can't help thinking it's the beginning of the
end. Good heavens! what's that?"

She had started at the dark figure of one of the foreign-looking
sailors, who seemed to have suddenly risen out of the deck beside them.

"The Senor Perkins," he said, with an apologetic gesture of his hand to
his hatless head.

"You want ME, my good man?" asked Senor Perkins paternally.

"Si, Senor; the mate wishes to see the Patrono," he said in Spanish.

"I will come presently."

The sailor hesitated. Senor Perkins took a step nearer to him
benignantly. The man raised his eyes to Senor Perkins, and said,--

"Vigilancia."

"Bueno!" returned the Senor gently. "Excuse me, ladies, for a moment."

"Perhaps it is some news of poor Mr. Hurlstone?" said Miss Keene, with
an instinctive girlish movement of hope.

"Who knows?" returned Senor Perkins, waving his hand as he gayly tripped
after his guide. "Let us believe in the best, dear young lady, the
best!"

CHAPTER III.

"VIGILANCIA."

Without exchanging another word with his escort, Senor Perkins followed
him to the main hatch, where they descended and groped their way through
the half obscurity of the lower deck. Here they passed one or two
shadows, that, recognizing the Senor, seemed to draw aside in a half
awed, half suppressed shyness, as of caged animals in the presence of
their trainer. At the fore-hatch they again descended, passing a figure
that appeared to be keeping watch at the foot of the ladder, and almost
instantly came upon a group lit up by the glare of a bull's-eye lantern.
It was composed of the first and second mate, a vicious-looking Peruvian
sailor with a bandaged head, and, to the Senor's astonishment, the
missing passenger Hurlstone, seated on the deck, heavily ironed.

"Tell him what you know, Pedro," said the first mate to the Peruvian
sailor curtly.

"It was just daybreak, Patrono, before we put about," began the man
in Spanish, "that I thought I saw some one gliding along towards the
fore-hatch; but I lost sight of him. After we had tumbled up to go on
the other tack, I heard a noise in the fore-hold. I went down and found
HIM," pointing to Hurlstone, "hiding there. He had some provisions
stowed away beside him, and that package. I grabbed him, Patrono.
He broke away and struck me here"--he pointed to his still wet
bandage--"and would have got out overboard through the port, but the
second mate heard the row and came down just in time to stop