he _Desperate Lark_. All the next night Shard dodged about the
sea, but the two ships separated and one kept him in sight, and the
next morning it was alone with Shard on the sea, and his archipelago
was just in sight, the secret of his life.

And Shard saw he must fight, and a bad fight it was, and yet it suited
Shard's purpose, for he had more merry men when the fight began than
he needed for his island. And they got it over before any other ship
came up; and Shard put all adverse evidence out of the way, and came
that night to the islands near the Sargasso Sea.

Long before it was light the survivors of the crew were peering at the
sea, and when dawn came there was the island, no bigger than two
ships, straining hard at its anchor, with the wind in the tops of the
trees.

And then they landed and dug cabins below and raised the anchor out of
the deep sea, and soon they made the island what they called
shipshape. But the _Desperate Lark_ they sent away empty under full
sail to sea, where more nations than Shard suspected were watching for
her, and where she was presently captured by an admiral of Spain, who,
when he found none of that famous crew on board to hang by the neck
from the yard-arm, grew ill through disappointment.

And Shard on his island offered the Queen of the South the choicest of
the old wines of Provence, and for adornment gave her Indian jewels
looted from galleons with treasure for Madrid, and spread a table
where she dined in the sun, while in some cabin below he bade the
least coarse of his mariners sing; yet always she was morose and moody
towards him, and often at evening he was heard to say that he wished
he knew more about the ways of Queens. So they lived for years, the
pirates mostly gambling and drinking below, Captain Shard trying to
please the Queen of the South, and she never wholly forgetting
Bombasharna. When they needed new provisions they hoisted sails on the
trees, and as long as no ship came in sight they scudded before the
wind, with the water rippling over the beach of the island; but as
soon as they sighted a ship the sails came down, and they became an
ordinary uncharted rock.

They mostly moved by night; sometimes they hovered off sea-coast towns
as of old, sometimes they boldly entered river-mouths, and even
attached themselves for a while to the mainland, whence they would
plunder the neighbourhood and escape again to sea. And if a ship was
wrecked on their island of