“No, Miss Rose, my business is with the Swash and her captain. I shall stick by both, now I’ve found ’em again, until they once more desart me. A man’s duty is _his_ duty, and a woman’s duty is _her_ duty.” “You same to like the brig and her captain, Jack Tier,” observed Biddy, “and there’s no use in gain-saying such a likin’. What _will_ come to pass, must come to pass. Capt. Spike is a mighty great sailor, anyway.” “He’s a willian!” muttered Jack. “There!” cried Rose, almost breathless, “there is a rock above the water, surely. Do not fly by it so swiftly, Jack, but let us stop and examine it.” “There is a rock, sure enough, and a large piece it is,” answered Tier. “We will go alongside of it, and see what it is made of. Biddy shall be boat-keeper, while you and I, Miss Rose, explore.” Jack had thrown the boat into the wind, and was shooting close alongside of the reef, even while speaking. The party found no difficulty in landing; the margin of the rock admitting the boat to lie close alongside of it, and its surface being even and dry. Jack had brailed the sail, and he brought the painter ashore, and fastened it securely to a fragment of stone, that made a very sufficient anchor. In addition to this precaution, a lazy painter was put into Biddy’s hands, and she was directed not to let go of it while her companions were absent. These arrangements concluded, Rose and Jack commenced a hurried examination of the spot. A few minutes sufficed to give our adventurers a tolerably accurate notion of the general features of the place on which they had landed. It was a considerable portion of the reef that was usually above water, and which had even some fragments of soil, or sand, on which was a stinted growth of bushes. Of these last, however, there were very few, nor were there many spots of the sand. Drift-wood and sea-weed were lodged in considerable quantities about its margin, and, in places, piles of both had been tossed upon the rock itself, by the billows of former gales of wind. Nor was it long before Jack discovered a turtle that had been up to a hillock of sand, probably to deposit its eggs. There was enough of the sportsman in Jack, notwithstanding the business he was on, to turn this animal; though with what object, he might have been puzzled himself to say. This exploit effected, Jack followed Rose as fast as his short legs would permit, our heroine pressing forward eagerly, though almost without hope, in order to ascertain if Mulford were there. “I am afraid this is not the rock,” said Rose, nearly breathless with her own haste, when Jack had overtaken her. “I see nothing of him, and we have passed over most of the place.” “Very true, Miss Rose,” answered her companion, who was in a good humor on account of his capture of the turtle; “but there are other rocks besides this. Ha! what was that, yonder,” pointing with a finger, “here, more toward the brig. As I’m a sinner, there was a flashing, as of fire.”