tifully decorated with greenery. The long, large-leafed
vines and vigorous castor-oil plants were peculiarly useful at this
crisis. Trailing over the low freeboard into the water, they screened
the launch so completely that Watts and the Norwegian, perched high
above the creek at a distance of three hundred yards, could only guess
her whereabouts when the search-light made the Gomez plantation light
as day.

The cruiser evidently discovered traces of the _Andromeda_ on
Grand-pere. She stopped an appreciable time, and created a flutter in
many anxious hearts by a loud hoot of her siren. It did not occur to
anyone at the moment that she was signaling to the troops bivouacked on
South Point. De Sylva was the first to read this riddle aright. He
whispered his belief, and it soon won credence, since the warship
continued her scrutiny of the coast-line.

At last, after a wearying delay, she vanished. Five minutes later,
Watts and Olsen brought the welcome news that she was returning to the
roadstead.

It was then half-past two o'clock, and the sun would rise soon after
five. Now or never the launch must make her effort. Ready hands tore
away her disguise, she was tilted by crowding in the poop nearly every
man on board, the engines throbbed, and she was afloat.

At daybreak the thousand-foot peak of Fernando Noronha was a dark blur
on the western horizon. No sail or smudge of smoke broke the remainder
of the far-flung circle. The fugitives could breathe freely once more.
They were not pursued.

Iris fell asleep when assured that the dreaded warship was not in
sight. Hozier, too, utterly exhausted by all that he had gone through,
slept as if he were dead. Coke, whose iron constitution defied
fatigue, though it was with the utmost difficulty that he had walked
across the narrow breadth of Fernando Noronha, took the first watch in
person. He chatted with the men, surprised them by his candor on the
question of compensation, and announced his resolve to make for the
three-hundred-mile channel between Fernando Noronha and the mainland.

"You see, it's this way, me lads," he explained affably. "We're short
o' vittles an' bunker, an' if we kep' cruisin' east in this latitood
we'd soon be drawrin' lots to see 'oo'd cut up juiciest. So we must
run for the tramp's track, which is two hundred miles to the west.
We'll bear north, an' that rotten cruiser will look south for sartin,
seein' as 'ow they know we 'ave th