d from him. At the sound o' her voice
he started up, and, looking round like a wild bull, caught sight o' the
little one on the deck o' the other junk, just as they were hoistin'
sail to take advantage of a breeze that had sprung up.

"Whether it was that they had bound the man with a piece o' bad rope, or
that the strength o' Samson had been given to him, the Lascar could not
tell, but he saw the Englishman snap the rope as if it had bin a bit o'
pack-thread, and jump overboard. He swam for the junk where his little
girl was. If he had possessed the strength of a dozen Samsons it would
have availed him nothin', for the big sail had caught the breeze and got
way on her. At the same time the other junk lay over to the same breeze
and the two separated. At first the one-eyed pirate jumped up with an
oath and fired a pistol shot at the Englishman, but missed him. Then he
seemed to change his mind and shouted in bad English, with a diabolical
laugh--`Swim away; swim hard, p'raps you kitch 'im up!' Of course the
two junks were soon out of sight o' the poor swimmer--and that was the
end of _him_, for, of course, he must have been drowned."

"But what of the poor little girl?" asked Nigel, whose feelings were
easily touched by the sorrows of children, and who began to have a
suspicion of what was coming.

"I'm just comin' to that. Well, the gun-boat that went to look for the
pirates sighted one o' the junks out in the Indian Ocean after a long
search and captured her, but not a single one o' the barque's crew was
to be found in her, and it was supposed they had been all murdered and
thrown overboard wi' shots tied to their feet to sink them. Enough o'
the cargo o' the British barque was found, however, to convict her, and
on a more careful search bein' made, the little girl was discovered, hid
away in the hold. Bein' only about four year old, the poor little thing
was too frightened to understand the questions put to her. All she
could say was that she wanted `to go to father,' and that her name was
Kathy, probably short for Kathleen, but she could not tell."

"Then that is the girl who is now here?" exclaimed Nigel.

"The same, lad. The gun-boat ran in here, like as we did, to have some
slight repairs done, and Kathy was landed. She seemed to take at once
to motherly Mrs Holbein, who offered to adopt her, and as the captain
of the gun-boat had no more notion than the man-in-the-moon who the
child belonged to,