carry out her
scheme, she could not go alone, and thoughts of sailing upon the sea,
and the dangers from pirates, storms, and wrecks, were very terrible to
the quiet merchant. He could not encourage this night-born scheme of his
niece.

"But there is one thing I can do," cried Kate, "and I must do it this
very day. I must go to the Governor's house, and I pray you, uncle, that
you will go with me. I must tell him about my father. I must make him do
something which shall keep that Captain Vince from sailing after him
and killing him. How I wish I had thought of all this before. But it did
not come to me."

It was not half an hour after that when Kate and her uncle entered the
grounds of the Governor's mansion.

CHAPTER XV

THE GOVERNOR OF JAMAICA

The Governor of Jamaica was much interested in the visit of Kate Bonnet,
whom he saw alone in a room adjoining the public apartments. He had met
her two or three times before, and had been forced to admit that the
young girls of Barbadoes must be pretty and piquant in an extraordinary
degree, and he had not wondered that his friend, Captain Vince, should
have spoken of her in such an enthusiastic manner.

But now she was different. Her sorrow had given her dignity and had
added to her beauty. She quickly told her tale, and he started upright
in his chair as he heard it.

"Do you mean," he exclaimed, "that that pirate, after whom I sent the
Badger, is your father? It amazes me! The similarity of names did not
strike me; I never imagined any connection between you and the captain
of that pirate ship."

"That's what Captain Vince said when I last saw him," remarked Kate.

"It must have astounded him to know it," exclaimed the Governor, "and I
wonder, knowing it, that he consented to obey my orders; and had I been
in his place I would have preferred to be dismissed from the service
rather than to sail after your father and to destroy him. If I had known
what I know now, my orders to Captain Vince would have been very
different from what they were. I would have told him to capture your
father, and to bring him here to me. It cannot be that he is in his
right mind!"

Now Kate was weeping; the terrible words "destroy him," and the
assurance that if she had thought sooner of appealing to the Governor,
much misery, or at least the thought of misery, might have been spared
her, so affected her that she could not control herself.

The Governor did not attempt to con