all was blight and gloom, with murky masses of dead, still clouds
hanging low down over the island.

The little suffering boy, lying there on the coral pavement, with his
head resting on the thin, delicate arm, with pale, sweet face turned
half upward toward the Virgin, gave a feeble cry and opened his eyes. He
rose to a sitting posture, with his little hands resting on his lap and
little ragged shirt. Then, with his dim hazel eyes fixed upon the
painting, while the tears coursed slowly down his pallid cheeks, he put
forth his hands in a childish movement of supplication, and murmured
again his tearful prayer, "Mamma! mamma!"

Presently rising, he turned his feeble footsteps toward the doorway, and
as his eye caught the stone bowl of holy water standing on its coral
pedestal near the portal, he bent down his feverish head and slaked his
parched lips. Revived by this, he timidly looked out from the chapel,
and shuddering as he beheld the gloomy wilderness around, he once more
screamed in a thin piercing cry, "Mamma! oh, _ma chere_ mamma!"

That was the last sad wail for help for many and many a long year that
those infant lips were destined to utter; and when he again called upon
that dear name, his manly arms would clasp a joyful mother to his
swelling heart.

"Henri!" came back like an echo in a clear shout to the shriek of the
boy. "Henri! Henri!" was reiterated again and again, each time in a
voice that seemed to split asunder the canopy of clouds above.

The boy started and listened.

"Henri! Henri! this way to your good friend the doctor! Quick, my little
boy!"

Now with the step of a fawn the child ran out upon the sharp sandy
esplanade, and following the voice as he tripped lightly through the
narrow pathway between the needle-pointed cactus, in a moment he
stopped, with a look of horror, beside the trestle on which the bound
and nearly naked man was stretched.

Ay, it was a sight to make a strong and stalwart man turn pale with
sickness and horror, much less a baby-boy of three or four years old.
There lay the man, all through the dreadful night, with swarms on swarms
and myriads upon myriads of stinging insects, biting and sipping, and
sucking his life-blood with distracting agony away. Ah! think of the
hellish torture often practiced by those bloody pirates upon their
victims in the West Indies! The bound man's eyes were closed, the lips
and cheeks puffed and swollen out of all human proportions, and