other affair. I am given to
understand that the men are extremely dissatisfied that I should have
spared your life--our motto, you must know, is: `Dead men tell no
tales', and we have acted in strict accordance with it thus far, which
doubtless accounts for the immunity that we have so long enjoyed. Yours
is the first life that I have ever spared."

"Thank you!" I said. "I suppose I ought to feel very much obliged to
you, but somehow I do not. This disaster has absolutely ruined my
prospects in the service, so you might just as well have killed me
outright. And, by the way, why have you spared me? Your surgeon
informed me that you spare only those who join you. I hope you don't
anticipate the possibility that I shall join you?"

My companion laughed heartily, yet there was a slight ring of bitterness
methought in his laugh. "No," he said, "I have not spared you in the
hope that you will join us; we have managed thus far to do fairly well
without your assistance, and I am sanguine enough to believe that, even
should you decline to throw in your lot with us, we shall continue to
rub along after a fashion without it. No, that was not my reason for
sparing you. By the by, what is your name, if I may presume to ask? It
is rather awkward to be entertaining a guest whose name, even, one does
not know."

"My name," I answered, "is Grenvile--Richard Grenvile, and I am a
lieutenant in his Britannic Majesty's navy."

"Quite so!" remarked my companion caustically, "I guessed as much from
your uniform. You bear a good name, young sir, a very good name. Are
you one of the Devon Grenviles?"

"Yes," I answered, "I am Devon all through, on both sides. My mother
was a Carew, which is another good old Devonshire family."

"Ah!" ejaculated Ricardo, as he called himself, with a quick indrawing
of his breath, as though what I had said had hurt him, though how it
should have done so was quite inexplicable. "I could have sworn it!
Lucy Carew! Boy, you are the living image of your mother! I recognised
the likeness the moment that we came face to face, when you boarded us;
and I have three times spared your life on that account--twice while the
fight was in progress, and again when my people would have heaved your
still breathing body to the sharks!"

"Good heavens!" I exclaimed, "is it possible that you can ever have
known my mother?"

"Ay," answered Ricardo, "extraordinary as it may appear to you, I once
knew your