that no harm should arrest her dainty footsteps.

Presently was heard the toll of a bell. The sweeps paused, the hide
gromets resting on the thole-pins, and the water raining from their
broad blades.

"That must be a man-of-war off here on the quarter," exclaimed the young
officer at the tiller, "ringing for church."

The old seamen at the sweeps unconsciously took off their hats, wiped
the sweat from their brows, and listened.

"It can hardly be the 'Monongahela,'" said Ben, "though p'raps she took
more of a breeze to wind'ard, off the island."

Still the schooner glided on noiselessly over the sea, until, a minute
later, Harry Greenfield sang out,

"Port, sir! or we'll be plump into a vessel here ahead."

The helm was put down, and the "Rosalie" sheered off to starboard within
a biscuit-toss of a large brig.

"By my grandmother's wig!" said Ben, "that's the old 'Martha Blunt!'"

"Henri," said Paul Darcantel, in French, in his deep voice, "the last
request I shall ever make is to keep on. There is not a moment to
lose!"

"Give way, men!" shouted the officer, in a decided tone, as the words
came with a stifled gasp from his heaving breast, while the sigh that
followed was drowned in the splash of the sweeps in the water as they
again chafed in their gromets, and the foam flashed away from the blades
astern.

But there was another splash. A white object sprang with a bound over
the brig's quarter, dipping below the surface of the calm sea, and when
it came up, two great flippers, with a large black head between them,
struck out like the paws of an alligator, breasting the water with a
speed that soon brought him within a few fathoms of the schooner's low
counter. Then, seizing hold of the slack of the main sheet, which was
thrown to him, he came up, hand over hand, as if he could tear the stern
frame out of the schooner. A vigorous grasp caught him by one paw, and,
with the other laid on the taffrail, he leaped on deck as if his feet
had pressed a springboard instead of the yielding water.

Again, as in the olden time, he held his little Henri aloft in his giant
arms; but this time it was Banou who was dripping from a souse, and not
his little master.

"Give way, my souls! Another thousand dollars if we get up to the Key
before dark!" said the deep, low tones of the tall doctor.

"Good Lord!" roared a voice from on board the brig, now shut up again
all alone in the fog--"if that old nigger has not gone