ght occurred that attacks by
pirates were common enough in those seas, that other fathers might have
lost daughters in this way, and that, perhaps, his suspicion might be
wrong. It would be a terrible thing, he thought, to raise hope in his
poor friend's breast unless he were pretty sure of the hope being well
founded. He would wait and hear more. He had just come to this
conclusion, and managed to subdue the feelings which had been aroused,
when Van der Kemp turned to him again, and continued his narrative--

"I know not how it was, unless the Lord gave me strength for a purpose
as he gave it to Samson of old, but when I recovered from the stinging
blow I had received, and saw the junk hoist her sails and heard my child
scream, I felt the strength of a lion come over me; I burst the bonds
that held me and leaped into the sea, intending to swim to her. But it
was otherwise ordained. A breeze which had sprung up freshened, and the
junk soon left me far behind. As for the other junk, I never saw it
again, for I never looked back or thought of it--only, as I left it, I
heard a mocking laugh from the one-eyed villain, who, I afterwards found
out, owned and commanded both junks."

Nigel had no doubt now, but the agitation of his feelings still kept him
silent.

"Need I say," continued the hermit, "that revenge burned fiercely in my
breast from that day forward? If I had met the man soon after that, I
should certainly have slain him. But God mercifully forbade it. Since
then He has opened my eyes to see the Crucified One who prayed for His
enemies. And up till now I have prayed most earnestly that Baderoon and
I might _not_ meet. My prayer has not been answered in the way I
wished, but a _better_ answer has been granted, for the sin of revenge
was overcome within me before we met."

Van der Kemp paused again.

"Go on," said Nigel, eagerly. "How did you escape?"

"Escape! Where was I--Oh! I remember," said the hermit, awaking as if
out of a dream "Well, I swam after the junk until it was out of sight,
and then I swam on in silent despair until so completely exhausted that
I felt consciousness leaving me. Then I knew that the end must be near
and I felt almost glad; but when I began to sink, the natural desire to
prolong life revived, and I struggled on. Just as my strength began a
second time to fail, I struck against something. It was a dead cocoa-nut
tree. I laid hold of it and clung to it all that night. Next morning