look-out."

He did not come to me again for three days, but I saw from my port
early the following morning that the tender was with us; and I
concluded regretfully that the difficulty of the oil was overcome. On
the second day after the robbery of the _Bellonic_, we stopped a third
ship; though I saw nothing of it, as all the fighting was on the
starboard side, and my cabin was to port; but there was a sharp fight
on the third morning with a Cape-bound vessel, and again towards the
afternoon with one of the North-German Lloyd boats homeward bound to
Bremerhaven: as before, Osbart, coming to my rooms, delighted to give
me the details of the captures; and that night he was unusually
frivolous.

"Poor business to-day," he said, throwing himself into a lounge and
lighting a cigar; "not an ounce of specie, and no jewellery to
mention--and there was no killing, so don't put on that face of yours.
Why, my dear boy, it was a perfect farce! I, myself, argued for twenty
minutes with an old woman, who sat mewing like a cat on her box, and
when I got her off it, thinking she had a thousand in diamonds, it was
full of baby linen. And I'll tell you a better thing. An old Dutch Jew
threw a two-penny-halfpenny bundle into the sea, and then he was so
sick with himself that he went in after it. We hooked him out by the
breeches with a boat-hook; but I believe he wished himself dead with
the bundle. As for 'Four-Eyes,' he took what he thought was five
hundred in notes from a card-player, but they're bad, dear boy,
bad--every one of them."

"You don't seem very depressed about it," said I.

"Don't I?" replied he. "Well, things aren't all they should be. The
tender we sent to Liverpool came out in a hurry, as they began to watch
her, with a mere bucketful of oil aboard. We must get oil from
somewhere or we shall all swing as sure as we're doing twenty-eight
knots now. That's what I've come to tell you about to-night. The
skipper can't stand it any more, and is going to run to England
himself, and see what those mighty smart naval people of yours are
doing. He'll take you with him, for it would be as good as signing your
death-warrant to leave you here. Don't count upon it, though, for we
shan't let you out of our sight, and you've got to swear a pretty big
oath not to give us away before you set foot on the tender."

I was overjoyed at his saying, but I feared to let him see it, and
asked with nonchalance--"How do you pick up this sh