The reader will readily have anticipated that Jack Tier had early made the females on board the Swash her confidants.  Rose had known the outlines of her history from the first few days they were at sea together, which is the explanation of the visible intimacy that had caused Mulford so much surprise.  Jack’s motive in making his revelations might possibly have been tinctured with jealousy, but a desire to save one as young and innocent as Rose was at its bottom.  Few persons but a wife would have supposed our heroine could have been in any danger from a lover like Spike; but Jack saw him with the eyes of her own youth, and of past recollections, rather than with those of truth.  A movement of the wounded man first drew Rose from the window.  Drying her eyes hastily, she turned toward him, fancying she might prove the better nurse of the two, notwithstanding Jack’s greater interest in the patient.

“What place is this—­and why am I here?” demanded Spike, with more strength of voice than could have been expected, after all that had passed.  “This is not a cabin—­not the Swash—­it looks like a hospital.”

“It is a hospital, Captain Spike,” said Rose, gently drawing near the bed; “you have been hurt, and have been brought to Key West, and placed in the hospital.  I hope you feel better, and that you suffer no pain.”

“My head is n’t right—­I do n’t know—­everything seems turned round with me—­perhaps it will all come out as it should.  I begin to remember—­where is my brig?”

“She is lost on the rocks.  The seas have broken her into fragments.”

“That’s melancholy news, at any rate.  Ah!  Miss Rose!  God bless you—­I’ve had terrible dreams.  Well, it’s pleasant to be among friends—­what creature is that—­where does she come from?”

“That is Jack Tier,” answered Rose, steadily.  “She turns out to be a woman, and has put on her proper dress, in order to attend on you during your illness.  Jack has never left your bedside since we have been here.”

A long silence succeeded this revelation.  Jack’s eyes twinkled, and she hitched her body half aside, as if to conceal her features, where emotions that were unusual were at work with the muscles.  Rose thought it might be well to leave the man and wife alone—­and she managed to get out of the room unobserved.

Spike continued to gaze at the strange-looking female, who was now his sole companion.  Gradually his recollection returned, and with it the full consciousness of his situation.  He might not have been fully aware of the absolute certainty of his approaching death, but he must have known that his wound was of a very grave character, and that the result might early prove fatal.  Still that strange and unknown figure haunted him; a figure that was so different from any he had ever seen before, and which, in spite of its present dress, seemed to belong quite as much to one sex as to the other.  As for Jack, we call