mber, when a boy, I was
told men should be; but you are the first I ever met. You would learn
what has become of the little girl, Eva Seaworth, as she was called.
Alas! I cannot tell you. The only good action I ever in my life
attempted has been frustrated. I had preserved your little sister from
all injury, and intended to have restored her to her friends in safety,
when I lost her."

"Explain, explain," I cried in a tone of agony. "Do not you know where
she is?"

"Indeed I do not," was the answer. It struck a chill into my heart; and
a stranger coming in would have found it difficult to say which of the
two was the dying man.

"Can you give me no clue--can you not conjecture where she is?" I at
length asked.

"Indeed I cannot, sir," he answered. "I have no reason to suppose her
dead; but I am utterly unable to tell you where she now is."

"What! my sweet little sister! you deserted her!--wretch!" I cried,
scarcely knowing what I said, and wringing my hands with the bitterness
of heart. The next moment I regretted the exclamation.

"You wrong me there," said the pirate. "I deeply mourn for her loss, as
you will understand shortly. But my time is short. I have resolved to
give you some important information I possess respecting you; and as
your companions may be useful, as witnesses of what I say, call them
back. I will endeavour to make what little recompense I can, for some
of what I may look on as the smallest of my many crimes; and then I will
get you to talk to me about that religion I have so long neglected. I
must give you something of my history; for, strange as you may deem it,
it is much mixed up with yours."

"What!" I exclaimed, interrupting him, with astonishment, "your history
mixed up with mine! Can you give an account of who I am?"

"Indeed I can, sir; and may put you in the way of regaining rights, of
which you have long been deprived. But hasten, summon your friends; you
have no time, I feel, to lose."

I rushed out, with my heart throbbing, and full of amazement, to call
Prior and Fairburn. Before I returned, and before he could impart the
information so important to me, the pirate might have breathed his last;
yet my sad disappointment regarding the uncertainty of my sister's fate
prevented me feeling the satisfaction I should otherwise have
experienced at thus being on the point of gaining the information I had
all my life so eagerly desired. My friends speedily follow