but even here, out of direct range of the glare, I
found it impossible to see anything outboard, the mere reflection of the
flames being bright enough to dazzle me.

I awaited the coming of daylight, and the appearance of the alleged
ship, with the utmost eagerness, not altogether unmingled with anxiety.
On the beach of one of the islands which we had visited shortly before
the wreck of the yacht, I had observed the ribs of what had once been a
fine ship; and the Scotsman who had taken up his abode on the island as
a trader in copra and shell had told me a grisly story concerning that
ship, which had haunted my memory from the moment when I had awakened to
find the _Stella Maris_ piled up on the coral reef. That story was to
the effect that the ship had one morning been sighted ashore on the
beach, apparently undamaged, but with no sign of a crew aboard her; and
when the Scotsman at length succeeded in boarding her, he had found
twenty-three corpses lying about her decks in a state of putrefaction
that rendered the craft a veritable pest-house and precluded all
possibility of close examination. But the deck and bulwarks were so
abundantly smeared and bespattered with dry blood as to point
unmistakably to the fact of a general slaughter of the crew; while the
open hatches and the state of the cargo showed that the ship had been
pretty effectually plundered.

My informant added that, while such cases were rare, there was reason
for believing that the adjacent seas were haunted by certain individuals
who made it their business to hunt for wrecks for the sake of what could
be salved from them, and were not above perpetrating a little piracy
when the conditions were favourable.

It was the memory of this story that had caused me to give such explicit
instructions, that I was to be informed of the presence of a stranger in
our neighbourhood before making our plight known by the ignition of the
flare. The unruly youngster had wilfully disobeyed me, with the result
that, for all he or I knew to the contrary, the attentions of a band of
ruthless outlaws or bloodthirsty pirates had possibly been invited. I
could only hope that this might not be the case, and that the stranger,
if stranger there really was, would prove to be honest; but I was by no
means easy in my mind about it.

When one's imagination becomes obsessed by an unpleasant idea there is a
natural tendency for anxiety to grow while one is held in suspense; at