I gazed at him in blank amazement. "Yes," said the captain, "I have seen her, and she has sent me to you. But I see you are all knocked into a heap, and I will make the story as short as I can. This vessel of mine is bound from Liverpool to La Guayra, and on the way down we called at Lisbon. On the morning of the day I was to sail from there, there came into port the _Glanford_, a big English merchantman, from Buenos Ayres to London. I knew her skipper, Captain Guy Chesters, as handsome a young English sailor as ever stood upon a deck. "In less than an hour from the time we dropped anchor, Captain Guy was on my vessel. He was on the lookout, he said, for some craft bound for South America or the West Indies, and was delighted to find me there. Then he told me that, ten days before, he had taken two ladies from a half-wrecked French steamer, and that they had prayed and besought him to cruise about and look for the _Sparhawk_, a helpless ship, with a friend of theirs alone on board. "'You know,' said Captain Guy to me, 'I couldn't do that, for I'd lost time enough already, and the wind was very light and variable; so all I could do was to vow to the ladies that when we got to Lisbon we'd be bound to find a steamer going south, and that she could easily keep a lookout for the _Sparhawk_, and take off the friend.' 'That was a pretty big contract you marked out for the steamer going south,' I said, 'and as for the _Sparhawk_, she's an old derelict, and I sighted her on my voyage north, and sent in a report of her position, and there couldn't have been anybody on board of her then.' 'Can't say,' said Captain Guy; 'from what I can make out, this fellow must have boarded her a good while after she was abandoned, and seems to have been lying low after that.' Was that so, sir? Did you lie low?" I made no answer. My whole soul was engaged in the comprehension of the fact that Bertha had sent for me. "Go on!" I cried.