ath for the twenty
years, as I swore to do. After that, if we both live so long, my tongue
and arm shall speak and strike."

The pirate stepped back a little as he shut up the joints of the
spy-glass with a crash, and, with a scowl of hate and vengeance
combined, he said, in a loud voice, while his cold eyes gleamed like a
ray of sunlight on an iceberg,

"And I, too, keep my oaths; and, without waiting twenty years, I strike
now!"

Even while the treacherous villain spoke, two swarthy, sinewy scoundrels
crept stealthily from within the chapel, and, with the soft, slimy
movements of serpents, as their leader uttered the last word, they
sprang at the back of the doctor, and wound their coils around him,
twining strong strands of raw-hide rope about his arms, legs, and body.
Bound as in a frame of elastic steel, their victim was thrown, face
downward, upon the sand.

"Be quick, Pedillo! the time is flying! Gomez, bring the corpse trestle
from the chapel."

In a moment a wooden frame with legs, and stretched across with a bed
of light wire, which had been used to carry the mortal remains of
the pirates--and the poor women, too, beside them--to their last
resting-places, was brought out from the little church. Then the
bound victim was laid on it, face upward; again the hide thongs were
passed in numerous plaits until the body was lashed firmly to the
trestle.

"Place it on the edge of that rock there, with his head toward the
cocoa-nut-tree. Take this silk rope, Gomez, and clove-hitch it well up
the trunk. There, that will do. I myself will perform the last act of
politeness."

Saying this, the pirate widened the noose of the cord, and, slipping it
over the doctor's head, he placed the knot carefully under his left ear.
The victim gave no groan or sigh, and his dark, luminous eyes were fixed
on the blue sky above him in heaven.

"_Monsieur le Docteur_," said Captain Brand, as he hurriedly looked at
his watch and raised his hat, "I have but one word of caution to give
you: if you struggle you will have your neck broken before you are stung
to death! Talk as much as you like; but, as Babette is a long way off,
and hard of hearing, I doubt if she comes to your assistance! Adieu!"

[Illustration: "A DULL, HEAVY, BOOMING ROAR, THAT SHOOK THE CRAG TO ITS
BASE, ANNOUNCED THE RUIN OF THE PIRATES' DEN."]

The retreating figures went leaping toward the inlet, and, as they
rushed through the sheds, applied a torch to the