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“Out with the boats, Mr. Duncan,” he said; “they’re drunk or crazy, but they’re the men we want. Capture them.”

“Suppose they run, sir–suppose they take to their boats and get into the woods–shall we follow?”

“No, not past the beach–not into an ambush.”

The four boat-loads of men which put off from the brig found nothing but a deserted deck on the sinking bark and two empty boats hauled up on the beach. The pirates were in the woods, undoubtedly, having kept the bark between themselves and the brig as they pulled ashore. While the blue-jackets clustered around the bows of their boats and watched nervously the line of forest up the beach, from which bullets might come at any time, the two lieutenants conferred for a few moments, and had decided to put back, when a rattling chorus of pistol reports sounded from the depths of the woods. It died away; then was heard a crashing of bush and branch, and out upon the sands sprang a figure–a long, weird figure in black frock of clerical cut. Into their midst it sped with mighty bounds, and sinking down, lifted a glad face to the heavens with the groaning utterance: “O God, I thank thee. Protect me, gentlemen–protect me from those wicked men.”

“What is it? Who are you?” asked Mr. Duncan. “Were they shooting at you?”

“Yes, at me, who never harmed a fly. They would have killed me. My name is Todd. Oh, such suffering! But you will protect me? You are English officers. You are not pirates and murderers.”

“But what has happened? Do you live around here?”

It took some time for Mr. Todd to quiet down sufficiently to tell his story coherently. He was an humble laborer in the vineyard of the Lord. He had gleaned among the poorest of the native population in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro until his health suffered, and had taken passage home in a passenger-ship, which, ten days out, was captured by a pirate brig. And the pirate crew had murdered every soul on board but himself, and only spared his life, as he thought, for the purpose of amusement; for they had compelled him to dance–he, a minister of the gospel–and had made him drink under torture, and recite ribald poetry, and swear, and wash their clothes. All sorts of indignities had been heaped upon him, but he had remembered the injunction of the Master; he had invariably turned the other cheek when smitten, and had prayed for their souls. He told of the flight from the English war-brig, of the taking of the old bark in the fog and the sinking of the pirate craft, of the transfer of guns and treasure to the bark, and the interview at sea with the English brig, in which Captain Swarth had deceived the other, and of Captain Swarth’s reckless confidence in himself, which had induced him to follow the brig in and careen in the same bay. He wound up his tale with a lurid description of the drunken debauch following the anchoring of the bark,–during which he had trembled for his life,–of the insane firing on the brig as she passed, and the tumbling into the boats when the brig returned the fire, of the flight into the woods, the fighting among themselves, and his escape under fire.

As he finished he offered an incoherent prayer of thankfulness, and the sympathetic Mr. Shack drew forth his pocket-flask and offered it to the agitated sufferer; but Mr. Todd, who could probably drink more whisky and feel it less than any other man in the pirate crew, declined the poison with a shiver of abhorrence. Then Mr. Duncan, who had listened thoughtfully, said: “You speak of treasure; did they take it with them?”

Mr. Todd opened wide his eyes, looked toward the dark shades of the forest, then at the three masts of the bark rising out of the water, and answered impressively: