ng no more seen for hours at a time, lingered for as long, perhaps,
as two or three minutes, then passing away only to be succeeded by
others coming from the same quarter and enduring a little longer than
their predecessors, so continuing until at length we not only got way
upon the ship but were able to maintain it during the lessening
intervals between one puff and another. Finally a moment arrived when
the cats-paws began to merge one into another, while the whole surface
of the sea down in the south-eastern quarter lost its hateful mirror-
like appearance and donned a tint of faintest, most delicate blue that
deepened, even as we watched, creeping steadily down toward us until it
reached the ship and, with a last gentle rustle of canvas, she yielded
to the impulse of the first breathing of the south-east Trades.

When at length the true breeze reached us it came away out from about
South-East by South, enabling us still to lay our course, on the
starboard tack, with the braces the merest trifle checked. Once fairly
set in, the wind rapidly freshened until, when we of the afterguard went
down to supper at seven o'clock that evening, a fiery breeze was humming
through our tautened rigging, and the hooker was reeling off her seven
knots, with the royal stowed, and a rapidly rising sea foaming under her
lee bow.

CHAPTER FIVE.

WE FIND THE TREASURE.

It was a grand evening when, after supper, I went on deck for my usual
"constitutional". The salt, ozone-laden breeze was just cool enough to
set one's blood coursing freely through one's veins and to fill one with
the joy of living; the ship was making good headway; and the sky over
our lee quarter was a gorgeous blaze of gold and colour where the sun
was sinking in the midst of a galaxy of clouds of the most wonderful
forms. It was like a yachting experience.

In those latitudes the glories of the sunset very quickly fade, and with
their disappearance night falls upon the scene like the drawing of a
curtain. So was it on the evening in question; but I had grown
accustomed to those rapid nightfalls, and for a few minutes I, immersed
in my own thoughts, was quite unaware of anything unusual in our
surroundings. As the darkness deepened around us, however, it suddenly
occurred to me that there was something strange in the appearance of the
water; instead of its colour deepening under the shadow of night, as
usual, it seemed to be becoming lighter, as though it