emen," continued Hardy, as he again knocked the
ashes off his cigar, "that going to sea is attended with some few
discomforts, such as battening down the hatches in a sirocco in the
Mediterranean off Tripoli; a simoom in the China Seas; a bitter
northwest gale off Barnegat, with the rigging and sails frozen as hard
as an iceberg; but if a man can catch forty winks of sleep once in a
while, whether in a hammock, or on an oak carronade slide with the
breech of a gun for a pillow, he may manage to weather through it. But
from the moment we first saw that pirate till we saw the last of him,
neither the first lieutenant of the 'Scourge' nor the commander of the
'Centipede' once closed their eyes, unless--well, I won't anticipate."

Piron reached over his hand and shook that of his friend Cleveland
convulsively.

"Vera weel, mon! vera weel!" "He's the very man to do it!" said Stewart
and Burns to Stingo, nodding backward at the commodore.

Another striking contrast to the hand-shaking, virtuous compact between
Captain Brand and his friend, the pious padre Ricardo! I wonder if they
are shaking hands now! Probably not.

"Gentlemen," resumed Hardy, as he shook the ashes level in his
wine-glass, as if he wished to preserve them to clean his teeth with
after smoking, "I will not detain you much longer. Both vessels were
making great speed, and long before sunset we had been keeping a bright
look-out for the land. At last it was reported, trending all around
both bows, low and with a trembling mirage of pines and mangroves
looming up, and a multitude of rocky keys dead ahead. We were steering
directly for Las Mulatas Islands, a cluster then little known to any
navigators save, perhaps, the buccaneers of the Gulf of Columbus, and
perhaps, too, with the intention of running us just such another dance
as our pilot had a night or two before. However, we were again all
prepared to explore the unknown reefs; and, moreover, we got the
starboard anchor off the bow, and bent the cables to that and the spare
anchors amidships, so as to be all ready to moor ship in case our pilot
required us to do so. And likewise the cutters were hanging clear from
the davits--the same boats which had once before paid a complimentary
visit to some of his friends--supposing he would like to entertain us in
person.

"The sun went down again in a fiery blaze, and with its last ray there
slowly rose to the main truck of the pirate a swallow-tailed black fla