ng trumpet to his lips, shouted in deep, ringing
tones, "Captain Trahern, Robert Barthelemy hereby summons you to
surrender at discretion the King Solomon and her crew."

The speaker was Skyrme.

Trahern, indignant at the audacity of the pirates, which bordered on
insolence, ordered his men to fire on them. His gunners replied that the
cannon were wet.

"That is a lie," shouted Trahern, "they are under cover. Take your
weapons and crush these bold dogs."

"What?" shrieked Philip, "are these mortal men whom we can fight and
kill? Did any one ever see a devil die? I'll fight with no fiends."

He flung down his arms as he spoke.

"Nor I, nor I!" shouted the rest of the crew, firing their weapons in
the air and then throwing them down. Trahern found himself abandoned.

"And you will disgrace yourselves by surrendering to a force ten times
smaller! Men! Come to your senses, these are no ghosts."

But no power on earth could have induced them to attack the corsairs,
who were already fastening their grappling irons to the ship.

"Then I will defend the vessel alone," said the captain despairingly
and, seizing a carbine, he discharged it among the buccaneers.

No one was hit, for his own men had struck up the weapon and would not
let him aim at the assailants the second time.

A moment later the pirates were masters of the King Solomon.

The crew dared not resist them; their reputation for being able to
accomplish whatever they desired had spread so far that the trembling
seamen fairly lost their senses when they found themselves in the
presence of people whom they regarded as beings from another world, and,
even when they outstripped them tenfold in numbers, did not venture to
offer any resistance.

If it were not for the existence of documents which prove it, no one
would believe that twenty pirates, in a boat, amid the raging of a
furious tempest, captured a man-of-war which had eighty guns, two
hundred armed men, and a brave commander.

* * * * *

The eleven ships in the harbor of Mydaw were only awaiting the cessation
of the monsoons and the arrival of the King Solomon to sail against
Barthelemy.

The monsoons were still raging with the utmost fury when Robert
Barthelemy entered the port, bringing the King Solomon in tow.

Black flags fluttered from every mast of the Royal Fortune and between
her sails was stretched a square banner, on which was a hideous picture,
a skele