Mustapha Inférieure, tossed into a boat, and so to the _Perroquet Vert_. And the _Perroquet Vert_, with loot and looters on board, was bound, probably, for one of those obscure and infamous ports of Oran or Morocco--Tenez, Mostaganem, Beni Sar, Melilla, or the city of Oran, or Tangier itself! He knew something of the Spanish and Maltese dens of Oran and Tangier, the clearing-houses for stolen goods of two continents, and the impregnable refuge of scores of ingenious villains. And when he reflected upon the grandeur and immensity of the scheme, so simple in its essence, and so leisurely in its achievement, like most grand schemes; when he reflected upon the imagination which had been necessary even to conceive it, and the generalship which had been necessary to its successful conclusion, he murmured admiringly-- “The man who thought of that and did it may be a scoundrel; but he is also an artist, and a great one!” And just because he, Cecil Thorold, was a millionaire, and possessed a hundred-thousand-pound toy, which could do nineteen knots an hour, and cost fifteen hundred pounds a month to run, he was about to defeat that great artist and nullify that great scheme, and incidentally to retrieve his watch, his revolver, his fur, and his five hundred pounds. He had only to follow, and to warn one of the French torpedo-boats which are always patrolling the coast between Algiers and Oran, and the bubble would burst! He sighed for the doomed artist; and he wondered what that victimised crowd of European loungers, who lounged sadly round the Mediterranean in winter, and sadly round northern Europe in summer, had done in their languid and luxurious lives that they should be saved, after all, from the pillage to which the great artist in theft had subjected them! Then Lecky re-entered the state room. “We shall have a difficulty in keeping the _Perroquet Vert_ in sight, sir.” “What!” exclaimed Cecil. “That tub! That coffin! You don’t mean she can do twenty knots?” “Exactly, sir. Coffin! It--I mean she--is sinking.” Cecil ran on deck. Dawn was breaking over Matifou, and a faint, cold, grey light touched here and there the heaving sea. His captain spoke and pointed. Ahead, right ahead, less than a mile away, the _Perroquet Vert_ was sinking by the stern, and even as they gazed at her, a little boat detached itself from her side in the haze of the morning mist; and she sank, disappeared, vanished amid a cloud of escaping steam. They were four miles north-east of Cape Caxine. Two miles further westward, a big Dominion liner, bound direct for Algiers from the New World, was approaching and had observed the catastrophe--for she altered her course. In a few minutes, the _Claribel_ picked up the boat of the _Perroquet Vert_. It contained three Arabs. V.