XVII. Action 315

XVIII. Gathering up the threads 321

Postscript 328

Epilogue By the Editor 332

BOOK I

_Out of the constant East the breeze
Brings morning, like a wafted rose,
Across the glimmering lagoon,
And wakes the still palmetto trees,
And blows adrift the phantom moon,
That paler and still paler glows--
Up with the anchor! let's be going!
O hoist the sail! and let's be going!
Glory and glee
Of the morning sea--
Ah! let's be going!_

Under our keel a glass of dreams
Still fairer than the morning sky,
A jewel shot with blue and gold,
The swaying clearness streams and gleams,
A crystal mountain smoothly rolled
O'er magic gardens flowing by--
Over we go the sea-fans waving,
Over the rainbow corals paving
The deep-sea floor;
No more, no more
Would I seek the shore
To make my grave in--
_O sea-fans waving_!

PIECES OF EIGHT

CHAPTER I

_Introduces the Secretary to the Treasury of His Britannic Majesty's
Government at Nassau, New Providence, Bahama Islands._

Some few years ago--to be precise, it was during the summer of 1903--I
was paying what must have seemed like an interminable visit to my old
friend John Saunders, who at that time filled with becoming dignity the
high-sounding office of Secretary to the Treasury of His Majesty's
Government, in the quaint little town of Nassau, in the island of New
Providence, one of those Bahama Islands that lie half lost to the world
to the southeast of the Caribbean Sea and form a somewhat neglected
portion of the British West Indies.

Time was when they had a sounding name for themselves in the world;
during the American Civil War, for instance, when the blockade-runners
made their dare-devil trips with contraband cotton, between Nassau and
South Carolina; and before that again, when the now sleepy little
harbour gave shelter to rousing freebooters and tarry pirates, tearing
in there under full sail with their loot from the Spanish Main. How
often those quiet moonlit streets must have roared with brutal revelry,
and the fierce clamour of pistol-belted scoundrels round the wine-casks
have gone up into the still, tropic night.

But those heroic days a