too late that the
great Pirate body had drawn off in the darkness when the chase began, and
shot over to the Island. He stood telling how the Expedition, supposing
the whole array of armed boats to be ahead of it, got tempted into
shallows and went aground; but not without having its revenge upon the
two decoy-boats, both of which it had come up with, overhand, and sent to
the bottom with all on board. He stood telling how the Expedition,
fearing then that the case stood as it did, got afloat again, by great
exertion, after the loss of four more tides, and returned to the Island,
where they found the sloop scuttled and the treasure gone. He stood
telling how my officer, Lieutenant Linderwood, was left upon the Island,
with as strong a force as could be got together hurriedly from the
mainland, and how the three boats we saw before us were manned and armed
and had come away, exploring the coast and inlets, in search of any
tidings of us. He stood telling all this, with his face to the river;
and, as he stood telling it, the little arbour of flowers floated in the
sunshine before all the faces there.

Leaning on Captain Carton's shoulder, between him and Miss Maryon, was
Mrs. Fisher, her head drooping on her arm. She asked him, without
raising it, when he had told so much, whether he had found her mother?

"Be comforted! She lies," said the Captain gently, "under the cocoa-nut
trees on the beach."

"And my child, Captain Carton, did you find my child, too? Does my
darling rest with my mother?"

"No. Your pretty child sleeps," said the Captain, "under a shade of
flowers."

His voice shook; but there was something in it that struck all the
hearers. At that moment there sprung from the arbour in his boat a
little creature, clapping her hands and stretching out her arms, and
crying, "Dear papa! Dear mamma! I am not killed. I am saved. I am
coming to kiss you. Take me to them, take me to them, good, kind
sailors!"

Nobody who saw that scene has ever forgotten it, I am sure, or ever will
forget it. The child had kept quite still, where her brave grandmamma
had put her (first whispering in her ear, "Whatever happens to me, do not
stir, my dear!"), and had remained quiet until the fort was deserted; she
had then crept out of the trench, and gone into her mother's house; and
there, alone on the solitary Island, in her mother's room, and asleep on
her mother's bed, the Captain had found her. Nothing could ind