n less than two minutes from the time of our first appearance on deck.

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

"ALL'S WELL THAT ENDS WELL."

Leaving Woodford to attend to the securing of the prisoners, I hastened
aft to see how Tompion and his little party were faring in the cabins.
I found them in the saloon under the poop, with four prisoners who had
been discovered ransacking the cabins, and in one of these prisoners, a
fine handsome middle-aged man of swarthy complexion, with dark hair
clustering in close ringlets all over his shapely head, dark piercing
eyes, small ears, from the lobes of which depended a pair of plain gold
ear-rings, and a somewhat slim yet wiry and athletic-looking figure clad
in a picturesque but somewhat showy costume, I thought I identified the
man I was so anxious to meet, Giuseppe Merlani. The man was badly
wounded, having been run through the body by Tompion, who had been
compelled to inflict the wound in order to save his own life. The
fellow looked hard, almost wildly at me, and muttered something which I
could not catch, as I was at the moment speaking to the gunner; and
when, a minute afterwards, I found myself at liberty to interrogate him,
I discovered that he had swooned from loss of blood. I directed Tompion
to have him taken below, undressed, and placed in a hammock, despatching
one of our men, meanwhile, to hunt up the surgeon of the _Santa
Catalina_, and then made my way below to the spot where I had left Don
Luis. I found him still in charge of the man Collins, who had managed
in an effectual if somewhat clumsy way, to stanch the bleeding of his
wound; and it is scarcely necessary to say that he was overjoyed when I
informed him that we had succeeded in recapturing the ship. He at once
staggered to his feet, and upon my assuring him that there was nothing
further to fear from the pirates, announced his intention of going
immediately to his daughter's hiding-place, begging me to accompany him
thither. We accordingly started on our way to the main-deck, Collins
supporting Don Luis by placing his arm round the latter's waist. But we
were barely half-way up the ladder when a sudden hubbub and confusion
arose on the upper deck, and I was compelled to hasten away to see what
it meant. I found that it was caused by the discovery, suddenly made,
that the pirate schooner was sinking alongside, and I reached the poop
only just in time to see her heel over and founder stern first, the
broadsi