this _might_ have ended. Oh, mercy! what is that?"

A shock, as if the cutter had struck upon a rock--a dull, heavy _boom_--
and the fragments of the burning brig were scattered far and wide, to
come pelting down again the next minute in a perfect shower of charred
and splintered wood, spars, ropes, and the thousand-and-one other
matters usually found on board a ship. The brig's powder magazine had
blown up. A heavy cloud of dark smoke marked the spot where the
explosion had taken place; and when it drifted away before the fresh
morning breeze, one or two half-burnt timbers floating on the water were
all that remained of the _Albatross_.

"Ah!" exclaimed Bob, who was busy coiling down the various halliards,
etcetera, "I've been expectin' that any time this last half-hour, and I
only wonder it didn't happen afore. Well, that's a good endin' to a
good job well begun, and I reckon them chaps ashore there may's well
make up their minds to stay where they be for the rest of their nat'ral
lives, for they've neither ship nor boats, nor stuff to build 'em with
either. I don't reckon there's many trees on yon island that'd be much
use in a ship-buildin' yard."

"No," said I; "I think we may safely consider that their career of crime
and bloodshed is put an effectual stop to, for some time at least;
unless, indeed, some unfortunate ship should come to the island, in
which case they would have her to a certainty."

"Ay," returned Bob, "but that's a very onlikely chance. These here
islands don't lie in the road to nowhere, and it may be years afore they
sets eyes on a sail again after they loses sight of that good-lookin'
topsail of ourn. I s'pose they won't starve there, will they, lad?"

"No," said I, "there is very little fear of that. The island yields an
abundance of fruit, as you know, amply sufficient for all their
requirements; and they have their punt, which will serve them to go
fishing on the lagoon, though she is too small for any of them to
venture to leave the island in her. So, on the whole, I think they are
quite as well off as they deserve."

We were by this time clear of the reef and in open water, so I went down
to breakfast, leaving Bob at the tiller. Ella was very penitent for her
late "naughtiness," as she termed it, and was so lavish with her
endearments, to make up for it, that I would very willingly have
experienced such a "thunder-squall" every day of my life to have the air
cleared afterwa