ou to transact your little business with me."

Knowing and sharp as he was, the Jew was not sufficiently so to foresee
the result of his line of conduct with the Malay rover. Instead of
giving in and making the best of circumstances, that freebooter, with
characteristic impetuosity, shut the steel box with a loud snap, put it
under his arm, rose, and walked out of the place without uttering a
word. He went down to the beach and rowed away, leaving Moses to
moralise on the uncertainty of all human affairs.

Favouring gales carried the Malay pirate-junk swiftly to the east. The
same gales checked, baffled, and retarded the schooner _Fairy Queen_ on
her voyage to the west.

"Darling Aileen," said Miss Pritty, recovering from a paroxysm, "did you
ever hear of any one dying of sea-sickness?"

"I never did," answered Aileen, with a languid smile.

Both ladies lay in their berths, their pale cheeks resting on the
woodwork thereof, and their eyes resting pitifully on each other.

"It is awful--horrible!" sighed Miss Pritty at at the end of another
paroxysm.

Aileen, who was not so ill as her friend, smiled but said nothing. Miss
Pritty was past smiling, but not quite past speaking.

"What dreadful noises occur on board ships," she said, after a long
pause; "such rattling, and thumping, and creaking, and stamping.
Perhaps the sailors get their feet wet and are so cold that they require
to stamp constantly to warm them!"

Aileen displayed all her teeth and said, "Perhaps."

At that moment the stamping became so great, and was accompanied by so
much shouting, that both ladies became attentive.

A few moments later their door opened violently, and Mr Hazlit appeared
with a very pale face. He was obviously in a state of great
perturbation.

"My dears," he said, hurriedly, "excuse my intruding--we are--attacked--
pirates--get up; put on your things!"

His retreat and the closing of the door was followed by a crash overhead
and a yell. Immediately after the schooner quivered from stem to stern,
under the shock of her only carronade, which was fired at the moment;
the shot being accompanied by a loud cheer.

"Oh horror!" exclaimed Miss Pritty, "my worst fears are realised!"

Poor Miss Pritty was wrong. Like many people whose "worst fears" have
been engendered at a civilised fireside, she was only _beginning_ to
realise a few of her fears. She lived to learn that _her_ "worst fears"
were mere child's play to th