any his guests to take
proper leave of them. The crew of the pirate sloop crowded themselves
along her sides, and even mounted into her shrouds, waving their hats
and shouting as the boat moved away. The cook was the loudest shouter,
and his ragged hat waved highest. And, as Dame Charter shook her
handkerchief above her head and gazed back at her savage friend, there
was a moisture in her eyes. Up to this moment she never would have
believed that she would have grieved to depart from a pirate vessel and
to leave behind a pirate cook.

Lucilla watched carefully the newcomers as they ascended to the deck of
the Black Swan. "That is the girl," she said to herself, "and I am not
surprised."

A little later she remarked to Captain Ichabod, who sat by her: "Are
they mother and daughter, those two?"

"Oh, no," said he. "Mistress Bonnet is too fine a lady and too beautiful
to be daughter to that old woman, who is her attendant and the mother of
the young fellow in the cocked hat."

"Too fine and beautiful!" repeated Lucilla.

"I greatly grieve to leave you all," continued the young pirate captain,
"although some of you I have known so short a time. It will be very
lonely when I sail away with none to speak to save the bloody dogs I
command, who may yet throttle me. And it is to Barbadoes you go to
settle with your family?"

"That is our destination," said Lucilla, "but I know not if we shall
find the money to settle there; we were taken by pirates and lost
everything."

Now the captain of the brig came up to Ichabod and informed him that the
goods he demanded had been delivered on board his vessel, and that the
brig was ready to sail. It was the time for leave-taking, but Ichabod
was tardy. Presently he approached Kate, and drew her to one side.

"Dear lady," he said, and his voice was hesitating, while a slight flush
of embarrassment appeared on his face, "you may have thought, dear
lady," he repeated, "you may have thought that so fair a being as
yourself should have attracted during the days we have sailed
together--may have attracted, bedad, I mean--the declared admiration
even of a fellow like myself, we being so much together; but I had heard
your story, fair lady, and of the courtship paid you by Captain Vince of
the corvette Badger--whose family I knew in England--and, acknowledging
his superior claims, I constantly refrained, though not without great
effort (I must say that much for myself, fair lady), from--