'I suppose so. At any rate, I knew no more about it; and I don't know anything further, now, since I was insensible till I woke up here this morning and found you bending over me. However, I'm all right now, or soon shall be.' 'But how did you come into the dhow you were found in?' Bella asked, while pouring out, directly afterwards, one question after another. 'And when did it happen--yesterday, or a week ago? And where was the whaler, and the sailors, and the _Briseus_? And why did they all desert you? What a nice kind of a captain yours must be, to be sure!' 'My opinion is now,' said Gilbert, 'that the dhow you found me in, rescued me--picked me up. And I expect our captain--he is a rattling good skipper, Bella, all the same--heard I was drowned and thinks I've missed my muster. My cousin Jack will imagine for a month or so--till we get in to Bombay--that he is the future Lord D'Abernon,' and he laughed as he thought of how soon Cousin Jack would be undeceived. 'But the dhow we found you in--how did she escape, and why didn't the _Briseus_ capture her?' 'Some must have got off in the confusion since it was only an hour from dark. I'm certain to be reported lost when the ship goes into either Zanzibar or Aden, and---- What's that?' he exclaimed, breaking off suddenly. 'Surely that's your uncle's voice!' He recognised it because Captain Pooley had been in to see him after he recovered his consciousness and had congratulated him on doing so, as well as on being practically restored, while saying also that he was delighted at being the means of rescuing him out of the sinking slaver. 'Yes,' Bella replied, 'that's uncle's voice; and the other is that of Mr. Charke, the first mate.' 'Listen! What is it he is saying?' It was perfectly easy to hear what he was saying, since both master and mate were conversing in the saloon, to which Charke had descended. And the words which reached their ears, as they fell from the latter's lips, were: 'Oh, no doubt about it whatever, sir; not the least. The negress is now as blind as the negroes themselves. She cannot see her way along the deck, nor any of the signs we have made before her eyes.' CHAPTER XI THE TERROR INCREASES