"We've gone quite far enough," growled Bart. "Where's that light that Dinny was to show?" There was no answer, and no light visible from where they lay for the next three hours, waiting patiently till the first faint streak of dawn should show them the waiting vessel, and their ghastly burden could be carried aboard ready for a sailor's grave. "It is a trick, Bart," said Jack at last, as he glanced at their freight lying forward beneath a spare sail. "Ay, I felt it, my lad," said Bart, frowning. "I felt it last night. Black Mazzard hain't the man to leave alone; and what's a couple o' bottles o' rum to such as he?" "The villain--the coward!" cried Jack, bitterly. "At a time like this!" "Ay, it's a bad time, my lad," said Bart, "but we've done our work, poor chap; and the sea's the sea, whether it's off a boat or a schooner. You mean that, don't you, now?" "No," said Jack, fiercely, as he pointed to the back-fins of a couple of sharks. "Ugh!" ejaculated Bart. "What, then, my lad?" "To find the schooner first, and if not, to make for one of the little islands, where we'll land." "Little more to the west, my lad," said Bart, after they had been sailing in silence for some time. "You'll land at the Sandy Key, won't you?" "Yes," said Jack, shortly, as he sat there with eyes fixed and frowning brow. "Poor old Abe!" said Bart to himself, as he gazed in turn at the ghastly object in the bottom of the boat. "One never used to think much of dying in the old days; but if one did, it was of being drowned at sea, washed ashore, and buried decently in the old church-yard atop of the hill. And now, old mate, after being a captain out here, we're a-going to lie you over yonder in the warm, dry sand, where the sun always shines and the cocoa-nuts grow; but you'll have no tombstone, lad, and no words writ, only such as is writ in her heart, for she loved you, Abe, old mate, more than she'll ever love me." A sharp look-out was kept for the schooner; but though the horizon was swept again and again, she was not in sight. "It's one o' Black Mazzard's games, lad," Bart said at last, as a faint, cloudy appearance was visible on their bow; "but we shall find him yonder." Jack bowed his head in acquiescence, and the boat skimmed rapidly on, till the cloudy appearance began to take the form of a low island, from whose sandy shore cocoa-nut palms waved their great pinnate leaves, looking lace-like against the clear blue sky. In a couple of hours they were close in, and the boat was run up in a sandy cove sheltered by a point, with the result that, instead of the tide setting in heavy rollers, there was just a soft curl over the waves, and a sparkling foam to wash the fine pebble sand. "No," said Bart, speaking as if in answer to his companion. "Never mind," said Jack, quietly. "We shall find the schooner by-and-by. Let's land."