uzon, and they have been making a good easting all night; but we are
running north now--see that point ahead? It's really an island--the
Little Sister, I am sure--and Dasol Bay lies to the north up the channel
between the island and the mainland. He's running to get into that
channel behind the island and scuttle her there--he knows his business."

In a few minutes the island stood clear of the coast, and I could make it
out, low and green and fuzzy, with a rim of white sand running back to
the fringe of the jungle and a ruffle of combers on the shingle. We could
hear the boom of the waves ashore, beating at the base of the barren
brown hills of the coast.

"He's well off the track of the steamers here," said Riggs, "but he won't
delay much longer now, unless he can get in behind the island and then he
can take his own time, because he can pick up a sail before he is sighted
through the ends of the channel. That island caps a little bay, and he'll
be snug as a bug in a rug to do his work. Let's have a look on deck and
see what's up."

Rajah leaped out of his bunk, and, after looking around for a minute in
confusion at his strange quarters, drank the water we had saved for him
in the pannikin, and then put his face to a port-hole and surveyed the
land.

I took the lead up the companion with the pistol ready, hoping that one
of the pirates might be close to the tiny slit I had cut in the board and
would offer a target. I applied my eye to the hole.

The Rev. Luther Meeker, still in his suit of duck and pongee shirt and
battered pith helmet, just as I had seen him on the mole in Manila, was
pacing the bridge in the calm, commanding way that marks the man
accustomed to command. He was puffing contentedly at a cigar, and there
was something amusing in the manner in which he cocked his head to one
side to survey the sea and then the land with a critical eye.

From side to side he tramped, swinging on his heel at each end of the
bridge like a grenadier sentry, and giving Petrak, who had the wheel, a
stern look as he passed. Buckrow was at the port end of the bridge, with
a glass to his eyes scanning the rim of the sea; but Meeker, or Thirkle,
kept aloof from his men, and he might well have been an admiral on the
bridge of his flagship--the Devil's Admiral, indeed!

"Take a look at them," I whispered to Riggs, and made way for him at the
scuttle peephole.

"Blast him!" raged Riggs as he saw the scene on the bridge. "I n