ep, and have just woke up. I think this is a real nice
boat. Are you the captain? My name is Inez Hawthorne--what is yours?"

These questions, uttered with childish rapidity and ingenuousness,
threw some light upon the apparent mystery.

"She belongs to the steamer," said Abe Storms, with his eyes fixed
wonderingly upon her. "She has managed to get in our boat in some way,
and we have carried her off. Did you ever see anything so pretty?"

As the reader has learned, there was good cause for this admiring
question. Both of the men were bachelors, but they possessed natural
refinement, and they could reverence the innocence and loveliness of
childhood. With the discovery that she was an actual human being, the
awe-struck wonder of the two men vanished, though their curiosity was
great to learn how it was she was carried away from the steamer.

"Won't you come here and talk with me?" asked Storms, reaching out his
arms invitingly, but a little doubtful whether she would respond,
though the stoop-shouldered inventor was always popular with children.
The answer of Inez was a sudden spring, which landed her plump into
the lap of the mate, while she flung her arms around his neck with a
merry laugh, and then wheeled about on his knee, so that she could
look in the face of either of the men, who, not unnaturally, felt a
strange and strong attraction toward the beautiful child.

Then the two began a series of questions that were answered in the
characteristic fashion of childhood, but from which the friends
succeeded in extracting something like a clear explanation of her
presence on board the _Coral_--so many miles from the steamer on which
she had set sail at San Francisco.

They learned that Inez--who was such a pet on the _Polynesia_ that she
was allowed to do as she chose--was invited by one of the crew to
visit the _Coral_, while she lay so close to the disabled steamer. The
one who gave this invitation was Hyde Brazzier, and he was struck with
the wonderful loveliness of the child, when she questioned him about
the schooner.

There is no nature, however steeped in crime, in which there is not a
divine spark which may be fanned into a flame--which, perchance, may
illumine the whole soul; and but for the subsequent strange events,
little Inez Hawthorne might have proved, in the most literal sense, a
heaven-sent messenger upon that craft, which carried so much
wickedness in the forecastle.

Brazzier rowed the short