“All right, Dominique, here you are.  Now don’t you miss the boat, or we shall quarrel at starting, and I shall send ashore at once and engage someone else.”

“Dominique come, sar, that for sure.  Me good man; always keep promise.”

“Well, here is another couple of dollars, Dominique; that is a present.  You give that to the wife, and tell her to buy something for the piccaninnies with it.”

So saying, Frank, George Lechmere, and Pedro stepped on board the boat; while the pilot walked off, his black face beaming with satisfaction.

He came off duly with the last water boat, and while the contents of the barrels were being transferred to the tanks—­for now that the long run was accomplished there was no longer any necessity for carrying a greater supply than these could hold—­Frank had a talk with him.

“Now, Dominique, this is, you know, a yacht cruising about on pleasure.”

“Yes, sar, me know dat.”

“At the same time,” Frank went on, “we have an object in view.  Just at present we want to find that schooner or brigantine that put in here nearly a month ago.  She carried a heavy spread of canvas on her yards, and lay very low in the water.”

The pilot nodded.

“Me remember him, sar; could not make out de craft nohow.  Some people said she pirate, but dar ain’t no pirates now.”

“That is so, Dominique.  Still there may be reasons sometimes for wanting to overhaul a vessel, and I have such a reason.  What it is, is of no consequence.  Pedro tells me that when she got under sail she went west, but as it was just dark when she sailed, she may very well have turned as soon as she was hidden from sight and have gone east; and it seems to me likely that she would, in the first place, have made for one of the Virgin Islands.”

“It depends, sar, upon the trade that he wanted to do.  Not much trade dere, sar.  The trade is done at Tortola, dat English island; and at Saint Thomas or Santa Cruz, dem Danish islands; all de oders do little trade.”

“Yes, Dominique, but I don’t think that she wants to trade at all.  What she wants to do is to lie up quietly, where she would not be noticed.”

“Plenty of places in the islands for dat, sar.”

“Did they take a pilot here?”

Dominique shook his head.

“No, sar; several offers, but no take.  If want to hide, they no want pilot from here; they take up a fisherman among the islands, to show dem good place.  But plenty of places much better in San Domingo or Cuba.  Why dey stop Virgin Islands?  Little places, many got no water, no food, no noting but bare rock.”

“I think that they would go in there, because, as the hurricane season had begun when they got here, they would think it better to run into the port.”

“Hurricane not bad here, sar; bery bad down at what English call Leeward Islands.  Have dem sometimes here, not bery often; had one four days ago, one ob de worse me remember.  We not likely to have another dis year.”