nd on
the wheel. He looked back for a moment at the two sentinel palms and
then he rang the bell for full speed ahead.

The engines throbbed, the screws churned the still water of the lagoon
into a white froth and the _Mariella_, with rapidly increasing speed,
poked her nose into the green foliage that barred her passage to the
sea. Branches and vines scraped along her sides for a moment and then,
released from their impeding embrace, she forged ahead with a tremble
and start into the open sea. The red portlight of the waiting gunboat
gleamed in the darkness a few points off her port bow. O'Connor swung
her head around until the light was off the _Mariella's_ quarter. Then
he turned the wheel over to the steersman who stood beside him.

"Keep her steady, now," he said, as he left the pilot house and returned
to the bridge, where Suarez stood with his glasses trained on the red
light.

"No sign of movement, yet, sir," he said.

"You have no lights burning?"

"Not a light aboard, sir, except in the binnacle."

"All depends upon the moon then. She'll hardly make us out against the
shore. If the moon stays in for fifteen minutes we shall be out of range
of her guns and we can outfoot her in a stern chase."

CHAPTER XXV

HOME AGAIN

Mrs. Hamilton sat on the broad veranda of her cottage looking wistfully
out to sea. She was pale and languid from the weight of many anxious
days and sleepless nights. Before her lay the treacherous ocean, now
calm and peaceful, rippling laughingly in the summer sunshine. The white
sails of tiny pleasure craft skimmed lightly over its placid surface,
and in striking contrast to her unhappy mood, nature and the world
seemed to show their cheeriest faces. The laughing voices of merry
youngsters, the twitter of the sparrows in the trees, the soft notes of
a girl's happy song wafted to her from a passing yacht, all grated
harshly on her overwrought nerves. Day in and day out, in sunshine and
storm, since Harry's disappearance, she had sat in a sheltered corner of
the veranda and--waited.

Mr. Hamilton stepped out of the cottage, and drawing a chair beside her,
took her hand gently in his and caressed it silently.

"There is no word yet?" she said, finally, without taking her eyes from
the dancing water.

"None."

"And you have been unable to learn anything of the steamer,--the
_Mariella_?"

"All that my agents can find out is that she is apparently a tramp, and
that she