irely beyond my reach; and the water was coming
in fast, too, for even as I stood there I could feel it creeping
insidiously up my legs. The scoundrels had evidently followed their
usual custom and had scuttled the ship, in order that no tangible
evidences of their crime might remain.

Until I made this discovery it had been my intention to put a prize-crew
on board her and send her into Port Royal; but with one or more--
probably half-a-dozen--bad leaks below the water-level, and utterly
beyond our reach, this plan was no longer feasible; and now the only
thing to be done was to leave the unfortunate craft to her fate, proceed
in chase of the authors of the mischief, and do our utmost to bring them
to book. I therefore scrambled up out of the lazarette into the main
saloon, made my way out on deck again, and, summoning my boat's crew,
descended the deserted ship's side, and pushed off on my way back to the
_Wasp_.

But it was with something akin to shock that I looked back at the _Santa
Brigitta_, as the boat sped across the short space of water that
separated her from the schooner. For although we had only been aboard
her a short half-hour, she had settled perceptibly during that time; so
deeply, indeed, that as I looked at her I felt convinced she must have
been scuttled forward as well as aft, and that the water must be pouring
into her from at least a dozen auger-holes. At that rate she would sink
long before we could get out of sight of her, although the breeze was
now perceptibly stronger than it had been when I boarded the ill-fated
ship.

By the time that I had regained the deck of the _Wasp_, and that craft
was once more under way, the pirate schooner was hull-down on the
north-western horizon, nearly ten miles away. But light breezes and
smooth water, such as we had at the moment, constituted absolutely ideal
weather for the _Wasp_; it was under precisely such conditions that her
marvellous sailing powers showed to the utmost advantage, and, smart as
the other schooner had revealed herself to be, I had very little doubt
as to our ability to overhaul her and bring her to account. We
therefore piled upon the little hooker every rag that we could find a
spar or stay for, brought her to the wind, flattened-in her sheets until
her mainboom was almost amidships, and generally made all our
preparations for a long chase to windward.

But although the weather was at the moment everything that could be
desir