t
least one more effort for freedom, I was not sorry to hear footsteps
coming along the deck, and the voices of the skipper and Ryan in earnest
conversation.

"We must get a light from somewhere at once, and look to the wounded
without a moment's delay," said the former. "I fear that our loss has
been very serious in this affair. Ah! there is a faint glimmer of light
from the skylight yonder; I will go below and see what it is.
Meanwhile, Mr Ryan, muster your men, and load the guns, if you can lay
your hand upon any ammunition. Those schooners will try to slip away if
they can, now that we have got the brig; but I shall not be satisfied
unless I can secure the whole of them; we _must_ have something more
than we have got already to account satisfactorily for our loss!"

"Niver fear, sorr," answered the second luff; "they'll not get away
from--By all the powers though, there goes one of thim now!"

And away he dashed forward again, shouting out certain orders to the
men, while the skipper, after hesitating for a few seconds, entered the
companion and began to descend.

My attention had been somewhat distracted from my prisoner by this brief
conversation, a fact which had evidently not passed unnoticed by him,
for before I fully realised what was happening, he had in some
inexplicable manner sprung to his feet with a single, lightning-like
movement, and his hand was already upon my left wrist, when with a quick
twist of the arm I managed to get my pistol-barrel pointed at him as I
pressed the trigger. There was a bright flash, lighting up the whole
cabin as though by a gleam of lightning, and glancing vividly from the
rolling eyeballs of my antagonist, a sharp explosion, and the Spaniard
went reeling backward with a crash upon one of the sofas as the captain
entered the cabin at a bound.

"Hillo!" he exclaimed, as he peered at me in the faint light of the
lantern, "who are you, and what is the matter here? Why--bless me!--it
is Mr Dugdale, isn't it? And pray who is that man on the sofa?"

In a few brief words I narrated my adventure, to which he listened
quietly, holding his wounded hand, bound up in a handkerchief, in the
other meanwhile; and when I had finished, he glanced at the prostrate
figure on the sofa and said, noticing the ghastly paleness of the
upturned face, and the lifelessness of the outstretched limbs--

"Well, he looks as though there was not much mischief left in him now,
at all events. Bu