ake to his friends.

"Why, sir, and would you believe it? I offered to pour a drop of
grog--mixed or raw--down his tight mouth, but he never had the
perliteness to thank me or ax me a question, but only looked wicked at
me. Consarn him! if he had only winked, I wouldn't mind it!" said Ben,
with much indignation; "but, howsever, I don't b'lieve he's any think to
leave or any friends left!"

But Captain Brand, though speechless without being tongue-tied, and
unable to wink, still thought. And what did the doctor propose to do
with him in case he was not to be stung to death by insects, sand-flies,
musquitoes, and what not?

"Lift the trestle for the last time, men, and stand it here over this
thick bed of cactus, so as the little finger may touch the letter on
this white tomb-stone."

Now Captain Brand's doubts were relieved, and he knew what was coming.
Oh ho! ho!

"There! that is right! Now collect stones and rocks, and wall this
trestle up solid to the edge of the frame, so that a hurricane can't
loosen it."

Big Banou went to work now, and presently his job was done--coral rocks,
and loose head-stones of pirates, well packed down with sand, made the
sides of the living tomb. Then the black pall was drawn over the body,
and they left the pirate to his inevitable doom.

Soon the three executioners reached the Tiger's Trap.

"Banou, take this locket and chain--ah! you know it well--to your young
master. Brown, the two thousand dollars will be placed in your and
Greenfield's hands for distribution among the schooner's crew; make a
good use of it! Tell the commodore that I shall take an old woman we
have found here away with me in a stolen fisherman's boat to Manzanillo,
and within the year I shall be at home! There! shove off, my lads!"

As the gig skimmed through the Tiger's Trap, Paul Darcantel, with the
widow of Ignacio, sailed out by the Alligator's Mouth, and as they
crossed that roaring ledge, the sun sank in its unclouded glory in the
west, and the young moon, with its thin pearly crescent, looked timidly
down upon the island.

And the night passed, and the next and the next, with scorching days and
blazing suns between them; while the mangrove, the palm, the cocoa-nut,
and the cactus--ah! that luxuriant plant throve apace--shooting up its
steel-pointed bayonets two inches of a night in thorny needles as thick
as pins in a paper, growing clean through the hide of ox or man like
blood, till their hard-e