roused; the young cocoa-nut springing up on the crag itself--not
a vestige of my old habitation left, or the bright blades or pleasant
guests to dine with me!"

Here there was something of the old cold murderous scowl on the
captain's face as he twisted the point of his nose.

"Ah! yes, there may be my wary-eyed Sanchez left, though the last
I heard of him he was in the Capilla dungeon of the Moro. And
that"--grating his teeth, and glaring with his icy eyes at the
fire, as if those two blocks of ice would put it out--"cursed
doctor who pursues me!

"Well, well, neither of those old friends are here yet, and before
another sun sets I shall bequeath the old den to them both! Ho, ho! with
those solid bags of clinking metal, I shall leave them as much sand and
rocks as they choose to walk over. What a sly devil I was to stow that
treasure away for a rainy day! Never told a living being! Poisoned the
fellow, too, who made the lock! Capital joke, 'pon my soul!"

This was the very last of the very few jokes that Captain Brand ever
enjoyed.

"And, now I think of it, I wonder if my thirsty old mate's bones are yet
lying there in the vault. What _was_ his name? such a bad memory I have!
Oh! Gibbs--Bill Gibbs--with one leg! Ho, ho!"

Here Captain Brand drained some more aguardiente out of a cracked
earthen pot, and slapped his fine legs with rapture.

"And those dear girls who married me! Lucia, too!"

The dirty wretch started as the wing of a sea-bird swooped down over the
pure inlet; and he thought he saw a white fore finger beckoning him on
to his doom.

"Pshaw!" said he, smoothing down his filthy tattered shirt with the
finger of his mutilated left hand, "how nervous I am! But what a bungle
Pedillo made of that marriage! And my good Ricardo, too! What a feast
the sharks must have had on his oily, well-fed carcass! Misericordia!
Ho, ho! I believe I'll bid my friends good-night."

Captain Brand stretched himself out at full length on the shelly strand,
his boat secured by a clove-hitch round his right leg, which rode calmly
in the little inlet; his bald head, with the few dry gray hairs on his
temples, resting on Miguel's sennit hat, and the thin scum of frosty
eyelids drawn over his frozen eyes--cracking their covering at
times--until at last the pirate, aided by fiery aguardiente, slept.

A few late cormorants and sea-birds sailed over him in his fitful
slumber, and uttered a cold cry, as if their pecking-time had