the _Duke_ was to cruise at a range that would cover forty-five miles; and the _Dutchess_ was to occupy the waters between her consorts. There were, of course, false alarms; as, for instance, on the 28th the _Marquis_ fired a gun, which was promptly answered by the _Dutchess_, on which the _Duke_ hauled her wind for the coast. It then turned out that the _Marquis_ had mistaken the _Duke_ for the Manila ship, and fired as a signal for the _Dutchess_ to chase. They had to wait a long time before the vessel they wanted hove in sight. It was now a month later than the usual time of her appearance in this part of the sea where she was being waited for, and the anxiety of the buccaneers was increased by their inability to obtain any intelligence of her. Provisions were again scarce, and even on short allowance there was barely bread enough to last for seventy days,—a serious matter in the face of the inevitable run later on to the Ladrone Islands, which promised to occupy fifty days at the very least. This most unfortunate dearth of stores, coupled with the growing dejection and mutinous sulkiness of the men, determined Rogers and his brother commanders to give themselves another week's chance, and then, if the galleon did not appear, to sail away to the Indies. In order to save time the _Dutchess_ was despatched to a convenient bay to take in water and wood, etc., that as one ship obtained these stores another might take her place, thus always leaving two on the look-out. By the 4th she had taken in what was necessary, and the _Marquis_ replaced her to refit. Until December 21st nothing happened; then on the morning of that day, when the _Duke_ was in the act of shifting her helm for the place where the _Marquis_ was refitting, the look-out man aloft hailing the deck, shouted that he saw a sail bearing west about twenty miles distant. The English ensign was immediately hoisted, and in a few minutes both the _Duke_ and the _Dutchess_ were standing towards the stranger; but on a sudden it fell stark calm, and as conjecture was hopeless and expectation insupportable, the pinnace was manned and sent to see what she could make of the distant ship. In reading Rogers's account, you find your sympathies curiously enlisted on behalf of those two stagnated buccaneering vessels, and witness with but little effort of imagination the crowds of weather-darkened, fiery-eyed men, some in the rigging, some at the masthead, some leaning in impetuous pose against the rail, staring their very hearts out under the sharp of their hands at the cotton-white outline, glimmering like the tip of a sea-bird's pinion on the edge of the distant gleaming horizon, whence the swell rolls in folds of oil to the wet and flashing sides of the ships; the officers on the quarter-deck peering their hardest through the lean and unsatisfying perspective-glasses of those days; Dampier and Rogers together rehearsing their intentions and