with all on board. He stood telling how the
Expedition, fearing then that the case stood
as it did, got afloat again, by great exertion,
after the loss of four more tides, and returned
to the Island, where they found the sloop
scuttled and the treasure gone. He stood
telling how my officer, Lieutenant Linderwood,
was left upon the Island, with as
strong a force as could be got together
hurriedly from the mainland, and how the three
boats we saw before us were manned and
armed and had come away, exploring the
coast and inlets, in search of any tidings of
us. He stood telling all this, with his face
to the river; and, as he stood telling it, the
little arbor of flowers floated in the sunshine
before all the faces there.

Leaning on Captain Carton's shoulder,
between him and Miss Maryon, was Mrs.
Fisher, her head drooping on her arm. She
asked him, without raising it, when he had
told so much, whether he had found her
mother?

"Be comforted! She lies," said the
Captain, gently, "under the cocoa-nut trees on
the beach."

"And my child, Captain Carton, did you
find my child, too? Does my darling rest
with my mother?"

"No. Your pretty child sleeps," said the
Captain, "under a shade of flowers."

His voice shook; but, there was something
in it that struck all the hearers. At that
moment, there sprung from the arbor in his
boat, a little creature, clapping her hand
and stretching out her arms, and crying,
"Dear papa! Dear mamma! I am not
killed. I am saved. I am coming to kiss
you. Take me to them, take me to them,
good, kind sailors!"

Nobody who saw that scene has ever
forgotten it, I am sure, or ever will forget it.
The child had kept quite still, where her brave
grandmama had put her (first whispering in
her ear, "Whatever happens to me, do not
stir, my dear!"), and had remained quiet
until the fort was deserted; she had then
crept out of the trench, and gone into her
mother's house; and there, alone on the
solitary Island, in her mother's room, and
asleep on her mother's bed, the Captain had
found her. Nothing could induce her to be
parted from him after he took her up in his
arms, and he had brought her away with
him, and the men had made the bower for
her. To see those men now, was a sight.
The joy of the women was beautiful; the
joy of those women who had lost their own
children, was quite sacred and divine; but,
the ecstasies of Captain Carton's boat's crew,
when their pet was restored to her parents,
were wonderful for the tenderness they
showed in the midst of roughness. As the
Captain stood with the child in his arms, and
the child's own little arms now clinging
round his neck, now round her father's, now
round her mother's, now round some one who
pressed up to kiss her, the boat's crew shook
hands with one another, waved their hats over
their heads, laughed, sang, cried, danced—and
all among themselves, without wanting to
interfere with anybody—in a manner never
to be represented. At last, I saw the coxswain
and another, two very hard-faced men with
grizzled heads who had been the heartiest of
the hearty all along, close with one another,
get each of them the other's head under his
arm, and pummel away at it with his fist as
hard as he could, in his excess of joy.

When we had well rested and refreshed
ourselves—and very glad we were to have
some of the heartening things to eat and
drink that had come up in the boats—we
recommenced our voyage down the river:
rafts, and boats, and all. I said to myself, it
was a very different kind of voyage now, from
what it had been; and I fell into my proper
place and station among my fellow-soldiers.

But, when we halted for the night, I found
that Miss Maryon had spoken to Captain
Carton concerning me. For, the Captain
came straight up to me, and says he, "My
brave fellow, you have been Miss Maryon's
body-guard all along, and you shall remain
so. Nobody shall supersede you in the
distinction and pleasure of protecting that
young lady." I thanked his honor in the
fittest words I could find, and that night
I was placed on my old post of watching the
place where she slept. More than once in the
night, I saw Captain Carton come out into the
air, and stroll about there, to see that all was
well. I have now this other singular confession
to make, that I saw him with a heavy heart.
Yes; I saw him with a heavy, heavy heart.

In the day-time, I had the like post in
Captain Carton's boat. I had a special
station of my own, behind Miss Maryon, and
no hands but hers ever touched my wound.
(It has been healed these many long years;
but, no other hands have ever touched it.)
Mr. Pordage was kept tolerably quiet now,
with pen and ink, and began to pick up his
senses a little. Seated in the second boat, he
made documents with Mr. Kitten, pretty well
all day; and he generally handed in a
Protest about something whenever we stopped.
The Captain, however, made so very light of
these papers that it grew into a saying
among the men, when one of them wanted a
match for his pipe, "Hand us over a Protest,
Jack!" As to Mrs. Pordage, she still wore
the nightcap, and she now had cut all the
ladies on account of her not having been
formally and separately rescued by Captain
Carton before anybody else. The end of Mr.
Pordage, to bring to an end all I know about
him, was, that he got great compliments at
home for his conduct on these trying
occasions, and that he died of yellow jaundice, a
Governor and a K.C.B.

Serjeant Drooce had fallen from a high
fever into a low one, Tom Packer—the only
man who could have pulled the Serjeant