breeze, we could see the sluggish mass almost rise bodily out of water
as it was torn and split by the round iron wedges, the fragments flying
up in dark, ragged strips and splinters with squirming ropes around
them, looking, in the moonlight, like skeletons of gibbeted pirates
tossed, gallows and chains, into the air, and then coming down in dips
and splashes into the unforgiving water.

"A minute later, all that was left of the shattered hull fell broadside
into the open fangs of the ledge, which ground it with its merciless
jaws into toothpicks. But in all the lively music and destruction going
on around us--which takes longer to tell than to act--we heard no human
voice save one, and that came in a loud, terrified yell amid the
crunching roar of the ledge,

"'_O Madre! Madre dolorosa!_'

"This, gentlemen, was the last sound that came from the piratical
schooner 'Centipede.'"

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

VULTURES AND SHARKS.

"Oh ho! oh ho! Above! below!
Lightly and brightly they glide and go;
The hungry and keen on the top are leaping,
The lazy and fat in the depths are sleeping!"

"Ah! well-a-day! What evil looks
Had I from old and young;
Instead of the cross, the albatross
About my neck was hung."

When Hardy had concluded his part of the tale, he stuck the stump of his
cigar into the wine-glass of ashes, as if he had no farther use for
either, moistened his throat with a bumper of tinta, and almost
unconsciously passed his left arm around Harry Darcantel's neck.

Stingo drank two bumpers, as if he had a particularly parched throat;
but Paddy Burns and Tom Stewart, strange to relate, never wet their
lips, and passed their hands in a careless way across their eyes, as if
there were moisture enough there--as, indeed, there was; feeling, as
they did, in the founts of their own generous natures, for their dear
friend who sat opposite.

Piron's head rested, face downward, on his outspread hands, and a few
drops trickled through his close-pressed fingers, but they were not
wine. And as he raised his head and looked around the board, where
glowing, sympathizing eyes met his, he said, in a low, subdued voice,

"I trust I may thank Heaven for avenging the murder of our child!"

Even as he uttered these words, his gaze rested on the face of
Darcantel; and striking the table with a blow that made the glasses
jingle, he started back, as he had done o