Before she could speak again, a loud hail came up to them from the gateway at the road, and a man on horseback dashed in at a gallop.

"Senora Paez," said Guert, excitedly, "it's Vine Avery! Something's happened."

"Guert!" shouted the rider, "we're all ready to sail! Come on! The coast is clear! Come back with me!"

"Hurrah! I'm ready," he began.

"Go, my dear boy!" interrupted the old senora. "I will call them to say good-by to you. I would not detain you if you were my son. It is your duty!"

Quickly enough, the Alvarez household gathered to say farewell to their young guest. They were all br.i.m.m.i.n.g with hospitality. They urged him to come again and to consider their house his home. Nevertheless he could see, plainly enough, that not one of them dreamed of detaining him, now. They understood that his post of honor was behind the guns of the _Noank_, and they would have despised him if he had not felt just as he did.

A horse was brought, and Senor Alvarez himself rode with Vine and Guert to the seash.o.r.e, less than ten miles away. That distance was galloped rapidly. A boat was at the beach with a sailor from the _Noank_ in it, and in a minute or so more it had three rowers. Loud and sincere were the last grateful farewells from the senor on the beach. As hearty were the good wishes sent back from the boat, but Guert's heart was thrilling as it had not thrilled during all his peaceful weeks at the Paez plantation.

There, yonder, at the mast of his beautiful schooner, floated the stars and stripes, the banner of freedom. There, waiting for him to rejoin them, were his own brave captain and the crew that seemed to him as his kindred. Away out yonder, outside of all these reefs and keys and ledges, was the great ocean.

"Hurrah, Vine!" he shouted. "Hurrah for a cruise and fights and prizes!"

"We're bound to have 'em!" said Vine.

As they pulled along, moreover, he told Guert that one of the sailors of the _Santa Teresa_ had come all the way from Porto Rico in a rowboat to tell Captain Avery a lot of news that the captain had as yet kept to himself.

"It looks to me," said Vine, "as if we had some work all cut out for us."

"That's what we want," said Guert.

"I tell you what, though," said Vine, "the queerest feller on board the schooner is that Dutchman, Groot. He asks after you every now and then. Do you know, he actually ventured to go right into Porto Rico twice. I don't s'pose anybody he saw there suspected him of being a pirate."

"Well," said Guert, "he never was one, exactly. Here we are, Vine. I guess I'll have a talk with him."

The boat was at the side of the _Noank_, and a score of well-known faces were at the rail.

"On board with you!" called out Sam Prentice. "The anchor's comin' in.

There's no time to be wasted."

Other orders followed, and Guert sprang away to his duties feeling a good deal more like himself than if he were watching slaves in a tobacco-field.

Very secure indeed had been that bit of a landlocked harbor on the island coast. Its entrance was a mere narrow ca.n.a.l, so to call it, between dangerous reefs on either side. No deep-draft British vessel could pa.s.s through that channel; even the _Noank_ was compelled to take it at high water because of its bars.

"Captain Avery," asked Guert, after delivering the messages of good will from his Spanish friends, "didn't you say that the British might have come in and carried the schooner in boats?"

"Ye-es, I did," drawled the captain. "That's the reason why I anch.o.r.ed her jest in that spot. I kept a sharp lookout, you see, on that there p'int o' rocks yonder. Our guns were kept trained on this channel, all the time. We were all prepared then to knock their boats to flinders as they got in to about here. Not one of 'em'd ever pulled past this 'ere twist in the channel, when it opens into the lagoon."

Guert's question was answered, and he had a higher idea than ever of the remarkable fitness of Lyme Avery to conduct the business of the privateer _Noank_.

"I see it," he thought. "They'd ha' been smashed by a raking fire at short range. It would ha' been awful!"

The schooner had but little canvas spread as yet, and she picked her way carefully, slowly; but the channel was not a long one, after all.

"Out at sea!" exclaimed Guert, with a long breath of relief, at last.

"Seems to me as if I'd been on sh.o.r.e a year. I was getting pretty sick of it."

"Lyme Avery," remarked his mate, as more sails were spreading, "it looks to me as if we were goin' to have a rough night. We'd better git well away from the coast."

"We'll do that," replied the captain, "and we'll run along in the track o' that Liverpool trader. She has pretty nigh a day the start of us."

"I understand that," thought Guert, overhearing them. "We're in for a race. We may be chased ourselves, too. It doesn't look to me as if a storm's coming, but they read weather signs better'n I can."

"Come," said a low voice in his ear; "I want to talk with you."

The summons was spoken in Dutch, such as Guert had been accustomed to hear in old days upon Manhattan Island. Somehow or other the sound of it was very pleasant to him. He turned even eagerly to follow Groot, and was led forward almost to the heel of the bowsprit.

"Now, my boy," said the escaped pirate, "we are by ourselves. I know you like a book. I have talked with Coco and Up-na-tan. They say you know all about their having been freebooters, long ago. They call it Kidd business. Now, I never was really one of that kind, but there are ways for one buccaneer to know another, soon as he sees him, or talks with him."

"Yes," replied Guert, "they say so. It's by handgrips and signs and words. I know some of 'em now."

He and the Dutchman shook hands, and Guert said what he knew.

"That's well enough for a beginning," said Groot, "but you must know it all. It might save your life some day. It saved mine when they captured me. I'll teach you. I mean to keep company with you and those two old fellows. I owe you my life."

"Vine helped, too," said Guert. "I'm glad we hauled you aboard. The sharks were pretty close behind you just then. Oh! But wasn't it awful! I wish we'd saved more of 'em."

"You couldn't," said Groot. "They'd only ha' been turned over to the law, if you had. They were all sharks, too, nearly all. Worst kind.

Some weren't quite as bad as the rest, perhaps. Never mind them, now.

Let's attend to this business."

Guert was willing enough, although Groot laughed, and said it made a kind of pirate of him.

"We'll practise now and then," he told him. "Now, some wouldn't believe it, but I met more than a score of regular picaroons, living at their ease in Porto Rico. Some of them are rich, too, and don't mean to go to sea any more. For all that, they're always ready to give information or any other help to sea-rovers like themselves."

Guert was all the while learning a great deal, and this addition to his stock of knowledge hardly surprised him.

"I see," he thought. "It's a kind of matter of course. It would be a good deal stranger if it wasn't so. Those that get away rich don't care to run any more risks. Besides, if such fellows hadn't signs and pa.s.swords already, they'd set right to work and invent some. Even regular armies have pa.s.swords and countersigns, and all the ships have signals."

He was thinking of that sort of thing when the dark came on. The wind was strengthening, and there were clouds rushing across the sky to vindicate Sam Prentice's prophecy concerning the weather.

"He was right, I guess," thought Guert. "Hullo! What's the captain up to?"

Captain Avery was standing at the mainmast, and he had just touched off a rocket that went fizzing up to its bursting place.

"I wonder who'll see it," thought Guert.

Far away in the deepening gloom to leeward, at that moment, the first lieutenant of the _Tigress_, watching upon her quarter-deck, exclaimed:--

"Captain! One more of our cruisers! She'll come within hail before long. That's it! I hope we're going to be relieved. I'm sick and tired of this West India station."

"So am I!" said the captain, heartily. "Reply to that signal. Give 'em our own number. Draw 'em this way."

His signal officer responded promptly, and more than one rocket went up from the _Tigress_. Her commander was much chagrined, however, for he received no response to give him the information he expected of the character of the newcomer.