you."

"Uncle, speak! explain, my lord!" gasped the young creature, terrified at his manner rather than his words, which her innocence could not comprehend.

He drew from his breast a dagger, and silently placed it in her hands.

"For what is this, my lord?" she gasped, half guessing its fearful meaning.

"You must sacrifice yourself before you suffer these ruffians to lay hands upon you," he said, with emotion that nearly rendered his words inaudible.

She clasped her hands over her forehead and stared in his face with a wild glare—her colourless lips parted with horror—and her whole frame shivering. Like a thunderbolt, the horrible reality of her situation had flashed upon her.

"Ha! what? ha! what? ha—wh—" and with a piercing and most heart-rending shriek she fell upon the cabin floor. He raised her, and spoke to her in tender accents of sympathy.

"Enough," she gasped—"enough, uncle—say no more."

"Dear niece, be calm!"

"Nay—do not think Grace Fitzgerald is not herself," she said, with forced calmness. "Uncle!"

"My dear child!" he answered, folding her to his heart.

"Give it me!"

"Oh God!" groaned the earl, overcome with the full realization of the evil that threatened her. "Must it be, my child?"

"It must. Give me the dagger," she added, with energy. "I will not now shrink from it—it may yet be, next to Heaven, my best friend."

"Take it, heroic girl—but our danger may not be so great—we may yet conquer! I feel, when I look on you, and reflect on your helpless state, the might of a host in my single arm. Ha! there is a gun. I must leave you for a while. Remain in your stateroom, and both you and your maid be careful to lie on the floor below the line of shot. God bless you, my child! Your presence alone should ensure the salvation of the ship."

He embraced her with almost parental affection, tenderly forced her to enter her stateroom, and closed the door. Then arming himself from his luggage with a brace of pistols, and buckling on his sword, he hurried to the deck as the report of a second gun came booming over the sea.

"She has fired, captain?" he said, as he joined the commander on the quarter-deck, who was looking to windward with his glass.

"A long shot to bring us to. It is plain he takes us for an unarmed vessel."

"This gives us an advantage, then," said the earl, turning his telescope in the direction of the stranger, who was plainly visible less than a mile distant, white with canvass, and fast gaining on the yacht, as she laboured slowly along under her diminished sail.

"A great one, if we can keep him in ignorance till he is close aboard," replied the captain. "By the rood! he comes down bravely. This it is, your lordship, to have sound spars, and plenty of canvass to hang on them," he added, looking moodily up, and surveying the bare poles of his own ship. "You are armed, I see, my lord. It is time I should be. Will your lordship be so good as to watch his motions. I will be on deck again in a moment."

He descended to his cabin as he spoke, and soon afterward returned armed with a cutlass, his head covered with a steel boarding cap, and with a couple of braces of pistols stuck in a leathern belt buckled round his waist. He caused his lieutenant and Mark to arm themselves in a similar manner. Every seaman, also, had a serviceable blade girded to his side, and one or more pistols in his belt; and harquebusses and cutlasses were placed on the companion and capstan, ready for indiscriminate use. Throughout the vessel, every preparation that the time and circumstances would admit of, or consummate skill on the part of its master could effect, was made; and every man stood at his post, silently and sullenly awaiting the approach of the pirate—for such it was now plain to every one was the character of the advancing stranger.

"There is a flash!" said the earl, who was intently watching the bucanier.

"No, it is a battle-lantern passed along the decks. He will not fire again seeing we do not heave to, but run us aboard, and carry us, if he can, cutlass in hand—this is the mode of fighting with these devils."

"They must not board us, Kenard!" said the earl, with calm determination in the tone of his voice.

"We will give him a touch of our quality before he comes to close quarters. An introduction before an intimate acquaintance, is my maxim, my lord."

"If you give him a broadside, I would suggest, sir, that the battery I command be added to the guns on the weather side," said Mark, who, while waiting the attack, had been pacing athwart ships near the cabin door, as if the presence of Grace in the cabin had something to do with the choice of his walk.

The captain stared at him a moment; but the respectful tones of the young man's voice, and the deference of his manner, left no room for reproof if he had designed to check the boldness of his new lieutenant.

"Born for a seaman, by the rood!" he exclaimed. "Shift the starboard guns to the weather side, Mr. Edwards. We shall only have a chance of one full broadside, and it is best to let him have all we can give him. If you want to be generous, give all you've got, is my maxim, my lord."

By the time the change in the battery was effected, the pirate was within three cables' length, or a third of a mile of the yacht, and, by the light of the moon, the decks could be discovered with the naked eye to be full of men, while her dimensions and rig were distinctly visible. She was one of that small class of three-masted luggers called frigatoons, common at the period, with very broad beam and round bows. She came along with the wind on her starboard quarter, noisily ploughing the waves before her with her blunt bows, under three huge lugger sails, covering each mast from deck to truck, a jib, and triangular mizzen sail not unlike a ship's spanker. The moon shone white on all, while its rays were reflected in quick flashes here and there, as if from steel, from amid the dark mass on her decks.

"A fine shot in that dense crowd, Edwards," said the captain. "Give every man a musket after the broadside is discharged, and let him pick a red cap for himself."

"Ay, ay, sir," responded the lieutenant, preparing to obey the order.

Silently and steadily, as if no man was in her, the dark hull continued to approach.

"She is full near for a shot, Kenard," said the nobleman; "I can see the very faces of the men."

"A man should know the colour of his enemy's eyes before he fights with him, is my maxim, my lord," he said, coolly levelling his glass. "Let me single out their captain. Ah, there he stands beside the helmsman, a grisly old dog, and the moonlight on his weather-beaten features makes them appear bronzed. There is a youth standing beside him with a glass at his eye, whom he is speaking to. Ha! the old bucanier is giving orders to prepare for boarding, I see, by the wave of his cutlass and the motion of his lips. Now is our time," he added, energetically.

As he spoke he threw down his glass, drew his cutlass, and sprung upon the companion-way.

"Stand by for a broadside," he shouted, in a voice that reached the pirate.

"All ready!" answered the two lieutenants, in the same breath.

"Helm a starboard!"

"Starboard 'tis!"

"Steady now!"

"Steady."

"Let them have it!" he shouted, in a clear voice that rung like a trumpet.

Terrible cries of men taken by surprise, of men wounded and in pain, followed close the deep-mouthed roar of the guns: the volumes of smoke, that shot half way towards the pirate, then rolled swiftly back upon the yacht, and were blown to leeward, leaving a full view of the enemy. His