rgeous with strange and brilliant-hued flowers and fragrant with their
mingled perfumes, which sloped very gently down to a sandy beach, beyond
which was visible, through the wide-open casements of the apartment, a
wide stretch of landlocked water, in the centre of which floated the
hull of a vessel that I had no difficulty in identifying as the
_Barracouta_. The room which I occupied was elegantly furnished. Its
walls were decorated with several oil paintings that, to my uneducated
eye at least, appeared to be exceedingly good, and dotted about the room
here and there were little tables upon each of which stood a vase of
magnificent flowers. This was the scene upon which my eyes opened as I
awoke from the first natural sleep that had visited me since that
disastrous day when I had been struck down upon the deck of the pirate
brig, and I lay for some minutes motionless, drinking in the beauty and
the delight of it all, and revelling lazily in the sensation of relief
from pain and fever that I was now enjoying.

Then, as I unconsciously sighed with excess of pleasure, I became aware
of a slight movement beside the bed, and, glancing round, I perceived a
middle-aged negress bending over me and looking anxiously into my eyes.

"_Bueno_! The senor is himself again at last!" she exclaimed in accents
of great satisfaction as she placed her cool hand upon my brow for a
moment, and then proceeded to smooth my rebellious locks with a
tenderness that was almost caressing. "Yes," she continued, "the fever
has quite gone, and now the senor has nought to do save to get well and
strong again as soon as possible." She spoke in Spanish, and her accent
and manner were those of one who had been accustomed all her life to
associate with cultured people.

"Who are you, pray?" I demanded in the same language, "and where am I?"

"I am Mammy," she answered, "the old nurse of the senorita, and Senor
Ricardo's housekeeper. And you are now in Senor Ricardo's own house--
ay, and in his own room, too! What is the young English senor to Senor
Ricardo, I wonder, that he should be cared for thus?"

I scarcely knew whether this last remark was in the nature of a
soliloquy, or whether I was to take it as a question addressed to me,
but I treated it as the latter, and replied:

"I really do not know, Mammy, but--stop a moment; let me think--yes--I
seem to remember--or did I dream it?--that Captain Ricardo said he--
had--once known my mothe