k crosses--the graves of the
pirates whose bones reposed beneath. At one end of this burial-place was
still another subdivision, where stood ten upright flat white stones,
on whose faces were rudely carved initial letters, with the years in
which the eternal sleepers had been laid beneath the sand. Far and near
sprang up close and almost impenetrable thickets of cactus, whose sharp
and pointed needle-shoots defied the passage of any thing more bulky
than land-crabs and lizards. One or two narrow pathways had been cut out
here and there, but they were overgrown again by the stubborn, hardy
vegetation; and only with the risk of losing one's trowsers, and having
one's legs cut in gashes, could a human being struggle through it.

Within the chapel kneeled a dozen or more of the "Centipede's" crew, the
coarse and sodden faces and uncombed locks, from their night's debauch,
in striking contrast to the place and the apparent devoutness of manner
in which they crossed themselves while the rites of the Church were
going on. Before the altar stood Padre Ricardo, with his breviary on the
chancel beneath the taper, and chanting forth from his deep lungs the
services of the mass. In a few minutes the unholy hands and lips which
performed the solemn ceremony ceased word and gesture, and with a
sonorous benediction at the elevation of the Host, and a tinkle of a
bell, the sailors arose from their knees and again staggered back to the
sheds, to slumber through the day. When all had gone, the padre clasped
his missal, tucked it into his bosom, and making the sign of the cross
with a genuflexion before the Virgin, the sacrilegious wretch turned and
left the chapel.

Pursuing the winding path which led to his own habitation for a certain
distance, he then turned to the left, and carefully picking his way
through the sharp cactus and Spanish bayonets along the face of the
crag, he stopped at a yawning fissure which gaped open in the rock.
Here, too, the same wiry vegetation had crept, and it was with great
difficulty, and many an "_Ave!_" and "_Santa Maria!_" that the padre
succeeded in passing into the dark, rugged mouth of the cavern.

"By the ashes of San Lorenzo!" he muttered, "there are serpents and
venomous insects in this pit of purgatory. Oh, _misericordia_! what has
pierced my leg? Why should my son drag me through this hole? Ah! blessed
Saint Barnabas! a slimy reptile has crossed my instep!"

Feeling with his outspread hands i