to proceed direct to Brest, for I could get
easily on to Paris, where I intended placing my little Elsie at school
in the convent of L'enfant Jesu, at Neuilly, under the guardianship of
some good nuns, by whom her poor mother was educated and brought up. It
was a promise, my friend, to the dead."

"I see, colonel," rejoined the skipper apologetically, lighting his
cigar again, having allowed it to go out while listening to the other;
"I see, sir. Go on; I'm all attention."

"Well, then," continued the colonel, "these preliminaries being all
arranged, Elsie and I went aboard the _Saint Pierre_, a full-rigged
sailing ship of some eight hundred tons, the morning of the twenty-
eighth of last month; and on the evening of the same day, as I have
already told you, we made sail and quitted the anchorage where the ship
had been loading--abreast of San Miguel, a port that guards the
roadstead to the eastward, where it is open to the sea."

"Aye, I know La Guayra well, colonel," put in the skipper at this point,
showing that he was following every detail. "I was in the Royal Mail
Line when I was a nipper, before joining my present company."

"I recollect the night we sailed," resumed the other, paying no
attention to Captain Applegarth's remark, but speaking with his eyes
fixed, as if in a dream and seeing mentally before him the scenes he
described. "The moon was shining brightly when we got under way,
lighting up the Trinchera bastion and making the mountains in the
background seem higher than they were, from the deep shadows they cast
over the town lying below. This latter lay embosomed amid a mass of
tall cocoanut trees and gorgeous palms, with other tropical foliage, and
had a shining beach of white sand immediately in its front, stretching
round the curling bay, on which the surf broke in the moonlight, with a
phosphorescent glow and a hollow sound as if beating over a grave.
Heavens! It was the grave of all my dearest hopes and plans, for that,
sir, was one of the few last peaceful nights I have of late known, and
very probably ever shall know again!"

"Faith, don't say that now, sir," cried out Garry at this. "You'll have
a peaceful one to-night, sure, or I'm no prophet. Begorrah, though, I
niver was, so far as that goes!"

The skipper grinned at this sympathetic interpolation, and the colonel's
sombre face lighted up a bit as he turned his pathetic eyes on the
speaker, as if wishing to share his hopefulnes