isest thing he could do.

"If you could speak Spanish you might have taken the command of the ship
which was to have been given to me; but as it is, the men would not
place confidence in you, and you could do nothing with them; so, to tell
you the truth, I think you are well out of it. Our success is very
uncertain. The troops on shore have again been defeated with heavy
loss, and I suspect have been so demoralised that they'll take to flight
whenever the enemy rush out upon them."

These remarks strengthened Nettleship in his resolution, and, wishing
our new friend good-bye, we pulled back to the brig. The wind was from
the south-east, and Nettleship thought it prudent to get a good offing
before night, lest it should again shift and blow us back towards the
land. The brig sailed under her reduced canvas tolerably well, and
before daybreak the next morning we had made fair progress towards
Gibraltar. As the sun rose, however, the weather gave signs of
changing. The wind veered round to the north-west, and blew heavily
directly towards the Bay of Algiers.

"Don Barcelo and his fleet will catch it, I'm afraid, if they don't
manage to get out of the bay before this gale reaches them," remarked
Nettleship. "I'm very thankful that we put to sea, or we should have
fared ill."

As it was, we ran a great risk of losing our masts; but they were well
set up, and we shortened sail in good time, and were able to keep our
course. Our chief anxiety, however, was for the gallant Henry Vernon;
for should the flag-ship drive on shore, he would to a certainty lose
his life.

"We must hope for the best," observed Nettleship; "the _Guerrero_ was
less damaged than many of the other ships, and may be able to ride it
out at anchor, or claw off shore."

As we could never manage to get more than four knots an hour out of the
brig, we were a considerable time reaching Gibraltar. To our
satisfaction we found the _Jason_ was still there. We were warmly
congratulated on our return on board, as from our non-appearance for so
long a time it was supposed that we had either been lost in a squall, or
that the brig had been taken by another pirate. We were much
disappointed to find that the brig had to be delivered up to the
authorities at Gibraltar, as we fully expected that Nettleship would
have been ordered to take her home. Though she was an especially
detestable craft, yet he and Tom Pim and I were very happy together, and
we ha