"The last thing I remember, after Jim and myself were capsized, is that I was holding on to the dinghy, and that I lashed myself to her with the painter. Poor Jim must have gone down at once. I don't remember seeing him after the boat turned over. The seas must have driven the sense out of me. I came to, days afterwards, in the cabin of a German barque. She had picked me up--still lashed to the dinghy--in an insensible condition. The barque was bound from Hamburg to Rio. My long exposure in the water brought on a serious and tedious illness. I was more dead than alive when I landed at Rio, and was at once taken to the hospital. There the English Consul called to see me, and behaved with great kindness. When I told him my story, and who I was, he said, 'A man of your name came here with a yacht a short time back--an eccentric man, for he only stopped two days here and was off again; so I did not see him.' I asked what the name of the yacht was. 'The _Petrel_,' he replied. Then, of course, the whole truth dawned upon me, and I satisfied the consul that someone had stolen my yacht and had assumed my name. The consul then advanced to me the money I required. I was still lying in the hospital when the news came to Rio that the _Petrel_ had been lost at sea, and that her crew had found a derelict, and sailed her into Pernambuco. In spite of the doctor's warnings, I left the hospital, and hurried here at once. I was awaiting an extradition warrant from England, when Mr. Norton anticipated my own action, and arrived with a warrant that had been obtained on account of former felonies committed by Carew." The true story of the French barque and her crew was never known. Baptiste and the two Spaniards took alarm and disappeared from Pernambuco. Not that they were in danger, for they were not implicated in the felonies which had been brought home to Carew. But the guilty wretches knew not what would be discovered next, they so completely distrusted each other, each knowing that he himself would readily betray his comrades, either for a price or to secure his own safety. What ultimately happened to these three villains I do not know. Baptiste being a criminal of the educated, cunning, and cowardly-cautious order, possibly enriched himself by iniquity for many years more, and, escaping his deserts in this world, may yet have died in his old age, a respected citizen in his native land. The other two more vulgar scoundrels were no doubt hanged, or stabbed in a brawl, or despatched in some such summary fashion sooner or later--a penalty for their crimes which seems light indeed to men of this brutal stamp, who consider a violent death as the most desirable and indeed only legitimate termination to existence. THE END PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH ADVERTISEMENTS _The Express Series.--No. II._ A GIRL OF GRIT CHAPTER I MY AMERICAN MILLIONS