ing a
couple of ships'-lengths outside the bulwarks. Then it cleared away,
the clouds dispersed, the stars came out, the wind dropped to a moderate
breeze, and presently the moon, with nearly half her disc in shadow,
crept up above the horizon, flooding the heaving waters with ruddy gold
that quickly changed to silver as the satellite climbed high enough to
clear herself of the vapours that distorted her shape and imparted to
her the colour of burnished copper.

But where was the brigantine? Ahead, abeam, on our quarter we looked,
but nowhere could we discern the faintest trace of her. We had lost
sight of her a bare quarter of an hour, and in that brief space of time
she had contrived to vanish as completely as though she had gone to the
bottom in deep-water, leaving not so much as a fragment of floating
wreckage to furnish a clue to her fate.

The skipper was as much puzzled as he was annoyed, and in his perplexity
he turned to the master.

"What do you think has become of her, Mr Trimble?" he demanded. "She
cannot have gone ashore and broken up so completely in a quarter of an
hour that no sign of her would remain. We should see something at least
in the nature of wreckage to give us a hint of what had happened. Yet I
see nothing; although if she had been stranded, either purposely or by
accident, her wreck ought to be away in there somewhere about abreast of
us. And there are no off-shore dangers, are there?"

"The nearest that I know of are The Monks, away out here, some
twenty-five miles to the nor'ard and east'ard of us," answered the
master. "The coast inshore of us is, of course, a bit rocky, but there
is nothing, so far as I know, in the nature of hidden dangers to cause
the wreck of the brigantine. No, sir, it is my belief that there is
some snug little secret cove, known to the skipper of that brigantine,
and that he took advantage of the rain squall to slip into it, in the
hope of dodging us."

"Ah!" said the skipper, "yes; that is, after all, the only feasible
explanation of his disappearance. He is neither ahead nor astern nor to
seaward of us; therefore he must be hidden somewhere inshore. Mr
Galway,"--to the first lieutenant--"we will shorten sail, if you please,
with the ship's head off the land, remaining in sight of the coast until
daylight, when we shall perhaps be able to discover the hiding-place of
that brigantine."

This was done, and during the remainder of the night the _Euro