t of something--"there's my friend Gibbs
lying there--I believe he has fallen down in a fit--be very careful of
him--a bed in the vault--a little biscuit and water--he may be feverish
when he wakes up, you know. And, Babette, old girl, if you are in want
of kindling wood, you may as well use that timber leg of our friend
Gibbs! I don't think he'll want it again. There! _doucement_, Baba!"

The negress gave a deep grunt of assent, and, seizing the senseless body
lying on the floor, she dragged it out of the room. Returning a few
moments after, she wiped up the blood with a cloth dipped in hot water,
and finally disappeared.

CHAPTER X.

AN OLD SPANIARD WITH ONE EYE.

"I fear thee, Ancient Mariner!
I fear thy skinny hand!
For thou art long, and lank, and brown,
As is the ribbed sea-sand."

"The 'Panchita' has passed Mangrove Point," came in the hoarse whisper
from the signal-man. "You can see her now from below, sir."

Captain Brand put on a fine Panama hat, and stepped out on the veranda,
where, with a cigar in his mouth, he leaned over the balustrade, and
kept sharp watch on every thing that was going on below him. In a few
minutes a long pointed brown bowsprit protruded itself beyond the wall
of rocks, followed by a great triangular lateen sail, bent to a yard a
mile long, and tapering away like a fly-fishing-rod, where, at the end,
was a short bit of yellow and red pennant. As her bows came into view
they showed above a curved prow falling inboard, with a huge bunch of
sheepskin for a chafing-mat on the knob, and a thin red streak along the
wales, on a lead-colored ground, above her bottom, which was painted
green. As more of her proportions came into the picture, you saw a stout
stump of a mast, raking forward, with short black ropes of purchases for
hoisting the single yard, and heavy square blocks close down to the foot
of the mast. When this great sail had come out from the screen of rocks,
another light stick of a mast stood up over the taffrail, with another
lateen sail and whip-stalk of a yard, to which was bent the Spanish
Colonial Guarda Costa flag. In fact, she was a Spanish felucca all over,
from stem to stern, and truck to water-line. A few dingy hammocks were
stowed about halfway along her rail, and there were a good many men
moving about her decks in getting the cable clear, and a lot more
clinging like so many lizards along the bending yard, and all in some
attempt at