tead of Mr Kennedy? I most sincerely
hope that nothing dreadful has happened."

"We have got off much more easily than at one moment I dared to hope," I
said. "But I grieve to inform you that the fight has cost us the life
of one man, and he the man whom we can least of all afford to lose. You
will guess at once that I mean poor Kennedy, who was killed by a round
shot--the only shot that did any damage worth mentioning."

For a moment Mrs Vansittart seemed scarcely able to credit my news. I
believe that up to then she had never quite realised the fact of our
peril; but now that one of our men had actually lost his life it was
suddenly brought home to her with startling vividness, and she was
correspondingly upset. She stared at me unbelievingly, gasped: "What?
Neil Kennedy killed? Oh, Walter, you cannot possibly mean it!" and
then, as I nodded my head, she sank back into her chair and burst into
tears. I thought it best to let her have her cry out in peace, for
tears seem to be the natural safety valve of a woman's emotions; and
while she sat there with her face buried in her hands and the tears
streaming through her fingers, Miss Anthea, Monroe, and Julius came up
from below. Of course they all wanted to know what was the matter, and
I was obliged to explain. In the course of the explanation, which took
something of the form of a brief narrative of the entire adventure, I
happened to remark:

"What puzzles me more than anything is how it happened that those
fellows were able to find us so accurately on so dark a night. I took
the greatest care to mask all our lights effectually; yet when we first
sighted them they were heading as straight for us as if we were in plain
sight."

"And so we were," remarked Monroe; "for which we have to thank our young
friend Julius, here. When, in obedience to his mother's command, I took
him below to his cabin before the fight began, I not only found the open
port of his cabin uncovered, but all three of the electric-lights
ablaze, so that the port must have shown up in the dark like a
lighthouse. The young gentleman explained to me that he couldn't sleep
because of the heat, and had therefore been reading in bed!"

CHAPTER EIGHT.

A WEIRD AND STARTLING EXPERIENCE.

The untimely death of poor Kennedy resulted in my being promoted to the
position of first mate of the _Stella Maris_, young as I was; while the
boatswain, who knew nothing of navigation, but was an exc