pain; how I was captured by a Spanish brigantine"--omitting again to
state that he got up a mutiny with the crew of that brigantine,
poniarded the captain and mate in their sleep, and, assuming command of
the vessel, changed her colors for a black flag, and began his career as
a pirate in the Caribbean Sea--"and how I escaped. To all this she
listened with great interest, her large eyes dilating, and her bosom
swelling with sympathy as I proceeded, when suddenly the cabin door
opened, and my ugly friend Pedillo put his head in, and gave me a
warning nod.

"'What is it?' I said, rather sharply, to Pedillo; 'and how dare you
intrude inside my cabin?' I fear, too, that I came very near doing a
mischief to my boatswain; for I am rather impulsive at times, and by the
merest accident I happened to have a small pistol in my pocket."

Don Ignacio twitched his sleeve, and looked as if he believed such
accidents as pistols being found in the narrator's pockets happened
quite often.

"'_Senor_,' said Pedillo, 'there are two sail standing out from the lee
of Culebra Island, and one of them appears to be a large--'

"I stopped any farther particulars from the lips of my subordinate by a
motion of my finger, and then, kissing the hands of the girl, who was
somewhat surprised at what had transpired, I left the cabin and jumped
on deck.

"The schooner was now running down through the Virgin's Passage between
St. Thomas and Porto Rico, with a fine breeze on the quarter, and the
sun was just sinking behind the last-named island. I snatched a
spy-glass from the rail, and looked ahead. There, sure enough, was a
sixteen-gun brig on the starboard tack heading across our track, and a
large frigate under single-reefed top-sails stretching away over to the
opposite shores of Culebra, while they were telegraphing bunting one
with another as fast as the bright-colored flags could talk. And, as
luck would have it, as I swept the glass round, what should I see but a
long rakish corvette in company with a huge whale of a line-of-battle
ship, with her double tier of ports glimmering away in the slanting rays
of the sun, both on the wind, and coming out from under the lee of
Culebra Point, just a mile or two astern of us. By the blood of
Barabbas, _caballeros_, we were in a trap for wolves, and the hounds
were in full cry! I immediately, however, luffed the schooner up, and
steered boldly for the frigate; and, as a puff of smoke spouted out from