re! Take this between you!"

One last pat of the steed's arched neck, a grateful neigh as the dark
face pressed against his broad head, and Paul Darcantel strode away in
the gray light of the morning.

"Gorra mighty! Nimble Jack, look at dis! Bress my modder in hebben, it
am one gold ounce apiece, sure as dis gemman's name Ring Finger Bill! De
Lord be good to dat tall massa! Him must hab plenty ob shiner to hove
him away on poor niggers!"

Even while the tall man strode on toward the port, and as the happy
blacks were chattering over their yapper, and walking the gallant steed
up and down the paved court-yard, a dull, heavy-sailing Spanish
brigantine was slowly sagging past Gallows Point and the Apostles'
Battery, when, creeping on by the frowning forts of Port Royal, she held
her course to sea.

Very different sort of craft from the counterfeit brigantine, with
clean, lean bows, slipping out from the Tiger's Trap one sultry evening
before a hurricane, which went careering, with a sea-hound after her,
down to the Garotte Gorge. Different kind of a crew too; and Captain
Brand must have remarked the contrast, with his keen, critical, nautical
eye--that is, if he chanced to sail in both brigantines, as there is
much reason for believing he did--with great disgust, on board the
dirty, dumpy old ballahoo now just clear of Drunkenman's Cay, and
heading alongshore for Helshire Point, bound for St. Jago de Cuba.

CHAPTER XLV.

LILIES AND SEA-WEED.

"Oh leave the lily on its stem!
Oh leave the rose upon the spray!
Oh leave the elder bloom, fair maids,
And listen to my lay!"

"When descends on the Atlantic
The gigantic
Storm-wind of the equinox,
Landward in his wrath he scourges
The toiling surges,
Laden with sea-weed from the rocks."

By day and night, under sun or moon, and in breeze or calm--by the
resounding shore--on the rippling water--in saloon and grove, picnicking
and boating--under vine or awning--all around in the whirling waltz, the
measured contra-danza--amid the tinkle of guitar or trill of piano, the
rattle and crash of the full band on board the frigate--gently rocking
on the narrow deck of the "Rosalie," or down in the brig of teak, there
was ever a white arm linked in the arm of blue--now timidly, then with a
confiding pressure--now a furtive look of blue eyes into dark, then a
fixed, steady gaze from the brown to the light--h