mon papa!_" said the little scamp, as he looked knowingly up
in the officer's face.

"Excuse my little boy, sir," said his mother, who was in chase of him;
and then turning to the child with a blush spreading over her lovely
face, "It is not your papa, Henri! papa is in Kingston."

"Ah! madame, I love children. I had once a dear little fellow like this,
but both he and his sweet mother are in heaven now. God bless them!"

A flush of sadness tinged his cheeks, and he passed his hand rapidly
across his eyes, as if the dream was too sad to dwell upon; but changing
his tone, and while with one hand he patted the little fellow's head, he
went on: "Madame lives in Jamaica?"

"Oh yes; I was born there, but my parents were destroyed by an
earthquake when I was quite a little child, and this good captain here
carried my sister and myself to France soon after, where Monsieur--"
here she hesitated and blushed with pleasure--"where I married my
husband, who is a planter on the island. Perhaps you may know Monsieur
Jules Piron?"

"Piron!" said the navy man, with warmth. "Ay, madame, for as fine a
fellow as ever planted sugar! Know him? Why, madame, it is only a week
ago that a lot of us dined with him at his estate of Escondido; you know
it, madame? in the grand piazza which looks down the gorge. But he
behaved very shabbily," said the officer, as his face lighted up gayly,
"for he kept a spy-glass to his eye oftener than the wine-glass to his
lips, in looking out seaward, and in talking of his wife and the little
boy he had never seen."

"Oh, monsieur! you make me so happy," said the lovely woman, as with
sparkling eyes and heaving bosom she cried, "Banou! Banou! this
gentleman has just seen your good master."

The black, who had been standing near and guarding every movement of his
little charge, who was trailing the sword about the deck, immediately
approached the officer, and, falling on his knees, seized his hand and
drew it toward his face.

"Ah! madame, I see that kindness meets with a return as well from a dark
as a fair skin," said the officer, in a low tone, as he gently withdrew
his hand from Banou's grasp.

"But," he continued, turning toward the skipper, as the clear sound of
the cruiser's bell struck his ear, "I must not forget what I came for."

"You say, captain, that you saw a schooner at daylight, eh? This way, if
you please"--as he raised his cap to Madame Piron and walked over to the
other side of the