So would she. She had a great mind to commit suicide, and was only kept alive by the incessant work in the hospital at Pilot Mount, where she nursed father, and Lord Newstead, and lots of poor miners.'

CHAPTER XIV

'REALLY,' said Vanda, 'when we want to see our Australian friends, the proper thing is to come to England. We have certainly met more in a month here than we ever did in a year in the colonies.'

'And we Captain Hay -I beg his pardon, Captain Bucklaw in Australia,' assented Hermione. I wonder what will be his end. Something romantic and far from peaceful, I feel certain. Oh, here he comes to say good-bye! Why can't he stay another day, I wonder?'

never should have fallen across

'Reasons of State! The Captain never stays long in one place, I've remarked,' said Mr. Lilburne, who, with his wife, now joined them. He had a wire from his agent that the cargo was complete, and the Haitchi Maru only waiting for her commander.'

Mr. and Mrs. Banneret now came forward, while the Lilburnes shook hands warmly with the man who had been their friend in need, whatever might have been his career under other circum

stances.

'We shall never forget you,' said Mrs. Lilburne; you saved two lives when you rescued Alister from that inferno.'

'The Captain knows he may count on us whenever he likes to call,' said her husband. We hope to be able to repay him in kind.'

'It was time for us to go, my lads;

It was time for us to go,'

said he, chaunting the refrain of an old sailor-song, in deep melodious tones. 'I have never yet been caught napping, but, believe me, this meeting of true friends will be among the most precious memories of a reckless life, and if any of the present company should find themselves in danger on sea, or land, within a hundred miles of this skipper, he'll effect a diversion if it's in the power of mortal man. But, after all, it's a ten-to-one chance we never meet again. Think of me as one who might have been a better man with better luck. Adios, señora. Adios, Don Carlos Alvarez. Adios, señoritas.' Here he shook hands once more with the men, and bowing low to the girls and Mrs. Banneret, strode away to a swift hansom which awaited him, and disappeared from their eyes.

There was a peculiar feeling, somewhat allied to regret, yet perhaps even more to relief, when their picturesquely lawless friend took his departure. This sentiment was shared in lesser degree by the older, more experienced individuals of the party. But the girls were frankly grieved at the loss of so romantic an acquaintance—the tears, indeed, coming into Vanda's eyes as she realised

that she could hardly hope to know a real pirate' again.

'Do you think he really was engaged in the Black Flag business-death's head and crossbones, and so on?' queried Eric.

'I don't think that was ever proved,' answered Lilburne; 'more likely a trifle of privateering, or "blackbirding," as labour-recruiting was called in the early days of the Queensland sugar-planting industry. But there was a warrant out for him, and, indeed, for Hilary Telfer--that tall, fair man standing near Mrs. Banneret with his lovely wife he was supercargo on board the famous Leonora."' 'What a beautiful creature she is!' said Hermione; what a figure, what eyes, and such a face, lit up by a charming smile! She is something like a Spanish girl we saw at Santa Barbara, and yet not quite the same type-far more beautiful, with grace personified. I can't quite place her.'

'She is a descendant of Lieutenant Fletcher Christian, the leader of the mutineers of the Bounty, who disappeared somewhere about the year 1788, and formed that very interesting community at Pitcairn Island. They were not discovered until September 1808, when Captain Folger, of the American ship Topaz, seeing smoke rising from an island, from which a canoe was approaching, was hailed by the occupants in good Saxon English. "Won't you heave us a rope, now? was the request from the frail bark, and, a rope being thrown out, a fine young man sprang actively on deck. "I'm Thursday October Christian," he said modestly, "son of Fletcher

Christian, and the first man born on the island." H.M.S. the Briton and the Tagus-the former commanded by Sir T. Staines-were in search of an American ship which had seized some English whalers, when they suddenly came in sight of an uncharted island. It was Pitcairn, but should have been two hundred miles distant- being placed on the chart by Captain Carteret (who discovered it in 1767) three degrees out of its true longitude.'

'It seems almost incredible,' said Mr. Banneret, 'that a canoe carried on a man's shoulders should be safely handled amidst such terrific surges, but I recollect seeing Australian aboriginals at Two-fold Bay carrying their bark canoes on their heads to the water, and fishing successfully when it was by no means smooth. English-speaking strangers proved themselves to be unsurpassed boatmen-to be recognised in the aftertime as such amongst the best whalemen in the world. Twenty years had elapsed since Fletcher Christian and his mutineer associates, with their Tahitian wives, had left Mataavai Bay. During the whole of that time the actors in the tragedy had disappeared from mortal ken as completely as if they had been sunk "deeper than plummet lies," with their broken-up and abandoned vessel the Bounty.'

In 1808 Captain Mayhew Folger first came upon the little community of Pitcairn Island; in 1814 the Anglo-Tahitians had increased to the number of forty. Nothing was done by the British Government until 1825, when Captain Beechey, in the Blossom, on a voyage of discovery,