sighted the craft dead ahead about five bells in the
afternoon watch, identified her to their entire satisfaction about half
an hour later, and passed her, some sixteen miles to the southward,
about one bell in the first "dog."

"Now," said Milsom, when he came down from aloft after personally
satisfying himself as to the identity of the great, dirty-white, rust-
streaked hull crawling along in the northern board, "let me make a
little calculation. Our plan is to appear ahead of her, steaming to the
northward and westward--to meet her, in fact, instead of overtaking her;
and the proper time to do this will be about a quarter of an hour before
sunset. I take it that she is steaming at about the pace which my
friend the harbour-master allowed her--that is to say, about eight
knots. At that rate she will be about eight miles farther to the
eastward at a quarter of an hour before sunset. That means that--um--
um--yes, that will be about right. Now, Jack, my hearty, cheer up! for
unless something goes very radically wrong with our scheme, our friends
ought to be safe and snug aboard this dandy little hooker in a couple of
hours' time. Now, it is you, my friend, who are going to play the giddy
pirate and wrest our friends, at the sword's point, out of the hands of
the oppressor, so cut away down below, my lad, and get into your
disguise; and while you are doing that the deck hands can be doing the
same, so as to render it impossible for them to be identified at any
future time, should they be met in the streets of Havana, or elsewhere,
by anybody belonging to the _Maranon_."

Half an hour later Jack re-appeared on deck, his already well-bronzed
face and hands stained to the darkness of a mulatto's skin, and his
corpus arrayed in an old, weather-stained, and very-much-the-worse-for-
wear Spanish naval lieutenant's uniform, which Don Ramon had caused one
of his servants to procure for him at a second-hand wardrobe dealer's in
Havana; his disguise being completed by the addition of a black wig and
a ferocious moustache and whiskers, obtained through the same channel at
a theatrical wig-maker's shop. To say that his own mother would not
have known him in this get-up is to put the matter altogether
inadequately; and his appearance on deck was the signal for a roar of
mingled admiration and mirth from all hands. Meanwhile, the crew had
pinned their faith to burnt cork and their working slops as a disguise,
except the five