her lip, and we talked in lowered voices as though we were bound on
some midnight raid. The night seemed to be charged with the expectancy
of the unknown, and Sailor, who, of course, was to be a fellow-voyager,
whined restlessly from the wharf side at the little yawl that awaited us
in the whispering, lapping water.

Sailor had watched his master getting his guns ready for some days, and,
doubtless, memories stirred in him of Scotch moors they had shot over
together. He raised his head to the night wind, and sniffed impatiently,
as though he already scented the wild duck on Andros Island. He was
impatient, like the rest of us, because, though it was an hour past
sailing-time, we had still to collect two of the crew. The same old
story! I marvelled at the good humour with which Charlie--who is really
a sleeping volcano of berserker rage--took it. But he reminded me of his
old advice as I started for my first trip: "No use getting mad with
niggers--till you positively have to!"

Well, the two loiterers turned up at last, and, all preliminaries being
at length disposed of, we threw off the mooring ropes, and presently
there was heard that most exhilarating of sounds, to any one who loves
sea-faring, the rippling of the ropes through the blocks as our mainsail
began to rise up high against the moon which was beginning to look out
over the huge block of the Colonial Hotel, the sea-wall of which ran
along as far as our mooring. A few lights in its windows here and there
broke the blank darkness of its facade, glimmering through the avenues
of royal palms. I am thus explicit because of something that presently
happened, and which stayed the mainsail in its rippling ascent.

A tall figure was running along the sea-wall from the direction of the
hotel, calling out, a little breathlessly, in a rich young voice as it
ran:

"Wait a minute there, you fellows! Wait a minute!"

We were already moving, parallel with the wall, and at least twelve feet
away from it, by the time the figure--that of a tall boy, cow-boy
hatted, and picturesquely outlined in the half light--stopped just ahead
of us. "Like the herald Mercury," I said to myself. He raised something
that looked like a bag in his right hand, calling out "catch" as he did
so; and, a moment after, before a word could be spoken, he took a flying
leap and landed amongst us, plump in the cock-pit, and was clutching
first one of us and then the other, to keep his balance.

"Did