as if this Atlantic Ocean were the English Channel, and there was a boat alongside ready to carry us to Plymouth or Dover.

"Yes," I answered, almost mechanically, for this was a detail indeed I found it hard to bend my mind down to; "throw what you have into your boxes and portmanteaux. I will wait for you here."

I

In five minutes I had stowed my possessions away, and then going to Broadwater's berth, drew a chart of the West India Islands from the bag, and returned with it to the cabin. hung over it eagerly, but to little purpose. Here was a stretch of islands starting from high abreast of the Florida coast and trending away down to Dominica, and which of them that green and gleaming spot of land out to starboard was, it was hopeless to conjecture. At a later date I might have put my finger upon it without much trouble, but Broadwater's charts were exceedingly old, and this one of the West Indies was complicated and disfigured with ink-marks and dim tracings like a school-boy's lessonbook. However there could be no doubt that this island fringed the thicker zone, that it was some eastward sentinel Cay, such as Rum, Cat, or Watling Island, and that civilization therefore bore from it as the sun set; so that our course, should we make shift to get away, must lie to the west and south.

Whilst I pored upon the chart, the companion was darkened by the figure. of a man, and the imperious voice of Mole rang down, "Are ye ready, Mr. Musgrave?"

"I am waiting for the lady," I replied.

I took the chart, and went to the foot of the companion-steps with it. "Mr. Mole," I said, "I have served you as honestly as it was possible to me in the navigation of this brig. It is surely not too much to ask you the name of the island over the side, that I may fix its position here," pointing to the chart, so as to be able to tell in what

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quarter of this bare sea the inhabited lands lie?"

"The name's of no consequence, nor its bearings either," he responded gruffly; "ten to one if it's wrote down on a chart that's brought us up with a round turn leagues and leagues clear of the coast we aimed at. Bear a hand, if you please, sir; the men are growing impatient."

I flung the chart down on the deck. It was a merciful thing I had not armed myself, for I was so mad just then it was as likely as not that I should have drawn upon the ruffian, and paid the penalty by being tossed over the side with a lump of holystone seized to my feet. Miss Grant came out of the cabin.

"I am ready," she exclaimed; "are we expected to carry our luggage on deck?"

I called to Mole, who still stood at the head of the companion-ladder, "You can send a couple of men for the boxes," and so saying, I conducted Miss Grant through the hatch.

They had lowered the boat and brought her alongside under the gangway, that was unshipped with steps over it. A few of the men eyed us askant as though ashamed, yet too curious not to steal a glance. The half-blood was one of these. I thought to myself "You beauty! Old Broadwater after all had the true gauging of your nature. If ever the gallows were put to a profitable use, it will be when you dangle from it, bleaching to the wind!" I stood with folded arms, my eyes rooted to the deck, Miss Grant by my side, neither of us speaking. Somehow the sense of bitter humiliation, induced by the thought of the sort of men they were who were using us thus, weakened the deep emotion of dismay with which I contemplated our abandonment upon that island. In a few minutes a couple of fellows arrived, bearing our luggage. There were four or five boxes and portmanteaux, along with a carpet-bag or two, some bundles of rugs, a hat-box, and the like; and I cannot express the horrible accentua

tion these prosaic things gave to our condition when one looked from them to over the rail at the line of white surf melting into the sparkling sand, with the greenery beyond, without a hint even of savage human structure to relieve the spirit of wildness which was swept into the heart of the lonely place out of the infinite ocean distance by the blue line of the horizon going past it on either hand. The two men who had brought the luggage dropped over the side into the boat; the boxes and portmanteaux were handed over. "Now, sir," said Mole. I was about to speak. clasped my hand. whispered, "come!"

Miss Grant "Hush!" she

Without a word I got over the side and helped her to descend. Suddenly some one cried out, "They're going ashore without anything to eat or drink."

"Vast with that boat, Jim!" shouted Mole.

There was a pause of a few minutes, then what was left of our private stores was passed over, along with a couple of beakers of fresh water and a jar of spirits belonging to the brig. "Shove off!" sung out Mole, "and bear a hand back, lads."

The two fellows threw their oars over, and the little boat, deep with the weight of the provisions, the luggage, and the four people in her, glided shorewards over the blue rippling surface. It happened strangely enough that the two men were of the three (the halfblood being the third) who had pulled us aboard the Iron Crown from Deal. They were both Englishmen, with a ginger-coloured fork of beard, a wrinkled skin, dingy with weather, and covered with knobs like the foot of a sea-boot. They never offered to speak to us, and strenuously avoided meeting our eyes, watching indeed the shearing of their blades through the clear water, as though indeed they were a couple of draper's assistants out for an hour's row. I held Miss Grant's hand, scarce conscious of what I was doing, though I afterwards remembered that she

cherished my hold of it, as though, with a woman's sympathy, she believed I drew courage from the pressure of her fingers, and for that reason let me have my way. Had we been going ashore to some bright town full of life and conveniences, whence in a day or two we should be able to start for Rio, she could not have shown herself more perfectly tranquil and easy. Once she looked behind her at the receding form of the brig, and breathed deep a moment, but the respiration was not a sigh. For my part I never turned my head; my eyes were fixed upon the island we were approaching, but with a feeling of numbness in my mind which rendered curiosity so languid that I gazed as if it were some passing scene in which I had no other concern than that of a spectator.

The men made for the nearest of the creeks, where the tender lift of the summer sea ran foamless to the shadows cast by the leaning trees on either side; the boat's forefoot struck the almost snow-white sand, which went winding up like a silver trail through the herbage, as you notice. it on the Mozambique or Natal seaboard, and the sailor in the bows jumped out. The spit of shore that formed the right-hand shoulder of this creek, looking seawards, shelved so flatly to the wash of the surf, that you saw the ocean spreading beyond it to the open sky, with the brig, her topsail still aback, barely leaning from the wind, her canvas and hull dark against the flashing water and the airy splendour beyond her. I threw a look at her now, and thought I could distinguish the tall figure of Mole, watching us through a glass which he steadied against a backstay. The seaman who remained in the boat handed out our luggage and provisions, parcel by parcel, to the other, who dragged or carried them a few yards clear of the water's edge. On this freight being discharged, I went into the bow and stepped ashore, Miss Grant springing easily from the gun

wale with her hand upon my outstretched arm. My inward rage and despair raised so great an aversion in me to the two sailors, that the mere being addressed by them would have been intolerable, and I was brisk in quitting the boat and in assisting Miss Grant, that they might have no excuse to order us ashore. But I had no sooner felt the ground under my feet than the conviction seized me that we were to be left without a boat! I had not thought of this. My consternation, ever since Mole had apprised me of the intentions of the crew, had been so great that such considerations as had entered my mind were, as I may say, instinctive only; by which I mean, that when a thought occurred to me it was accompanied by a sort of dull notion of its being true. I had-I know not why-reckoned in this mechanical, instinctive way upon our being furnished with a boat; had looked at the chart with that fancy in my mind, and concluded that when we left the island we must steer to the west and to the south; the unconsidered idea in me being that we should be provided with a boat. But now I understood that these men, to return to the brig, must go away with the boat, and that the girl and I were to be marooned to the very height of the meaning of the wild old buccaneering word!

One fellow sat ready to back water; the other, standing in the bows, was in the act of poling the little craft off to get her head seawards. I sprang in a bound to the very lip of the shoaling water.

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My God, men!" I cried, articu. lating with difficulty, so tremulously was my heart beating, so choking was the sense of constriction in my throat, "you do not mean to leave us here without any means of escaping? Lads, as sailors and Englishmen, show some pity. We are without a refuge!" I cried, almost hysterically, pointing inland; "without tools, without skill to contrive a fabric to escape from this

horrible solitude. Men, as you are English sailors

"Shove her off, Bill," growled the fellow in the stern. "Away with us! There's no use talking, and nothen can come of listening."

The boat's head sped round to the thrust of the oar; the two blades dipped-sparkled-dipped again; in a few moments she was clear of the creek, with the two rowers bending to their toil as though they were pulling for a wager.

I walked slowly to where Miss Grant was standing. I think for a little while I must have been off my head, as the common saying goes, for I recollect shaking my fist at the boat and the brig beyond, and heaping fifty curses upon the crew; until exhaustion, combined with the sweltering heat of the sun striking off the white dusty dazzle upon which we stood, came to my rescue and most mercifully silenced me. Miss Grant never spoke, never offered to interrupt or check me. allowed me to talk myself out, and then taking hold of the sleeve of my coat, quietly drew me to one of the trunks that stood under the shadow of a tree, upon which by a gentle movement of her hand she induced me to sit, and then extracting a little silvermounted bottle of refreshing scent from her pocket, she damped her handkerchief with it, and held it to my forehead.

She

I believe, had there been a tear in my composition, my eyes would have distilled it at that moment.

I broke from my spell of womanly weakness with a very passion of resolution.

"I will not ask you to forgive this failure in me," I cried, "heartily ashamed of myself as I am. A little patience, and I shall hope to prove myself worthy of so noble, so courageous a companion as you. I should not have suspected so much weakness in me. I cannot believe it a part of my nature. I have been unduly, most heavily tried. But so have you!" I exclaimed, finding more strength

coming to me out of the clear, serene beauty of her eyes than any cordial could have inspired. "Oh, we will make it well for both of us yet."

I sprang to my feet with a shake of my body that was like flinging away the whole miserable girlishness in me to the winds.

"Nay," she exclaimed, "keep your seat. I will sit by your side. We are not separated yet, Mr. Musgrave. I swear," she cried, lifting her eyes to heaven, "I would rather that this should have happened than that we should have had to endure another week of the horrible life we were leading in that cruel ship. We are not separated; but who knows that another week might not have found us somight not have found me alone?" She shuddered almost convulsively, then instantly rallying with an effort of will that was a miracle in its way for the energy of it, she added, in a changed, softened voice full of sympathetic sweetness and the melody of her tones, "How refreshing is the shadow of these trees! how soothing this stillness! We shall be able presently to think what is next and best to be done. Let us meanwhile wait and see what they intend to do," pointing to the brig.

CHAPTER XXIV.

WE VIEW THE ISLAND.

THE boat, creeping along the water with a spark of light to the rise of the oars on either hand of her flashing out as regularly as a revolving lantern, regained the brig, and in a few moments the little fabric mounted jerkingly to the davits; then round swung the topsail-yard, the royals mounted slowly to a taut leech, staysails were run aloft, and as the brig gathered way she fell off a point or two with her head to the east of south, the sea opening beyond her to the clear horizon.

We watched the vessel receding from us in silence; fathom by fathom she crept seawards, with her canvas trem

bling amid the swimming sultriness of the atmosphere, and a short polished tape as of shot satin dragging in tow of her rudder.

"Distance makes her beautiful," exclaimed Miss Grant, "but she has proved a most ugly ship to us."

"What do they mean to do with her, I wonder!" said I, watching the flickering of her high sails as she drew along a slope of the shore whose shoulder would in a moment or two conceal her.

"What do you suppose?" she asked. "As they have two good boats," said I, "they will probably scuttle the vessel when within convenient reach of some habitable place. It is clear that they know their whereabouts; and as Mole can use the log-line, the chart will give him the rest of the information he needs. They'll arrive ashore, or be picked up as shipwrecked mariners, earn a deal of pity, pocket some dollars in addition to what they may plunder from Broadwater's and the mate's cabins, then scatter, and never more be heard of. There! She has vanished!" I cried, rising.

It

I turned to survey the island. was partly coarse, thick guinea-grass, and partly soft, glittering, dusty sand where we were, with a group of trees winding to the place to which the sailor had dragged our luggage out of a line of palms marshalled for the space of a couple of hundred steps along the shore of the creek, with others opposite, both bending their ostrich like plumes to a combining of their boughs that formed a little cool green tunnel under which the bright shoaling water ran darkling, though it sparkled out green as emerald in the opening beyond, with a rounding at the extremity like the end of a thumb, where the white sand came down to it. The land went in a slight rise to a grove of trees that was almost a little forest in its way, with a twilight amid the greenery, spiked by hazy beams of sunshine striking down any opening the light could shoot through. Here and there a great red toadstool showed

like a small scarlet shield in the herbage. There was a clump of cocoanut trees standing isolated to the left of the grove. The white and flowinglike streams of quicksilver wound in paths through the grass in all directions, and made one wonder that the tropical vegetation one saw could take root and find nurture in such soil. The air, blowing softly from the southwest, was tremulous with the humming of many kinds of insects, and sweet with indefinable perfumes as of convolvuli and the passion-flower -a mingling of nameless aromas. I watched a frigate-bird come out from the mere black spot he made seawards, and glance like an arrow without stir of its wide and graceful pinions to some haunt of its own past the little inland forest. In places close beside us the long grass stirred, as though there were human fingers beneath, to the movement of a lizard perhaps green as a bottle, with eyes like rubies, and a flickering fork of tongue as if it was breathing fire; or maybe some dingy thing that might have been a land-crab could be made out creeping for a space through the fibres of the grass, and then falling motionless as though, mole-like, it had sunk deep out of sight.

"I hope there is nothing poisonous in the way of snakes hereabouts," said I, pulling out a stout stick from one of the bundles that lay strapped near a portmanteau, and very warily I strode into the thick of the herbage, beating right and left, keeping a bright look-out, and listening intently. I started nothing but a lizard or two, and one of those half-lobsters called soldiers, and a vast spider with a body as big as a crown-piece, magnificently marked like the leopard, with the hues so brilliant and shining that it was as good as beholding some marvellously wrought mechanism glorious with jewels to watch the scamper of the thing with its long legs over the heads of the spears of grass that bent to its weight. I returned, and, opening my portmanteau, pulled out

the pistols which lay there loaded, and thrust them into my pockets.

"I'll go and take a view of the scene," said I; "there may be land in sight away west from the tallest of those hummocks. This island must form one of the Bahama group certainly, and if so, others cannot be very remote, though hidden from this elevation. Will you remain here until I return?"

"No, I will accompany you," she answered; "there's nothing to be afraid of, yet I do not like the idea of being alone." She sent a swift glance round her with a faint smile that was like asking forgiveness for this little show of weakness.

The length of her dress made me feel a trifle uneasy. It was impossible to know what small murderous fangs lay hidden among the long coarse grass that showed yellow and bald in places to the roasting eye of the sun. The folds of her gown formed such a flowing drapery that the skirts of it trailed a foot or two in her wake-a regular net for the ensnaring of anything venomous or distracting. Let her courage be what it would, methought if she should hook up such a spider as the chap I had just put to flight, it might go hard with us both. It was no time for ceremony. It is simply impossible for a man to be marooned with a girl without the vessel that makes castaways of them carrying off a mass of the superfluous decorums which on shipboard kept them at arm's-length.

"Miss Grant,” said I, “ excuse me -your dress is too long."

She gathered the folds of it in her hand, and said simply, "Yes, much too long;" then going to one of her trunks she produced, after some fumbling-a pincushion !—(to think, now, of a pincushion on an uninhabited island!) and handing it to me, bade me help pin her dress up for her. It was a task in its way to reconcile one almost to being marooned -for the moment, at least. I don't think I had known how perilously