ne of the last balls struck her on the narrow deck,
passed through that and the waterways, and out to windward, spoiling two
of her timbers, and no end of planking, yet this was the last damage she
received. Her crew, also, had got as well as could be out of harm's
way--both the sound and wounded--and were lying quietly as possible deep
down in the vessel's run. When daylight broke the breeze began to
slacken, but she was by this time hull down from the corvette, a long
way beyond the reach of her long eighteens in the bow ports, and eating
her way to windward, with no chance of being taken.

[Illustration: THE NIGHT CHASE.]

"It's no use," said the captain of the corvette to his first lieutenant,
as they stood watching the receding chase. "We may as well give it up;
she has the heels of us in this light wind, and will soon be out of
sight. I think, however," continued the captain, with a smile, "that
he'll remember the 'Scourge' when he meets her again. This is the second
time we have chased that fellow; and this heat, by the way the splinters
flew, we must have peppered the skin off his back."

Shutting up the joints of the spy-glass which he held in his hand, he
took hold of the man-ropes of the poop ladder, and as he put his feet on
the steps, he said,

"You can go about, Mr. Cleveland, and run down to the brig."

CHAPTER VII.

THE MEETING AND MOURNING.

"Moan! moan, ye dying gales!
The saddest of your tales
Is not so sad as life!
Nor have you e'er began
A theme so wild as man,
Or with such sorrow rife.

"Then, when the gale is sighing,
And when the leaves are dying,
And when the song is o'er,
Oh! let us think of those
Whose lives are lost in woes--
Whose cup of grief runs o'er!"

The afternoon following the night when the foregoing events transpired,
the "Martha Blunt" sailed slowly along the sandy tongue of land which
separates Port Royal from Kingston, and dropped anchor in the harbor. As
the cable rumbled out with a grating sound through the hawse-hole, and
the crew aloft were furling the sails, a large, gayly-painted barge,
pulled by a dozen blacks shaded by a striped awning, shot swiftly
alongside. Jabbering were those darkies, and clapping their hands, and
shouting joyously. A rope was immediately thrown from the gangway of the
brig, and a tall, handsome man, with a broad Panama hat, loose white
jacket and trowsers, sprang with a