It was Miss Marjorie Malyoe, very white, but strangely composed, showing no terror, either in her countenance or in her expression.

* * * * *

It would not be possible for the writer to give any clear idea of the circumstances of the days that immediately followed, and which, within a week, brought Barnaby True and the enchanting object of his affections at once to the ending of their voyage, and of all these marvellous adventures.  For when, in after times, our hero would endeavor to revive a memory of the several occurrences that then transpired, they all appeared as though in a dream or a bewitching phantasm.

All that he could recall were long days of delicious enjoyment followed by nights of dreaming.  But how enchanting those days!  How exquisite the distraction of those nights!

Upon occasions he and his charmer might sit together under the shade of the sail for an hour at a stretch, he holding her hand in his and neither saying a single word, though at times the transports of poor Barnaby’s emotions would go far to suffocate him with their rapture.  As for her face at such moments, it appeared sometimes to assume a transparency as though of a light shining from behind her countenance.

The vessel in which they found themselves was a brigantine of good size and build, but manned by a considerable crew, the most strange and outlandish in their appearance that Barnaby had ever beheld.  For some were white, some were yellow, and some were black, and all were tricked out with gay colors, and gold ear-rings in their ears, and some with long mustachios, and others with handkerchiefs tied around their heads.  And all these spoke together a jargon of which Barnaby True could not understand a single word, but which might have been Portuguese from one or two phrases he afterwards remembered.  Nor did this outlandish crew, of God knows what sort of men, address any of their conversation either to Barnaby or to the young lady.  They might now and then have looked at him and her out of the corners of their yellow eyes, but that was all; otherwise they were, indeed, like the creatures of a dream.  Only he who was commander of this strange craft, when he would come down into the saloon to mix a glass of grog or to light a pipe of tobacco, would maybe favor Barnaby with a few words concerning the weather or something of the sort, and then to go on deck again about his business.

Indeed, it may be affirmed with pretty easy security that no such adventure as this ever happened before; for here were these two innocent young creatures upon board of a craft that no one, under such circumstances as those recounted above, could doubt was a pirate or buccaneer, the crew whereof had seen no one knows what wicked deeds; yet they two as remote from all that and as profoundly occupied with the transports of their passion and as innocent in their satisfaction thereof as were Corydon and Phyllis beside their purling streams and flowery meads, with nymphs and satyrs caracoling about them.