; but, to make the thing more plausible, that
one-eyed old scoundrel was detailed to run along the Doce Leguas Cays,
see what information he could pick up there, and then follow down after
us.

"That night, or early the next morning, we were off again, and ran down
the coast, with a good offing to keep the wind, until we got to the
ground, and passed in by Cape St. Francis, and doubled round into the
Bight of Pines. There we fell in with a whole fleet of English and
American cruisers and schooner craft, who informed us that they had
searched every accessible spot where a man could walk dry-shod upon,
from Guayabos to the Isle of Mangles; that they had destroyed several
old and deserted piratical nests, and hung two or three ostensible
fishermen by way of wholesome warning to their allies the pirates; but
that was all; and from what they had learned, there did not seem to have
been an established retreat in that maze of cays and reefs for four or
five years.

"So you see we had our cruise for nothing, and then the captain agreed
with me that we had both been most egregiously deceived by the Spanish
commander of the guarda costa. Well, we hauled our wind once more,
standing well out to sea, and after a tedious beat of some days we again
edged in toward the coast, somewhere near the Boca Grande of the Twelve
League Cays on the westernmost side. It was in the morning when we made
the land, and, steering close in, we got a good slant off the shore, and
kept the glasses going from the topmost cross-trees down all through the
day. For my part, as Hardy may perhaps remember, I scarcely took the
glass from my eye for eight hours, and from the mizzen-top I feel quite
sure that there were not many objects, from the size of a blade of grass
to a mangrove bush, that I did not examine, from the coral reefs up to
the rocky heights, let alone the cocoa-nut-tree that we were in search
of.

"Toward afternoon, however, the weather came up hazy, the wind began to
fall off, and the barometer began to exhibit very queer spasms indeed,
rising with a sort of jerk at first, and then dropping down the tenth of
an inch at a clip, with the atmosphere becoming close and sultry, and
the men gasping about the decks as if we were about to choke at the next
breath. It was during the hurricane months, and the indications
certainly should have led us as far as our legs could carry us to open
water, instead of being caught embayed perhaps with half a t