me sluggish gulls
and pelicans sailing and diving about the reef for their prey. Shutting
up the glass with a crash that made the joints ring, he strode to the
settee, where hung several knotted bell-ropes, and, seizing one, gave it
a sharp jerk. Then putting his ear to an aperture in the wall, where was
a hollow cane tube like the mouth of a speaking-trumpet, he listened
attentively till a hoarse whisper uttered the word,

"_Senor._"

Putting his mouth to the tube, he said,

"Can you make out the 'Centipede' from the crag station?"

"Not sure, sir, this morning; but last evening, at sunset, I saw a sail
which I took to be her. The sea-breeze is just beginning to make, and if
she's to windward of Punta Arenas she'll soon heave in sight."

This colloquy was held in Spanish; and when the signal-man had ceased
speaking, the interlocutor lit another cigar mechanically, kicked a
foot-stool out of his way like a foot-ball, and thus communed with
himself as he rapidly paced between the table and the veranda:

"Fourteen weeks ago yesterday since the schooner was off Matanzas; not a
word of news to cheer me through all that cursed fever; the spring trade
done, and the track deserted by this time!"

Then pausing in his walk, he stopped at the chart-stand, and unrolling a
map, he went on:

"Where, in the devil's name, could she possibly have gone to? She might
have been to Cape Horn and back before this. Miserable fool that I was
to trust the craft with that thirsty, thick-headed Gibbs! _Diavolo!_ he
may have been captured, and if he has, I hope his neck has been
stretched like a shred of jerked beef."

Even while he was talking a bell struck near the settee, and, putting
his ear again to the tube, the hoarse voice said,

"I can make her out now, _senor_. She's just caught the strong young
breeze, and is, hull up, coming along with the bonnet off her fore-sail
and a reef in her main-sail! There's a felucca to windward of her, which
I take to be the 'Panchita!'"

"Ah ha!" laughed the individual in the room. "The 'Centipede' is safe,
then; and I am to have the pleasure, too, of a visit from the Tuerto,
the mercenary old owl, with his account of sales and his greed. But let
me once catch him foul, and, my one-eyed friend, I'll treat you to such
a dance that you won't need shoes!"

Here he glanced with a meaning look at the silk rope swaying from the
beam above his head, and the laugh of satisfaction which followed was