drew out the Indian's tomahawk from his belt and in another second he would have buried it in the back of the unsuspecting bandit. The monstrous fondness for cruelty which impelled this wanton murder was so repugnant to the Englishman that he, bound too tightly for any other movement, rolled himself, by working his elbow and knee, right against the feet thrown forward of the traitor. The shock was not enough to make the blow fully miscarry, but the axe only cleft the wretch's collarbone, glancing the flesh to one side along it on partial withdrawal with an agony imparted which made the recipient yell. He flung himself round, and drawing his knife at the same inappreciable second of time, broke through the other's guard with the hatchet, and buried the blade in his heart so forcibly that the hilt drove his breath out of his lungs with a loud sound. Farruco pitched over upon the Englishman, and died before he had ceased his groan of despair.

The wounded outlaw sat himself down, without any but self-concern, to attend to his wound, to which he applied a dressing of chewed leaves. Then studying the scene, he suddenly became conscious that the movement of the loglike form of the prisoner between his assassin's legs had saved his life, if, always granted, it were a curable wound.

Without a word, like a man who fears to hesitate in his formation of a good but novel whim, lest he revokes its realisation to remain consistent with his daily and worse nature, Pepillo, without wiping the fatal knife, severed the leather thongs around Gladsden.

"One good turn," said he, sententiously, as becomes a Spaniard, but prudently setting his foot on the gun of which the captive was despoiled.

"Yes, he meant to split your skull, that's all," remarked the latter, sitting up and chafing his limbs to restore the circulation. "He was a pirate; and you have only anticipated his suspension at a yardarm."

Pepillo paid no attention to him. He had picked up the Indian's hatchet, and seemed to be regarding with an antiquarian zeal the design traced in an idle moment or two, now and then, with the hunting knife. Then, contracting his brow more in terror than in pain, and turning pale in the same increasing dread rather than from loss of blood, he ejaculated:

"The villain! The assassin! It is a copper bronze hatchet! I am poisoned! I shall die of lockjaw!" Then, noting the incredulous expression of the bystander, who had, however, been sufficiently sympathetic as to rise to his throbbing feet and lean towards the sufferer, "I tell you, Pagan, that the Indian was one of the Apaches Emponzoñadores—the sect of the Poison Hatchets, and I am—the Lord and my patron saint forgive me—a dead man!"

Gladsden looked at the tomahawk, and, after the man's utterance, thought the metal head gave out a sinister gleam. Then, recalling all he ever knew of copper poisoning, he said:

"Let me attend to the cut," in a tone which made the sufferer see that he was taken as the victim of terror rather more than mortal pain.

Still, as the gash was beyond his simple remedy, the Indian cataplasm which should have allayed the fiery feeling which even augmented from the first, Pepillo yielded to his late enemy like a child, with that compliance of the Latin races under mortal injury.

A seafarer knows much about cuts, and so, at the first glance after removing the herb poultice, Gladsden recognised that the cut, clean in infliction, was aggravated shockingly.

"You see!" cried the Mexican, triumphantly, as far as the victory over the other's disbelief was concerned, but with acute agony at his certainty being confirmed; "Am I not a lost man?"

"In that case," replied the Englishman, taking up his gun and charging it methodically out of Farruco's powder horn as the nearest, "I will go and see about the wearer of that woman's dress whom I caught a glimpse of yonder, when you and your mate all but anticipated my shot at that screeching savage."

"Don't leave me!"

"But I must! Gallantry, my dear ex-captor."

"Leave me not!" reiterated Pepillo, who had supported himself with his gun whilst the Englishman had looked at his hurt, "For the sake of my widow and four little ones."

"A bandit with a family," observed Gladsden. "This is curious."

"Yes; who know not of my mode of life," appealed the salteador, falling into a seated position and clasping his hands. "By the rules of our band—for I am one of the Caballeros de la Noche, of Matasiete—all my goods fall in to the gang! But my wife—my Angela! My little ones—my angelitos! Have still more compassion, you greatly noble American of the North, and hear my viva voce testament in their behalf."

"Go on," was the reply. "Considering where the commissioner to take oaths—who is only an Englishman, by the way, and no American of the Northern States—where he has his office opened, and the improbability of his traversing a wilderness of poisonous vermin of all descriptions to file your testament, it is a pure formality. However," he added, the while the dying robber divided his time between a disjointed supplication and wrestlings against a pain that convulsed him severely at intervals more and more closely recurrent, "will away your 'bacca box and your knife and sash. I'll do my best to carry them to the legatees."

"Listen to me," said Pepillo solemnly, and beckoning him to approach. His voice was singular in sound; his features contorted, his clayey, pale face streaming with cold, thick perspiration. "I have not always been a ranger of the prairie. I was a sailor, like you are, as I caught in your speech. Do you know the islands on the other coast of the Gulf of California?"

"I have only sailed round to Guaymas."

"I will draw you the chart. Due north from Cantador Island I have a treasure. Laugh not, raise no brow in derision. In coin, and emeralds, gold, silver, and pearls, I have over a million dollars."

"Nonsense!"

"I am the last of the band of Colonel Dartois the Filibuster, and I tell you I am the sole treasurer of the crew."

The Englishman was not acquainted with that adventurer, of much notoriety in his day on the Pacific Coast, but the tone of the dying man was sincere.

"Be quick, then, thou dying one, to give the clue," said he as if convinced, whether so or not.

CHAPTER IV.

A DESERT MYSTERY.

Upon this enjoinder of so eminently practical a nature, and thoroughly aware of the necessity of haste, the fallen Mexican rapidly drew with his ramrod end, upon a space of earth smoothed by his foot in its deerskin boot, like an antique tablet under the stylus, a map—rude, but, to a navigator, plain and ample.

"At this point," said he, "a sunken reef trends north and south, with a break at a little bow a quarter mile from the black rock that juts out all but flush with its ripple. Deep water in 'the pot,' and there we anchored to ride to a submerged buoy, so that the cankerworm would not attack the metal or the borer the wood—a chest, bound with yellow metal. If it shall have broke away, its weight would only have sunk it deep in the oyster bed, all the shells there smashed to powdery scales by the drags. A diver will find it for you, then."

"Now, swear to me!" he went on, forcing his weakening voice to keep an even tenor. "Swear that one-half the contents of that hiding place shall be Ignacio Santamaria's, my brother-in-law's, who will give enough to his sister, my Angela. And the rest—be it yours, brave and Christian heart."

Whether he was only fostering a delusion, or accepting a commission that would enrich him, Gladsden nodded assent.

"But, swear!"

"I give you my word, as an English gentleman," said he, obstinately.

"I am content."

"And what is there stowed there away?" with a smile of his former discredit, "Copper bolts?"

"Pearls! The choicest from Carmen Island to Acapulco."

"Well, that sounds