“The fates are against the poor fellow,” murmured the captain, sorrowfully. “I fear we were too late to help him. And yet it is a shame to be so cheated after all the trouble. Pedro, we will have another try, and by the Virgin, I will renounce--I mean I will be angry with--my patron saint if he does not help us to succeed in keeping this man’s soul out of purgatory a while longer.” Pedro, who, by the way, was the steward of the “Halcyon,” was already fatigued by the vigorous exertions he had made. He was, moreover, convinced that the thing upon which he had been operating no longer contained a soul, and he felt a horror at the idea of pulling and twisting a dead body about. But he dared not refuse to do as he was told, so, invoking the aid of St. Peter as a corollary to the help St. George had been asked to extend to the captain, he set bravely to work once more, and soon became as full of faith and energy as Pereiro himself. Fortunately for St. George, the captain had no need to be angry with him, for after a prolonged and fatiguing spell of rubbing, fomenting, dosing, and artificial respiration, the stranger’s eyelids began to quiver, and short, gasping sighs escaped his labouring breast. Thanks to Pereiro’s clever treatment, he was already partially relieved of the brine which he had perforce swallowed, but no sooner did the latter realise that his efforts were being rewarded by success, than he promptly administered another emetic, which proved thoroughly effectual, and left the patient gasping with exhaustion, but on the high road to recovery. As the reader no doubt guesses, it was Hilton Riddell who was thus miraculously saved from what appeared to be certain death. His would-be murderers were so anxious to avoid observation on their own ship that they had not noticed the proximity of the barque at right angles with them, and felt as sure that they had compassed their desired end, as that they themselves were alive and well. Thus they sped on their course, hugging the belief that they had taken the most effectual means of silencing an enemy, and feeling secure in the reflection that, as the sea was not likely to give up its dead, they were not likely to be confronted with Hilton Riddell again.