the _Calypso_ held her course to the south-east, till the chart
declared the coast to be that of Djigheli Bay, and Arthur recognised the
headlands whither the unfortunate tartane had drifted to her destruction.
Anchoring outside the hay, Captain Beresford sent the first lieutenant,
Mr. Bullock, in the long-boat, with Arthur and a well-armed force, with
instructions to offer no violence, but to reconnoitre; and if they found
Mademoiselle de Bourke, or any others of the party, to do their best for
their release by promises of ransom or representations of the
consequences of detaining them. Arthur was prepared to offer his own
piastres at once in case of need of immediate payment. He was by this
time tolerably versed in the vernacular of the Mediterranean, and a
cook's boy, shipped at Gibraltar, was also supposed to be capable of
interpreting.

The beautiful bay, almost realising the description of AEneas' landing-
place, lay before them, the still green waters within reflecting the
fantastic rocks and the wreaths of verdure which crowned them, while the
white mountain-tops rose like clouds in the far distance against the
azure sky. Arthur could only, however, think of all this fair scene as a
cruel prison, and those sharp rocks as the jaws of a trap, when he saw
the ribs of the tartane still jammed into the rock where she had struck,
and where he had saved the two children as they were washed up the
hatchway. He saw the rock where the other three had clung, and where he
had left the little girl. He remembered the crowd of howling, yelling
savages, leaping and gesticulating on the beach, and his heart trembled
as he wondered how it had ended.

Where were the Cabeleyzes who had thus greeted them? The bay seemed
perfectly lonely. Not a sound was to be heard but the regular dip of the
oars, the cry of a startled bird, and the splash of a flock of seals,
which had been sunning themselves on the shore, and which floundered into
the sea like Proteus' flock of yore before Ulysses. Would that Proteus
himself had still been there to be captured and interrogated! For the
place was so entirely deserted that, saving for the remains of the wreck,
he must have believed himself mistaken in the locality, and the
lieutenant began to question him whether it had been daylight when he
came ashore.

Could the natives have hidden themselves at sight of an armed vessel? Mr.
Bullock resolved on landing, very cautiously, and with a suf