escope, disappeared from the rocks, and in a few moments a
light boat, of the model used by whalers, emerged from the mouth of the
bay, containing this man and another. In the boat also was a coil of
rope.

The one who had inspected the craft from the rocks was a tall young
fellow, dressed in flannel shirt and trousers, the latter held in place
by a cartridge-belt, such as is used by the American cowboy. To this
was hung a heavy revolver. On his head was a broad-brimmed cork
helmet, much soiled, and resembling in shape the Mexican sombrero.
Beneath this head-gear was a mass of brown hair, which showed a
non-acquaintance with barbers for, perhaps, months, and under this hair
a sun-tanned face, lighted by serious gray eyes. The most noticeable
feature of this face was the extreme arching of the eyebrows--a
never-failing index of the highest form of courage. It was a face that
would please. The face of the other was equally pleasing in its way.
It was red, round, and jolly, with twinkling eyes, the whole borrowing
a certain dignity from closely cut white hair and mustaches. The man
was about fifty, dressed and armed like the other.

"What do you want of pistols, Boston?" he said to the younger man.
"One might think this an old-fashioned, piratical cutting out."

"Oh, I don't know, Doc. It's best to have them. That hulk may be full
of Spaniards, and the whole thing nothing but a trick to draw us out.
But she looks like a derelict. I don't see how she got into this
channel, unless she drifted up past Cape Maisi from the southward,
having come in with the Guiana Current. It's all rocks and shoals to
the eastward."

The boat, under the impulse of their oars, soon passed the fringing
reef and came in sight of the strange craft, which lay about a mile
east and half a mile off shore. "You see," resumed the younger man,
called Boston, "there's a back-water inside Point Mulas, and if she
gets into it she may come ashore right here."

"Where we can loot her. Nice business for a respectable practitioner
like me to be engaged in! Doctor Bryce, of Havana, consorting with
Fenians from Canada, exiled German socialists, Cuban horse-thieves who
would be hung in a week if they went to Texas, and a long-legged sailor
man who calls himself a retired naval officer, but who looks like a
pirate; and all shouting for _Cuba Libre_! _Cuba Libre_! It's plunder
you want."

"But none of us ever manufactured dynamite," answered B