It was then that Bessy beckoned anxiously to Mr Meldon, who came hastily across the deck and knelt down, taking the hand feebly stretched out to him. "Not the pulse, doctor, the palm," said John Studwick, his face lighting up with a strange unearthly smile. "I'm not jealous now. Be kind to my darling sister. Good-bye." As Bessy burst into a fit of sobbing and lowered her head upon his breast, he laid his hand upon her glossy curls. Then seeing his father bending eagerly over him, he tried to raise his other hand, but it fell back, his lips formed the words "Good-bye" once more; and, as his eyes smiled up in his father's face, the lines around them gradually hardened, the pupils dilated in a fixed stare, and those who gazed down upon him knew that the spirit had fled to its lasting home. STORY ONE, CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT. A PUZZLING CASE. It was about an hour later that the doctor went below to his other patient, to find him lying perfectly still and hardly breathing, so softly his pulsation seemed to rise and fall, while, faithful to his post, Rasp was by his side. Laure was evidently sleeping, and, after a brief examination, Mr Meldon turned thoughtfully away, for there were peculiarities in the case which he could not fathom. As he reached the deck, he was touched on the shoulder, and, turning sharply, he found Rasp behind him. "Is he going to die to-night, doctor, like t'other poor chap?" "I can't say, Rasp," was the reply. "His case puzzles me. To-night he sleeps so easily that he seems to me better, and as if he were rallying fast." "Oh no, he ain't," said Rasp, shaking his head oracularly; "that's the artfulness of his nature. He's a-dying sharp." "How do you know?" "'Cause I heerd him a muttering to hisself when he thought as I warn't listening, and then he got talking to hisself in his foreign lingo; and when I came into sight again he began picking at his blanket." "May be," said Mr Meldon, "but all the same, he is certainly better." "Yah! stuff!" ejaculated Rasp, as he descended to the cabin. "He's dying fast, and it's going to be to-night. I can feel it as plain as can be, poor chap. But he's an out and out bad 'un, and only got what he deserves." Rasp took several pinches of snuff in succession. "How rum this snuff is to-night," he muttered, as he settled himself on the locker opposite where Laure lay, and then proceeded to watch the night through, after refusing the help of Oakum and 'Pollo, both of whom had offered to relieve him, and in the course of half-an-hour he was sleeping heavily. And so a couple of hours glided away; when, just as all was perfectly silent on board the schooner, and all save the watch on deck slept soundly, Laure, the Cuban, rose from his simulated sleep, and after a glance at Rasp stole to the locker in which lay his clothes, slipped them on silently, and then made softly for the deck.