manner to step aside with him out of ear-shot of the
sailors who assisted him.

"What have you got to say to me, my man?" he asked, when they had gone a
few yards into the palm-grove.

"You's lookin' for the pirit!" said Ebony in a hoarse whisper, and with
a superhumanly intelligent gaze.

"Why, how came _you_ to know that?" asked the captain, somewhat
perplexed and thrown off his guard.

"Ho! ho!" laughed Ebony in a subdued voice, "how I comes to know dat,
eh? I come to knows many t'ings by putting dis an' dat togider. You's
cappen ob man-ob-war. Well, you no comes here for notting. Well, Rosco
de pirit, de horroble scoundril, hims lib here. Ob course you come for
look for him. Hofficers ob de Brish navy got notting else to do but
kotch an' hang sitch varmints. Eh? I's right?"

"Well, no," returned Captain Fitzgerald, laughing, "not altogether right
as to the duties of officers of the British navy. However, you're right
as to _my_ object, and I see that this pirate is no friend of yours."

"No friend, oh! no--not at all. Him's far more nor dat. I lub him as a
brudder," said the negro with intense energy.

Captain Fitzgerald laughed again, for he supposed that the negro spoke
ironically, and Ebony extended his thick lips from ear to ear because he
foresaw and intended that the captain would fall into that mistake.

"Now you lose no time in sarch for him," said Ebony, "an' dis yar nigger
will show you de way."

"Do, my fine fellow, and when we find him, I'll not forget your
services."

"You's berry good, a'most too good," said Ebony, with an affectionate
look at his new employer.

So, as we have said, the village and island were searched high and low
without success. At last, while the searching party was standing,
baffled, on the shore farthest from the village, Captain Fitzgerald
stopped abruptly, and looking Zeppa in the face, exclaimed, "Strange, is
it not? and the island so small, comparatively."

"Quite unaccountable," answered Zeppa, who, with his son, had at last
joined in the search out of sheer anxiety as to Rosco's fate.

"Most perplexing!" said Orlando.

"Most amazin'!" murmured Ebony, with a look of disappointment that
baffles description.

Suddenly the negro pointed to the beach, exclaiming, "Oh! I knows it
now! Look dare. You see two small canoes? Dere wor _tree_ canoes dare
yisterday. De t'ird wan am _dare_ now. Look!"

They all looked eagerly at the horizon, where a