Interest had been made with the captain of a small coasting craft, a good fellow, and a friend of Martin’s, bound eastward to the Pearl Fishery, to take me along with him. Once at sea again, I trusted speedily to find means to transfer me to a deck above which floated the battle-banner of England. The Pearl fisherman sailed to join the fleet by night. Nearly four months had by that time elapsed, since I was captured in Carthagena harbour. Don José had obtained a reversal of his sentence of banishment, and had sailed for Spain. Concerning the alcaide and his clerk, I heard nothing; but Captain Guzman I saw as, in the gathering darkness of the evening, I hurried to the beach—lurking, like a troubled spirit, round the shop of the Jew money-lender. Joseffa had wept upon my neck—her mother had blessed me—Martin had told me of a special vision, in which St. Gieronimo had appeared and promised to watch over me! ‘God bless them all!’ I had not thought shame to weep in saying it. Another half-hour and the ocean was again beneath my feet. ‘Hurrah, for a new cruize! Hurrah, for new shipmates! Hurrah, for the riches of the ocean! Hurrah, for the pearl banks of the Rio de la Hacha!’ CHAPTER XXIII. HOW WE SAIL TO JOIN THE PEARL FLEET, AND THE NEGRO DIVER’S STORY. The night I sailed from Carthagena was as starry and still as that in which I entered the bay. Negro fishermen, in canoes, again sung rude ditties as they shot their lines for pisareros—the rigging of stately merchantmen again cut with many dark and interlaced lines the sparkling sky—and again, and for the last time, I heard the bells of the rich Monastery of the Hill come pealing over the music of the surf.