I am--
nor have I any chance of making my escape; but you, Tim, may some day
get free, and promise me, if you do, that you will take this message to
Captain Tracy, and say that hope keeps me alive."'

"`But maybe Captain Tracy won't believe me?' says I. `If he doesn't,
his daughter will; and to make sure, take this bit of paper and show it
them,' he replied. He wrote two letters on it; it was but a scrap, but
it was the only piece he had. I put it in my 'baccy-box to keep it
safe. Not two days after that I managed to make my escape, and, getting
back to Jamaica, looked out for a homeward-bound vessel. As luck would
have it, I shipped aboard the _Fair Rosamond_; and now, as death is
hauling away at the tow-line, and I have no chance of fulfilling my
promise, if you wish to do me a service and keep my soul quiet, you'll
promise to take the message to Captain Tracy and the bit of paper in my
'baccy-box; I'll leave that to you, and everything else I've got on
board.

"I promised Tim that I'd do as he wished, and that if I failed he might
haunt me, if he'd a mind to do so, till my dying day. Tim has come more
than once in my dhrames to remind me, and I've been aiger ever since to
do his bidding."

"And where's the bit of paper?" asked Captain Tracy eagerly.

"Here it is, yer honour," answered the seaman, pulling a battered old
tobacco-box out of his pocket, from which he produced a yellow scrap of
paper, on which was written, apparently with the end of a burnt stick,
the letters O.M. Norah had been too much excited even to speak. She
gazed at the paper.

"Yes--these letters were, I am sure, written by Owen. I knew that he
was alive; I was certain of it!" she exclaimed, her bosom palpitating as
she spoke with the varied emotions which agitated her. "Oh, father,
look at them! They must have been written by Owen; he had no time or
means for writing more, and he was sure we should recognise them if they
were ever brought to us."

The captain took the paper and examined it. "Yes, I truly believe that
these letters were inscribed by Owen Massey. Had he attempted to write
more, he knew that the whole would probably be obliterated before it
could reach us, so he did the wise and thoughtful thing," he said. "I
praise Heaven that he is alive. I was sure from the first that the
_Ouzel Galley_ did not go down in the hurricane, and this proves it;
though what has become of her, or where Owen is imprisoned, is more t