“Unless some wrecker, or turtler, fell in with him, and took him off.  Ay, ay, Don Wan; I left him that much of a chance, at least.  No man can say I murdered my mate.”

“I am not aware, Don Esteban, that any one has said so hard a thing of you.  Still, we have seen neither wrecker nor turtler since we have been here; and that lessens the excellent chance you left Don Enrique.”

“There is no occasion, senor, to be so particular,” growled Spike, a little sullenly, in reply.  “The chance, I say, was a good one, when you consider how many of them devils of wreckers hang about these reefs.  Let this brig only get fast on a rock, and they would turn up, like sharks, all around us, each with his maw open for salvage.  But this is neither here nor there; what puzzles me, was what we saw at the light, half an hour since, and the musket that was fired back at us!  I know that the figure at the foot of the tower did not fire, for my eye was on him from first to last; and he had no arms.  You were on the island a good bit, and must have known if the light-house keeper was there or not, Don Wan?”

“The light-house keeper was there, Don Esteban—­but he was in his grave.”

“Ay, ay, one, I know, was drowned, and buried with the rest of them; there might, however, have been more than one.  You saw none of the people that had gone to Key West, in or about the house, Don Wan?”

“None.  If any persons have left the Tortugas to go to Key West, within a few days, not one of them has yet returned.”

“So I supposed.  No, it can be none of them.  Then I saw his face as plainly as ever I saw it by moon-light, from aft, for’ard.  What is your opinion about seeing the dead walk on the ’arth, Don Wan?”

“That I have never seen any such thing myself, Don Esteban, and consequently know nothing about it.”

“So I supposed; I find it hard to believe it, I do.  It may be a warning to keep us from-coming any more to the Dry Tortugas; and I must say I have little heart for returning to this place, after all that has fell out here.  We can go to the wreck, fish up the doubloons, and be off for Yucatan.  Once in one of your ports, I make no question that the merits of the Molly will make themselves understood, and that we shall soon agree on a price.”

“What use could we put the brig to, Don Esteban, if we had her all ready for sea?”

“That is a strange question to ask in time of war!  Give me such a craft as the Molly, with sixty or eighty men on board her, in a war like this, and her ’arnin’s should not fall short of half a million within a twelvemonth.”

“Could we engage you to take charge of her, Don Esteban?”

“That would be ticklish work, Don Wan.  But we can see.  No one knows what he will do until he is tried.  In for a penny, in for a pound.  A fellow never knows!  Ha! ha! ha!  Don Wan, we live in a strange world—­yes, in a strange world.”