-go-lucky squalor. There was a faint gray
pencil of steam feathering away from her escape-pipe, and as we drew
nearer I saw she had hove short, and was ready to break her anchor out
of the ground at a moment's notice.

Another cry from the driver called off my attention. The carriage ahead
had stopped; its three passengers had descended, and hand in hand were
running over the rough ground towards the shore. A small dinghy was
waiting for them at the edge of the shingle. So there had been method
in their mad scurry after all.

Our driver cursed and _arr-e-e'd_ and forced his cattle into a
scrambling gallop, and we drew up with the deserted carriage, whose
mules were standing straddle-legged, and panting as though they were
going to burst. He pulled up there, but Haigh snatched hold of the
reins through the front window, and turning the animals off the road,
sent them with a yell into the palm scrub that fringed it. The poor
beasts took fright and sprang off at fresh gallop, the carriage leaping
and bumping after them like a tin kettle at a dog's tail, till at one
jolt stronger than the rest it lost balance, and fell over with a
splintering crash to its side.

We were all heaped over to leeward amongst a tidy heap of wreckage; but
we soon managed to scramble out, and saw the fugitives making rapid
going towards their boat.

"Now, Cospatric, ye wiry divil," shouted Haigh, "run for all you're
worth, and put Pether in your pocket."

Off I started, and measured my length twice in the first fifty yards.
The ground was awfully uneven, and the palmetto scrub so thick that one
could not see where to tread. The trio ahead were close upon their
boat, and it seemed to me an absolute certainty that I should be too
late. But a fresh crashing amongst the spiky shrubs behind made me turn
my head, and I saw the absurd figure of the old man charging down on a
mule that he had cut adrift. He passed me like a flash, his face
glowering like a fiend's, and he reached the shingle just as the dinghy
had got two boat-lengths away.

The passengers were encouraging the two sailors at the oars to every
exertion; but Taltavull pulled up as his mule's feet splashed in the
water, and whipping out a blue revolver covered the two rowers and
sharply bade them stop. They easied in the middle of a stroke, and
raised their oar-blades, glistening and dripping.

"And now, Senor Pether, I hold you covered. I am a dead shot, and if
you carry the Recipe