id the sailor, after more carefully scrutinising it.
"It is! I see its shape better now. There's some un in it. I see only
one; ah, he be standin' up in the middle o' it, like a mast. It be a
man though; an' I dare say the same as gi'ed that shout, if he be a
human; though, sartin, there warn't much human in it."

As if to confirm the sailor's last assertion, the shriek was repeated,
precisely as it had been uttered before; though now, entering ears that
were awake, it produced a somewhat different impression.

The voice was evidently that of a man. Even under the circumstances, it
could be nothing else, but of a man who had taken leave of his senses.
It was the wild cry of a maniac!

The crew of the _Catamaran_ might have continued in doubt as to this had
they been treated only to a repetition of the shriek; but this was
followed by a series of speeches,--incoherent, it is true, but spoken in
an intelligible tongue, and ending in a peal of laughter such as might
be heard echoing along the corridors of a lunatic asylum!

One and all of them stood looking and listening.

It was a moonless night, and had been a dark one; but it was now close
upon morning. Already had the aurora tinged the horizon with roseate
hues. The grey light of dawn was beginning to scatter its soft rays
over the surface of the ocean; and objects--had there been any--could be
distinguished at a considerable distance.

Certainly there was an object,--a thing of boat-shape, with a human form
standing near its middle. It was a boat, a man in it; and, from the
exclamation and laughter to which they had listened, there could be no
doubt about the man being mad.

Mad or sane, why should they shun him? There were two strong men on the
raft, who need not fear to encounter a lunatic under any
circumstances,--even in the midst of the ocean. Nor did they fear it;
for as soon as they became fully convinced that they saw a boat with a
man in it, they "ported" the helm of the _Catamaran_, and stood directly
towards it.

Less than ten minutes' sailing in the altered course brought them within
fair view of the object that had caused them to deviate; and, after
scrutinising it, less than ten seconds enabled them to satisfy their
minds as to the strange craft and its yet stranger occupant.

They saw before them the "gig" of the slaver; and, standing "midships"
in the boat,--just half-way between stem and stern,--they saw the
captain of that ill-sta