us," said the skipper to Colonel Vereker, who talked of taking the next Cunard steamer, which was advertised to leave on the morrow, as the Star of the North was being berthed in our company's dock on the East River. "I'm only going to stop here long enough to discharge our cargo and ship a fresh one; which is all ready and waiting for us; and then, sir, we'll 'make tracks,' as our friends the Yankees say, right away over the 'herring-pond' to Liverpool as fast as steam and sail can carry the old barquey. Better stick to us, colonel, and see the voyage out."

"All right, Senor Applegarth," replied the colonel, who could not drop his Spanish phraseology all at once, though otherwise gradually returning to his and our own native tongue and becoming less of a foreigner in every way, "I will return with you."

Both were as good as their word, he and little Elsie coming home with us, and the skipper making the passage from Sandy Hook to the Mersey in eight days from land to land, the fastest run we had ever yet achieved across the Atlantic, whether outward or homeward-bound.

But, quick as we were, the Saint Pierre managed to reach Liverpool before we did, the pilot who boarded us off the Skerries bringing the news that she had gone up the river a tide ahead of us.

This piece of intelligence was confirmed beyond question by Garry O'Neil coming off in the company's tug that sheered alongside as we dropped anchor in the stream later on, midway between the Prince's landing-stage and the Birkenhead shore, the manager of our line being anxious to compliment the skipper on his successful rescue of the French ship, the percentage on whose valuable cargo for bringing her safely to port, and thus saving all loss to the underwriters, would more than repay any damage done for the detention of our vessel when engaged on the errand of mercy and justice that took her off her course.

In addition likewise to the thanks of the company and the underwriters, the skipper was also presented with a handsome gold chronometer watch by the committee of Lloyds, besides participating in the amount awarded by the charterers of the Saint Pierre for the salvage of the ship, though in this latter apportionment it was only fair to mention that we all shared, officers and crew alike, I for my part coming into the sudden possession of such a tidy little sum of ready money that I felt myself a comparative millionaire.

When talking with Garry, whom it is almost needless to say all hands were glad to see again, the men cheering him lustily as he crossed the gangway from the tug, he told us that though otherwise they had had a fairly pleasant voyage after parting company with us off the Azores, the Boissons gave him a good deal of trouble.

Madame, he said, worried his life out by "making eyes" at him when he went below at meal-times, while on deck he was never safe for a moment from her embarrassing attentions unless, in desperation, as he was often forced to do, he went aloft to get out of her way.

"Faith, an' sure, that warn't the worst of it nayther," complained Garry in his humorous way. "Though the vain, silly ould crayture bate Banagher for flirtin'—an', indade, bates ivviry other of her sex, God bless 'em, that I've ivver clapt eyes on yet—that quare little Frenchy chap, her husband, he, the little sparrow, must neades git jallous, an' makes out it's all my fault, an', belave me, a nice toime I had o' it altogether. At last I said to him, afther havin' been more than usual exasperated by him, 'If you want to foight me, begorrah, ye can begin as soon as you loike,' at the same toime showin' him me fists."

"Ah, non, non, mon Dieu, non, note yat vay!" sez he, joompin' away from me whin he caught soight o' me fists. "I was mean ze duel and ze rapiere."

"Not me, faith," sez I. "If it's duellin' ye want you'll have to go to another shop, Monsieur Parleyvoo, for it ain't in my line. Allow me to till ye too, Monsieur Boisson, that if ye dare to hint at sich a thing ag'in whilst I'm in command of this ship, the ounly satisfaction ye'll ivver have out of me in the rap-here way will be a rap on the h'id wid this shtick of moine here, you recollict, joist to thry the stringth of y'r craynium, begorrah! Faith, that sittled the matther, the little beggar turnin' as pale as a codfish and goin' below at onst, lookin' very dejecthed an' crestfallin. He nivver s'id another word afther that to me as long as he remained aboard, nor did Madame trouble me very much more wid her attenshions. On the contrary, bedad, from the day this happened till yestherday, whin she wor set ashore at the landing-stage yonder, she'd look moighty saur at me if we chanced to mate on deck— aye, faith, as saur as a babby that's been weaned on butthermilk."

"Why," inquired the skipper, when we had both a good laugh at Garry and his account of the Boisson episode, "have they left, then, the ship for good?"

"Faith, yis, sor, bag an' baggage, the blissid pair of 'em, an' moighty pleased I wor to say the backs of 'em!"

"But how about the trial of those black devils, those pirates, then; won't they be required as witnesses against the murderers?"

"No, sor," replied Garry. "The polis officers that came aboard whin we got into dock sid they didn't want monsieur nor madame neither, as they didn't know a ha'porth of the jambolle, worse luck, they bein' below all the toime. The magistrates think the two French sailors, who're goin' on foine by the same token, and the colonel, all of whom were on deck an' saw everything that went on, would be sufficient witnisses aga'n the Haytian scoundrels."

"Oh!" said the skipper, "have these men been brought up before the magistrates?"

"Aye, yestherday afthernoon, sor, an' they've been raymanded, whativer that may mane—it ought to have been rayprimanded, I'm thinkin', an' a cat-o'-nine-tails, if they had their desarts—till next Tuesday! The magisthrates belayvin' the ould Star of the North wid you, cap'en, wid the colonel aboard, to give ividence ag'st the mutineers, that they wouldn't be in from New York afore then, not knowin' what the ould barquey could do in the way of stayming as you an' I do, sor, an' that she'd arrive, faith, to-day!"

All happened as Garry O'Neil informed us, the Haytians and mutineer blacks of the Saint Pierre's crew being brought up again before the magistrates the week following our arrival home, when, after hearing the additional evidence against them given by Colonel Vereker and the skipper, the six black and mahogany-coloured rascals were committed for trial at the next assizes, which we were told would not be held for another month, on the charge of "piracy and murder on the high seas."

The colonel took advantage of the interval that would necessarily have to elapse before his presence would again be required in court to escort Miss Elsie to Paris, and place her under the care of the sisters at the convent at Neuilly, where, I think I told you before, he said her mother had been brought up and educated; while the skipper and others of us belonging to the Star of the North, being compelled to remain within handy reach of the authorities, in case our presence at the trial might be required, the opportunity was seized to lay the old barquey up in dry dock and give her a thorough overhaul within and without, though the engines, as proved by our rapid passage here, were none the worse for our breakdown in mid-Atlantic, thanks to the skill and exertions of poor Stoddart and the rest of old Mr Stokes' staff.

Most of us in this way got a short holiday while awaiting the assizes, which I spent with my mother and sister, taking home with me the money I had been awarded as my share of the Saint Pierre's salvage, which had made me fancy myself a temporary Croesus.

Alas, though, the sum, large though it was for a young fellow to find unexpectedly in his pocket, went but a very short step in satisfying the rapacious wolf I found at my mother's door when I reached the little cottage, where she lived with my sister Janet, in one of the suburbs of Liverpool.

A bubble company, whose directors had all been selected for their religious bias rather than their business qualifications, burst at one fell coup, almost in the very hour of my return home, dissipating into thin air, as the Latin poet has it, all the savings of a lifetime which my mother had invested in the swindle—the provision left behind by my father, when he died, for her use, and the subsequent benefit of my sister and myself. The devout rogue who had "managed" the concern to his own worldly interest and that of his fellow religionists, carried on the same, so they said, in a pious and eminently "Christian way," no doubt, respected alike in the eyes of God and men, according to the loudly-voiced tenets of the particular sect, to which he and his co- directors mostly belonged; but he managed, all the same, to carry off to a remote and friendly land outside the pale of international law, and where dividends need no longer be paid to clamorous creditors, a considerable amount of portable property of a valuable nature, amongst which, probably, was our inheritance, my mother's capital!

Under these circumstances it behoved me to consider how I could best aid my poor mother and sister, then left suddenly destitute through no fault of their own.

Fortunately, I had the means ready at hand.

In our constant association on board the Star of the North after his rescue from the drifting boat, in which he greatly exaggerated the help I was able to render him, Colonel Vereker was kind enough to notice me much more than my subordinate position on board would have seemed to warrant; and in a conversation we had together during the voyage home from New York, after asking me what my prospects were, he made me an offer to accompany him back to Venezuela on his return, promising me, should I accept, a good salary to start with, and a fair chance of ultimately making my fortune.

Loving the sea and my profession, however, with all a sailor's love, besides being attached to my old ship and her officers, I felt no inclination then to give up what I had learnt to look upon as my legitimate calling, and turn landsman; so, although I had the highest admiration for the colonel, coupled with more than a liking for his young daughter, between whom and myself there seemed such a mysterious sympathy on the evening of my sighting the Saint Pierre, when the captain declared we were some hundreds of miles apart, I reluctantly and, so it seemed to me, ungraciously, declined his proposal, telling him I preferred "sticking" to the skipper and the old barquey!

But the colonel very kindly would not take my refusal at first as final; and, when setting out for Paris to take Elsie to her convent school, she taking leave of me with many tears and assurances that under any circumstances she would always remain mio amiquito (my little friend) pledging herself, too, to be, if allowed at the school, a constant correspondent if I would write to her sometimes to let her know where I was. Well, the kind, good-hearted man, taking, as he said, a deep interest in my welfare for Elsie's sake as well as for my own, assured me that he would keep his generous offer open until the period arrived for his ultimate departure for South America, on the termination of the trial of the Haytian pirates and their mutineer accomplices.

So, recollecting all this, in my hour of need, I naturally turned to the colonel and told him of my trouble on his return to Liverpool for the assizes, at which, by the way, the black scoundrels and their allies were sentenced to five years' penal servitude, the judge regretting his inability to impose a heavier punishment from the fact of proof being wanted of the active participation of the prisoners in the atrociously cruel murder of Cato and the other diabolical work perpetrated on board the ill-fated ship.

We were all glad when this matter, with the examination and sickening details that it entailed, was finally settled, and we were at liberty to go where we liked.

Colonel Vereker more than justified my confidence in him.

"Heavens! my boy, you must and shall be as my son," he said, wringing my hand in a grip that I knew would be faithful unto death. "Come with me and I will make a man of you, and a rich one, too, Dick Haldane!"

"But how shall I manage about my mother and sister, sir?" said I hesitatingly. "How shall I manage about them during my absence?"

"You can make over your salary to them, for you will not want anything while at Caracas, as you will live with me as my private secretary," he replied, with another hearty shake of my hand. "The money shall be paid to your mother regularly by my agent here, so that you need have no fears on that score as to her support. But I do not want you to decide such an important change in your life without proper consideration, and the advice of your friends, my boy. Go and consult Senor Applegarth, who I know is an old friend of yours as well as being your captain; and then, if he and your other friends advise your acceptance of my offer, and your mother and sister are willing to part with you—why then, Dick, you may consider the matter settled, and you, some day, will be very thankful you accepted my offer."

The skipper did not hesitate for one moment in giving his opinion, though, like most of my mess-mates, he was good enough to say how sorry he would be to part with me, and how he would miss me.

"Go by all means, my lad," said he. "By George! it's a chance that doesn't come twice in a fellow's lifetime, and you may consider your fortune as good as made!"

Mr Fosset and Garry O'Neil were equally enthusiastic.

"Faith, now, sor!" observed the latter, with a comical air of assured deference at my future dignified position, as he imagined it would be, "I hope ye'll remember ye'r humble ould fri'nd Garry whim ye're Prisidint of the Venezuelan Raypublic, mid a lot of yaller divvles for lackeys, an' so many dollars that ye won't know what to do wid 'em. Begorrah, it's wishin' I am, I stood in ye'r shoes, alannah, an' I wouldn't care for to call the Pope me ouncle, God bless him!"

Spokeshave, though, sneered at my success in gaining so good a friend as the colonel; but owing to the accident to the top of his nose, which being still bandaged, or rather court-plastered up, and not tending to add to his beauty, he was not able to turn it up and sniff in his former irritating way that always exasperated me so much.

As for old Masters, his face became the picture of woe when I informed him I was leaving the ship and the company's service.

"You mark my words, Master Haldane," said he in his most sepulchral manner, "many a one afore you has throwed up the sea, and what good has it done 'em? No good! Them that goes to sea oughter stick to the sea, that's what I says; and if they throws it up, though I hopes you won't, they allus live to repent it. I be truly sorry you be goin', and ah, Master Haldane, I sed as how summet 'ud come of our seein' that there blessed ghost-ship!"

"And so something has happened, bo'sun, and a precious lot too, my hearty!" said I, jokingly, as I stood on the gangway preparatory to going over the side. "But never mind that now, old shipmate! Good-bye to you, men, and thank you all for your kindness to me from the time I first sailed with you as a youngster."

I really believe I could see a tear in the old bo'sun's eye as he wished me farewell with the rest of them, the crew manning the rigging to give me a hearty cheer and "send off" that could be heard across the Mersey.

Thus it was that I took leave of the old barquey, and, my mother's consent having been obtained before I finally settled with the colonel, no further arrangements had to be perfected beyond obtaining and preparing my kit, and a hasty run to the cottage to pay a last visit to my old mother and sister Janet, and wish them farewell for a few years, when I looked forward to returning to England and finding them both well and happy, and in more comfortable and prosperous circumstances.

That same afternoon Colonel Vereker and I started off by train from Liverpool for Southampton, at which latter port we embarked in the outward bound West India mail steamer, sailing for Colon, en route to Venezuela.



CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT.

DURING SEVEN YEARS.

We reached La Guayra, and from thence Caracas, safely enough, in spite of the country just then passing through the acute stage of one of its periodical revolutions that had supervened on the top of an earthquake; which convulsions of nature and society are characteristic features of Venezuela, like as the chief products of its fertile soil are cocoa and "patriots," the latter being almost as great an article of export as the former, especially after a political crisis, and consisting of all sorts and conditions of men who, whether born subjects or alien intriguers, are all desirous of serving their natural or adopted mother country for a consideration!

Colonel Vereker was largely interested in an extensive gold mine in the interior, where he put me as his overseer.

This was not an unwise measure for his own sake, apart from any motive he had in advancing my welfare—his real reason for appointing me to the post; for, with the exception of the captain of the mine, a Frenchman, the majority of those employed were half-caste Spaniards and Portuguese, all of whom studied their several individual pockets rather than the interest of their employer, while the main body of workers were peons and mezites, bastard mulattoes, with a large intermixture of negro blood, who valued their own lives as little as they did the lives of those, with whom they had to deal.

I had plenty of work to do here, looking after all these scoundrels, having to keep my eyes open as much as possible in order to prevent wholesale robbery as far as I could, although it was utterly impossible to prevent petty pilfering of the ore on its way from the mine to Puerto Cabello, its general port for transhipment to Europe, to swell the treasure chest of the exiled.

However, by adopting the old Latin maxim, Suaviter in modo, fortiter in re, treating all without hauteur, which some of the insolent half-caste Spanish creoles affected, and yet keeping my revolver ready, with "my powder dry," so as to be prepared for any emergency, I managed to get along very well with the mixed lot I was set over, winning golden opinions from every one but a few of the worst characters.

It sounds as if I were boasting, but this is something for a young Englishman to be able to say in a country which, though it is the veritable El Dorado of poor Drake's dreams, and has possibly a future of wealth and prosperity before it when it comes under the rule of the Anglo-Saxon race—whether of ourselves, or of our cousins in Yankee land it does not much matter, for we are all of the same race and enterprising spirit—can be better described in respect of its present condition by a shorter and far more expressive word.

Amongst my other duties I had charge of all the colonel's voluminous correspondence, he having a mortal hatred to all letter writing in any shape or form, and in addition to my good patron's business communications, was entrusted with the task of despatching a lengthy epistle every other mail—they went fortnightly from La Guayra to France—informing Miss Elsie of our doings, the colonel himself adding the briefest of postscripts to his pequina nina, as he invariably termed her and always enclosing some remembrance for his little daughter, to show that his love exceeded any epistolary proof of the same, as well as a more substantial token of a handsome cheque for her maintenance and education, forwarded to the care of the mother superior of the convent.

Of all my manifold duties this was the pleasantest I had to perform, being as grateful as water poured on the parched soil of my exile amongst an alien people, antagonistic to me in everything, and with whom I had to shape a steady course, and preserve a "stiff weather helm," as sailors say, to avoid open rupture and assassination, the Venezuelese "sticking at nothing," especially when that "nothing" happened to be one whom, for some sufficient reason to their minds, they deemed an enemy and they chanced to be behind his back—and as I told you before, I steered clear of many enemies, but I could never learn to trust them as a people.

Yes, my happiest hours at San Felipe were spent in writing to little Elsie, who answered my own letters, as well as those I despatched on behalf of the colonel, with unvarying punctuality, holding to the promise she spontaneously gave in England when we parted on her going to school, at which time she had no idea of my ever accompanying her father to South America.

Similarly, the saddest task that could have been laid on my shoulders fell to my lot five years later, when the mysterious attraction by which I had been drawn towards her as a boy had grown into the most absorbing affection—a love that filled my heart.

And I had to write and tell her—I, who would cheerfully have laid down my life to save her a pang—to tell her of her dear father's death.

This occurred just as poor Colonel Vereker had arranged for my returning with him to the capital of the State, where another revolution—the sixth, I believe, since I had been in the country—had broken out, with the object, as the object of all these explosions of the mob invariably was, to depose the reigning party in power, and put the leaders of "the popular movement" for the time being, in the power of the deposed authorities.

The colonel, who had a good deal staked on the issue of the struggle, took up arms on the side of the cause he esteemed just—that to which the most respectable of the inhabitants to a man adhered—as he had taken up arms before for the party of law and order, amongst whom he was looked up to, not only as a skilled soldier and tactician, but a stalwart partisan, his very name being a tower of strength.

Alas! though, no opportunity was afforded him now to display his valour on the battlefield and lead his hosts to victory; for while we were en route for Caracas, a dastardly hound of a creole, whose blood was a mixture of the beast elements—part Spaniard, part Portuguese, part negro—well, this treacherous brute assassinated Colonel Vereker in the most cowardly fashion.

I was by and saw it all.

The vile murderer came up to my poor friend as we were resting in a posada on the road from San Felipe; and, while engaging him in an apparently friendly conversation respecting the political points of the rising, he suddenly stabbed the dear old man in the back with a long stiletto which he had hidden up his wide shirt sleeves.

Fortunately, I was there, and I had time to send a bullet through his brain from my revolver before the wretch could stir a yard from the spot; but this could not save my noble-hearted, kind, generous protector, a man who had been more than a father to me, and for whom I had the utmost affection and respect. No; the death of the scoundrel could not save him, for the wound the cowardly scoundrel had inflicted was mortal.

My dear friend and companion only survived long enough to confide his daughter to my care and give me his blessing ere he died, drawing his last breath in my arms, a smile on his face and dauntless to the end, as he pressed my hand and uttered the usual parting phrase he had learnt from his Spanish associates—"Hasta la manana—Good-bye till to- morrow!"

It was a long to-morrow, indeed!

After seeing the last tribute of respect paid to the colonel's remains, the gallant fellow being buried close to the posada where he had met with his untimely end, and a cross which I carved myself placed above his lonely grave, sheltered by a noble palm that stood erect, as he had done when living, a monument of nature's handiwork, I resumed my journey to Caracas, in order to carry out my lost friend's last directions.

The alcalde, who acted as the colonel's agent and was largely in his confidence, being an acquaintance of many years' standing, produced a copy of Colonel Vereker's will for my inspection, assuring me that this had been drawn up during his last visit to the State capital, while all his affairs were in the most perfect order, "the poor gentleman," as the alcalde expressed it, "being under the opinion that he would not have long to live," a presentiment of death I have often found many people to have had.

Generous and thoughtful for others to the end, he had not forgotten me in this his last testament, showing that the regard he had already displayed for my welfare was no mere temporary fancy!

On the contrary, much to my astonishment, he had bequeathed to me quite half his fortune—all his share, indeed, in the Gondifera mine—while all his realised property, which was invested in good English and American securities, out of the reach of the grasping hand of the hungerful Venezuelan patriots—all this he left to his daughter Elsie.

From a codicil, too, appended to the document, more in the form of a sacred charge than a legal instrument, "reading between the lines," I could perceive that the large-hearted man had fathomed the secret desire of my heart, though secret it evidently was not to him, loving Elsie as he did, albeit in a different fashion; for after enjoining upon me to regard his little daughter's interests even as he had studied mine, he added that, should fate bring us together in the future, as had happened so strangely in the past, his dearest wish would be gratified, for he had already learnt to care for me and to look upon me as his son!

Of course nothing of this was mentioned when writing to tell Elsie of the awful event and dreadful calamity that had befallen her, although later on, before I was able to return to England, when her education was completed and the good nuns wrote to me, as her father's executor, to say the time had arrived for taking her away from the convent unless she wished to change her religion and join the sisterhood, to both of which courses I was, of course, bitterly opposed, and, as you may imagine, was delighted when Elsie herself requested to be allowed to leave.

I must, however, have accidentally have shown my feelings towards her and have "let the cat out of the bag" in the letter I sent home to my mother, in answer to the last communication from Neuilly, asking her to take charge of my darling Elsie until I came home to win and claim her.

I imagined this from something that leaked out afterwards, and from the somewhat altered tone of Elsie's letters to me from the date of her leaving France to live with my mother; for, though affectionate enough, they had a certain little air of constraint about them, and though she spoke of various objects of interest to both of us, and of different persons whom she and I knew, and places she went to, she never by any chance ever mentioned herself, never after the letters she sent me containing the passionate outpouring of her inmost heart on receiving the news of her father's death, albeit all this she would feel perfectly certain was to me a sacred confidence.

Slight as the change was in her subsequent correspondence, I noticed it and it worried me, and determined me to have the matter cleared up as soon as I possibly could.

Meanwhile, however, I had to fulfil the colonel's last trust, and as I knew what his intentions had been in regard to the crisis in Venezuelan affairs at the time when an assassin's hand prevented him from acting the part he intended to play in the existing revolution, I thought I should be only carrying out his wishes in putting myself in his place, as far as it lay in my power to do so.

So, soon after coming to Caracas and settling the details of the colonel's last depositions, making my own will in my turn in case of accidents, though in what way is best known to myself, I went to the headquarters of the Government troops and joined the army of General Gomez.

Under this able leader I fought in several engagements that were fierce and sanguinary as all such fratricidal contests are, and ever have been in the annals of civil war, at San Sebastien, Carapana, Tarasca, and elsewhere, our guerilla struggle extending over the whole extensive country in almost every direction, where there was a town to sack or property to plunder, until at last the insurgent "patriots" were conquered and peace restored.

All this took a long time; and then, having had enough and to spare of fighting and bloodshed, and tired of mining too, I disposed of my interest in the Gondifera mine, and at last sailed for Europe, bidding a long adieu to Venezuela and everything belonging to it, my journey home being hastened by a somewhat tenderer letter than usual from Elsie, who had read a paragraph in the papers about my having been wounded at the battle of San Sebastien, though, of course, I had not mentioned anything about the affair to her or my mother, as it was a mere flea bite and of no consequence, and I feared to have alarmed them needlessly had I said anything about it in my letters to them at home.



CHAPTER TWENTY NINE.

HOME AT LAST!

Fellows who knock about the world sailoring and so on, cannot help coming to the conclusion that its compass is narrower than stay-at-home folk might be inclined to believe, for you can hardly stir a step without knocking across some one whom you previously imagined to have been miles and miles away, separated, perhaps, by an ocean from yourself.

I had scarcely stepped into the train from Southampton, bound Londonwards, en route for Liverpool, having only landed from the mail steamer that brought me direct all the way from Colon that very morning, when whom should I see looking at me from the opposite corner of the railway carriage but a big, bushy-haired, brown-bearded man whom I did not know from Adam.

"Faith," exclaimed this gentleman, after a moment's scrutiny, a broad grin lighting up his face and his eyes twinkling with a comical expression that would alone have made me recognise him, had I not heard his delightful, to me at any rate, Irish brogue, "ye're ayther Dick Haldane or the divvle!" stretching out both hands to grasp mine.

I was as pleased to see him, as may readily be believed, as the genial Irishman was to see me, I was sure, even without his telling me so.

"Well," said I, after we had pretty nigh wrung each other's hands off in friendly greeting, "and how are you all getting on aboard the dear old barquey? I want to hear about everybody."

"Begorrah, Dick, give me toime to recover me bre'th, me bhoy, an' thin I'll till ye ivverythin'," and then he continued in a bashful sort of way, unlike his usual off-hand manner, "I've lift the say for good, an' sit up for a docther ashore on me own hook, faith."

"Why!" I exclaimed in great surprise, "how's that?"

"Bedad, you'd betther axe y'r sister."

"What! my sister Janet?"

"Faith, yis; the very same little darlint of a colleen. Dick, ye spalpeen, jist lit me shake y'r fist agin, lad. I'm the happiest man in the wurrld!"

"Whee-e-e-e-eew," I whistled through my teeth. "This is indeed a surprise!"

Then it all came out, Garry telling a long yarn about his calling at my mother's house to ask about me some few months back, and meeting there Elsie, whom he had no difficulty in identifying, he said, as "the little girl of the ghost-ship," though she had grown a bit taller and was more good-looking than he remembered her at the time he saw her on board the Saint Pierre. But, good-looking as she was, he did not think her to be compared to my sister Janet, with whom he had evidently fallen in love at first sight and very deeply so, too!

On his subsequently declaring his passion, impetuous as usual, after a very short acquaintance, my mother insisted as a first step to entertaining his suit that he should leave the sea, as he had another profession by which he was quite capable of supporting a wife as well as himself, if he so pleased.

"Faith, and I wint an' bought a practis' at onst, havin' a snig little sum stowed away in the bank," continued Garry, "the savin's of me pay for the last five year an' more, besides that money we all got for salvagin' the French ship, sure, of which I nivver spint a ha'poth. But aven thin, Dick, ould chap, yer dear ould mother wern't satisfied, bless her ould heart. She sid that yer sisther an' mesilf wu'ld have to wait to git marri'd till you came home, ye spalpeen; an' not thin aven, if so be as how ye'd turn nasty an' disagreyable, an' refuse yer consint. Faith, ye won't now, will ye? or, bedad, I'll be afther breakin' ivvrey bone in y'r body, avic, an' thin have to plasther ye up ag'in."

To avoid such a terrible contingency I there and then gave my hearty consent to the arrangement he and Janet, with my mother's concurrence, had thus planned without my knowledge; although, really, if I had been inclined to grumble at not being informed previously of what now so unexpectedly transpired, I had only time and distance to blame, not the parties concerned, for the engagement was of so recent a date that the news of it, though on the way through the post, had not reached Venezuela when I left.

After I had answered a lot of Garry O'Neil's questions concerning myself and the time I had passed in South America, speaking, too, of poor Colonel Vereker, whose death he had learnt from my mother, I began again, asking in my turn all about my old shipmates, and, of course, his own also.

"Faith, the skipper is foine and flourishin'," he informed me, "an' the ould barquey as good an' as sound as ivver she was. Do you ricollict ould Stokes?"

"Of course I do," I said. "Is he still chief?"

"No, no; he retired a year ago or more on a pinsion which the company gave him for his long service; an' little Grummet—ye rimimber him?— well, he's promoted, sure, to ould Stokes' billet. The ould chap, though, is alive an' hearty, an' as asthamataky as ivver!"

"What's become of Mr Fosset?"

"Och, be jabbers! he's a big man now. He's a skipper on his own hook, jist loike Cap'en Applegarth. He's got the ould Fairi Quane, the sicond best boat but one to the line. D'ye ricollict that ould thaife of a bo'sun we had on the Star of the North?"

"Why, you must mean poor old Masters! I should think I did."

"That same, alannah. He wasn't a bad sort of chap, an' a good sayman, ivvry inch of him, though I used for to call him an ould thaife just 'for fun an' fancy'—as the old song says—well, he's lift the ould barquey an' gone with Cap'en Fosset in the Fairi Quane. But ye haven't axed me onst afther yer ould fri'nd Spokeshave! Sure, now, ye haven't forgot little 'Conky,' faith!"

"No, indeed," said I, amused at his query and the funny wink that accompanied it. "What has become of that spiteful little beggar?"

"Begorrah, ye'll laugh an' be amused, but he's marri'd to a wife as big as one of thim grannydeers we onst took in the ould barquey to Bermuda, d'ye rimimber? Faith, she's saix feet hoigh, an' broad in the b'ame in proporshi'n. They make a purty couple, bedad! an' they do say she kapes him in order. Do ye rickolict what an argufyin' chap Spokeshave was aboard?"

"I should think I did, indeed," replied I. "I think he was the most cantankerous little beast I ever came across in my life, either afloat or ashore!"

"Faith, ye wouldn't say that same now, Dick," rejoined Garry with much earnestness. "The poor little beggar's as make as a cat, for he daren't call his sowl his own!"

I asked after some of the other men belonging to my old ship, including Accra Prout, whom the colonel wished to accompany us to Venezuela, the mulatto refusing on the plea that, though he should always love his "old massa," he could not go with him for one insurmountable reason.

"Guess I'd hav' 'sociate wid dem tam black raskels daan thaar, massa, an' dis chile no like dat nohow. I'se nebbah 'sparrage my famerly by 'sociatin' wid niggahs, massa, nebbah. De Prouts 'long good old plantation stock, an' raise in Lousianner!"

This supercilious autocrat, it must be borne in mind, all the time being more than half a negro himself, though, for that matter, his heart was better and his disposition braver than many a white man who would have despised his coloured skin.

Some of the other hands about whom I inquired had left the old barquey and shipped aboard other vessels, so Garry told me; but at this I was not much surprised, sailors as a rule being fond of change and very unconservative in their habits.

With suchlike conversation my old mess-mate and I beguiled our long railway journey to Liverpool, which we reached the same evening, but before we had quite exhausted our respective questions and answers respecting everybody we had ever met or known during the time he and I had been to sea together.

My meeting with my dear mother and sister after so long an absence abroad can be well imagined, and so too my first interview with Elsie, whom I should hardly have known again, for how can I describe her beauty and grace, and though I had been prepared in some measure from accounts my mother had sent me, still they exceeded my expectations.

It would be impossible if I tried to picture her for "a month of Sundays," as Captain Applegarth used to say on board the old barquey when he thought a fellow spent too much time over a job.

So to make a long story short and to avoid all further explanation, it need only be added that one fine day last summer, when the trees were all green and leafy, and the flowers abloom, and happy birds filling the air with song, Elsie and I were married.

Garry O'Neil joined his lot with that of my sister at the same time, the two brides being given away respectively by the skipper, who managed to run the Star of the North home in time for the wedding, and old Mr Stokes, the chief engineer of the old barquey, who had only to cross the road, instead of the Atlantic, to get to our house, as he lived near to us now—he also was present. Captain Applegarth, who was a very old friend of my mother's and a kind one too, likewise, lived in a good substantial house surrounded by a lovely garden in our pretty, picturesque, old village.

To all whom it may concern, it may, in conclusion, be mentioned that this double-barrelled affair took place in the quaint, old-fashioned, non-ritualistic, semi-Gothic, and many-galleried old village church, of which so few remain now in England, situated close to our cottage, and where our widowed mother had, in our childhood, taught us to lisp our first prayers to heaven, our dead father resting in the ivy-grown and flower-adorned graveyard adjoining. The nuptial knot was tied by Parson Goldwire, as everybody called him in the neighbourhood, assisted by Matthew Jacon, the equally elderly parish clerk, without whose joint ministration on the occasion neither Janet nor myself would have believed the marriage ceremony had been properly solemnised, both my sister and myself standing in much awe of the learned divine and his inseparable "double," and holding to the creed that the austere pair represented the very quintessence of orthodoxy.



CHAPTER THIRTY.

A PRESENTMENT OF THE PAST.

After Elsie and I got "spliced," to use the old familiar language of my boyhood, the expressive argot of the sea, for which I shall always retain a passionate love, only second to that I bear towards my dear wife, we set off for the Continent, having determined to spend the happy period of our honeymoon abroad, like the fine folk of the fashionable world with whom, though, there is little in common between us, their ways otherwise not being our ways, nor their thoughts, ambitions, hopes or desires in any respect akin to ours.

First we went up the Seine to Rouen, where I had passed a couple of years of my school life, studying French and teaching the young scions of the Gallic race, with whom I was associated for the time the exigencies of football, as we play the game in Lancashire, varied by an occasional illustrative exhibition explanatory of the merits of la boxe Anglaise.

Time passed swiftly with so sweet and sympathetic a companion; our tastes were similar, both taking the greatest delight in ancient buildings and lovely scenery; the weather, too, was charming, and altogether we were as happy as two mortals can be on this earth.

Elsie and I saw all that was to be seen in the old city we first visited, which, in addition to its architectural beauties, should have a special charm for all Englishmen from the fact of the dauntless Richard Coeur de Lion having such an affection for the town that he bequeathed it his lion heart, and then we journeyed on through la belle Normandie, loitering here and there at those historic spots, woven into the life of our country, spots where artists of all nations love to linger.

We stayed anon at slow, sedate Caen, as still as the stone for which it is celebrated, and that furnished the building material of Winchester Cathedral; Bayeux, boastful of its antique tapestry; and Dol and Saint Servan, and away beyond, Sainte Michel, so like and yet unlike the like- named Saint Michael's Mount of Cornwall, in our own sea-girt isle that it might have been chipped out of the same block by its grand handycraftsman to serve as a replica; until, entering brighter Bretaigne, in the sunny south of France, where the landmarks of the past seem to stand out in bolder relief, we visited Nantes and other places of interest, and jogging on thence through Angouleme and Poictiers, halting a day at Poictiers to fight our Plantagenet battles o'er again, we finally ended our pilgrimage at Bordeaux.

At this wonderfully picturesque port, whose semi-ancient, quaintly modern aspect strangely attracted us both, we anchored awhile, remaining many weeks in excess of the customary limit of the traditional honeymoon, ours being an indefinite one and only to be completed we trust, when Elsie and I cease to breathe.

Late in the autumn, when the leaves had begun to turn russet and brown, and the air of a morning assumed a crisper and more bracing tone, telling us plainly as these signs tell that summer had fled for good and aye, and winter was coming by-and-by, we bade adieu to dear old Bordeaux, and taking a steamer there bound for the Thames, having had enough of railways and land travel, we started to voyage home by sea, my native element.

On the evening of the second day that had elapsed since losing sight of Pointe de Graves at the mouth of the Garonne, towards sunset, we had weathered Ushant and were shaping a course up Channel, north east, so as to clear the dangerous Casquettes rocks of Guernsey, when I noticed a large ship, close-hauled on the starboard tack, steaming inwards for the French coast, as if heading for Brest, her nearest port.

At that moment the tired sun, which previously appeared to linger above the horizon, uncertain whether to go or to stay, dipped suddenly as we were looking at him, a pale, yellow radiance succeeding the dazzling beams that had well-nigh blinded us, shining straight in our eyes, while the afterglow, mounting rapidly into the western sky, became more and more vivid each moment, two purple islands of cloud which floated across this refulgent background having the lower edges dyed of a rich crimson that seemed to set the sea on fire and tipped the spars and sails of the passing ship with flame.

She was flying the French Tricolor, and as our steamer went by, saluting her with a couple of blasts from her steam whistle in friendly greeting, the stranger vessel as a return, in accordance with the time-honoured rule of nautical etiquette always observed on such occasions, dipped her ensign.

This action, coupled with the similarity of the scene and its surroundings, the ship in the distance with her flag half on the hoist, the sunset glow, and the fact of my being on board a steamer then as now, brought back to my mind at once the incidents of that memorable evening of the past, more than seven years ago now, the vraisemblance between the two being simply astounding!

"Elsie, dearest Elsie!" I cried with a start, as the strange coincidence of the presentment struck me, the date being even identical. "Do you remember what day of the month this is, querida mia?"

"Why, of course, Dick, I do," she answered, nestling up to my side as if for protection, for we were sitting in a warm corner by the taffrail, just abaft the wheel-house, and screened from the observation of the rest of the passengers who were walking up and down the deck as usual after dinner. "Why, Dick, dear, it's the seventh of November, your birthday, you know; surely you have not already forgotten the little present I gave you this morning, my likeness in a locket for your watch chain, a miniature done by that clever artist at Orleans, and you told me you would always wear it for my sake. Dick, my husband, where is your memory?"

"No, my little one, I have not forgotten it," said I, kissing her, thinking she was going to cry at what she thought was forgetfulness on my part. "Here it is next my heart, like yourself," said I laughingly. "But, Elsie, alma mia, I was thinking of another anniversary, and a Friday evening too, to make it all the more wonderful! Don't you recollect now?"

"Oh Dick, my dear husband," she whispered, seizing my arm and gazing out over the taffrail at the ship, all ablaze now from the reflection of the sky, and nearly hull down to leeward. "I see, I see. What a strange coincidence. It is really wonderful!"

"It is, my darling," said I. "But it was more extraordinary still that you should have seen me that memorable evening, now more than seven years ago, and when I too saw the Saint Pierre with you on her deck, and more wonderful still, when the captain and some of the crew even to this day insist we were actually several hundreds of miles apart!"

"Ah, but you are near me now, though, thank God!" she cried, looking up into my face with the most charming expression of delight, causing me to be foolish in bestowing another little kiss on her upturned face. "I don't know how it was, but whether the ships were as far apart as the captain and the others say, or whether they were not, I did see your ship and you on her, as I told my dear, dear father at the time, and he himself did not believe it. Dick, dear, it must have been the gift of 'second sight,' as the Scotch people call it. There was a nun at the convent who had it, and could tell, so she said, when anything was about to happen to any of her family, though she couldn't predict events concerning persons who were not 'blood relations,' as she termed them. Don't be frightened, Dick, but I do think that I must really possess the same faculty!"

"Well, if that is the case, sweetheart," said I, "there must be some psychological affinity between us, and we are both endowed with the same weird gift, although the possession of the same has never been brought to the knowledge of us except on that one memorable occasion. That cannot be otherwise explained; but the fact of the two ships meeting afterwards may very readily be accounted for under the circumstances. The winds and currents of the ocean drifted them together, like as they did us, dear. Don't you think so?"

She did not answer for a moment, and, as our steamer speeded on her way, the glow in the sky gradually faded and darkness crept over the face of the sea, the flashing light of Ushant whirling its luminous arms round in rapid rotation, like some spectral windmill, away in the distance over our lee, where the French ship had long since disappeared.

Presently my Elsie, who had been looking down into the now gloomy depths alongside, musing over the bitter-sweet memories of the past, lifted her eyes to mine, glancing heavenwards.

"No, Dick, my dearest," said she, speaking at last, a certain hesitation and catch in her throat and a tear in the broken intonation of her voice, "Dick, I've been thinking and—and—it was a power greater than that of the winds and seas that brought us together. It was God!"

THE END.