-way, when his visitor had
taken his departure.

"Senor!" said Franci, putting his beautiful head over the rail.

"Bring me here the child, hear thou!"

"Si, Senor," said Franci. He went forward, and pulling aside a pile of
canvas that lay carelessly heaped together in a corner of the deck,
disclosed the boy John, curled up in a ball, with one monkey in his
arms, and the other sitting on his shoulder.

"Here, you, Sir Schoolmaster, the Patron ask for you. I give you my hand
to hellup you up! I like to put a knife in you!" he added in Spanish,
with an adorable smile.

"You'd get one into yourself before you had time!" said Rento, getting
up from the spot where his length had been coiled, and speaking with a
slow drawl that lent emphasis to the words. "You ever lay a hand on that
boy, and it's the last you lay on anybody,--understand that?"

"Oh, yays!" said Franci, gently, as he pulled John out of the tangle of
canvas and ropes. "But I am 'most killed all my life with looking at
your ugly face, you old she monkey! A little more killing make not much
difference to me."

Rento advanced toward him with uplifted hand, and the agile Spaniard
slipped round the mast and disappeared.

"What was he saying?" asked John, vaguely feeling that something was
wrong.

"Nothin', nothin' at all," Rento said, quietly. "He was givin' me some
talk, that was all. It's all he has to give, seemin'ly; kind o' fool
person he is, Franci; don't ye take no heed what he says. There, go
'long, youngster! the Skipper's lookin' for ye."

At this moment the Skipper's head appeared over the rail, and John
became quite sure that he was awake. Dreams were so curious, sometimes,
one never knew what would happen in them; and this whole matter of
piracy had been so strange and unlooked for that all the while he had
been hidden under the sail (where he had retreated by the Skipper's
orders as soon as Mr. Bill Hen Pike appeared in the offing), he had been
trying to persuade himself that he was asleep, and that the monkeys were
dream-monkeys, very lively ones, and that by-and-by he would wake up
once more and find himself in bed at Mr. Scraper's.

But now there could be no more doubt! He could not dream Franci, nor the
queer things he said; he could not dream Rento, with his kind, ugly face
and drawling speech; least of all could he dream the Skipper, who was
now looking at him with an amused smile.

Certainly, he did not look in the least like a p