TOWARDS the end of the cruise the schooner had just returned to the coast of Asia Minor after having run across to Athens and taken on board the officers and men who had sailed the last prizes taken there. On the day after they took up their place on their cruising ground they fell in with a large polacca brig. The vessel mounted ten small guns, and fought with some obstinacy, and it was not until Martyn placed the schooner so that she could rake the brig’s decks, which were crowded with men, that she hauled down her flag.  
“Lower two boats, Miller. You take charge of one and Tarleton the other. By the look of those fellows I don’t believe they are Turks at all. I believe they are from Algiers or Tunis; pirates at ordinary times, but who have come here to pick up slaves cheap. They are treacherous beggars, so be on your guard. There is a very strong crew. Don’t row alongside till I lay the schooner broadside on.”
 
In five minutes Miller hailed from the deck of the prize, “You are right, sir, they are Algerines, and as cut-throat a looking lot as ever I came across. She is crowded below with Greek women and girls, and as far as I can see at present she has no cargo of any sort. I have sent one of the boats for Marco. He can speak to the women, who are making a fearful hubbub down below.”
 
“Have you disarmed the crew, Mr. Miller?”
 
“Mr. Tarleton has just finished that. We have had to knock a good many of the scoundrels down. They are as savage as wildcats.”
 
The schooner was brought alongside the polacca and lashed there. The deck of the prize showed that the fire of the schooner had been terribly destructive. Over twenty bodies lay scattered about, principally round the guns.
 
 
“Are they all dead?” Martyn asked as he stepped on board.
 
“They are all dead now, but they were not when we boarded her. But as they lay there they fired their pistols among us. Two or three pretended to be dead, and then sprang up, knife in hand, and several of the men have got nasty cuts; so that was soon put a stop to. Some of the fellows below made quite a fight of it, and the men had to use their cutlasses pretty freely. However, they are all disarmed and bound now. I have no doubt they are Algerine pirates, and deserve to be hung to the yard-arm every man-jack of them.”
 
“Have you overhauled the hold yet?”
 
“Yes, sir. It is filled with these unhappy slaves. She evidently came merely in ballast, with money to buy them.”
 
“Well, no doubt these fellows have been pirates, Mr. Miller, but as we have no means to prove it we must let them go as we have the others, though it is a nuisance, for they only warn the people at the ports against us. We won’t put them on the mainland this time, but land them on one of the little islands. They may be some time in getting a craft to take them to the mainland, and then they will find it rough work making along the coast. However, we can settle upon that later. The first thing to do is to get the decks roughly cleaned and the dead bodies thrown overboard.”
 
A dozen men were set to work with mops and buckets, while others fastened shot to the feet of the Algerines and dropped them overboard. As soon as this was done Marco was sent below to tell the captives that they could come on deck.
 
As the women poured up, looking almost dazed at their sudden release, and at the bright sunlight after the stifling atmosphere of the dark hold in which they had been confined for six days, Horace saw one of them, a woman of some five-and-thirty years of age, to whose side a girl of fifteen was clinging, looking round with an air of excitement, in strong contrast to the comparative apathy of the others. She glanced round at him and the men engaged in tidying up the deck, and then with a cry sank fainting on the deck. He hurried up to her, and partly raised her, when he was struck by the cry of the girl, “Oh, mother, mother!” He looked at her in astonishment.
 
 
THE GREEK CAPTIVES ARE BROUGHT ON DECK
 
“Are you English?” he exclaimed.
 
“Yes,” she cried, “we are English; but we have been seized and carried away by these horrid Turks. Mother said she fancied she heard some shouts in English, but she thought she must have been mistaken, as only a Greek came down and spoke to us in the hold, and she did not think it possible that it could be English. And have you rescued us out of the hands of the Turks, sir? Mother said they were taking us away to sell us as slaves.”
 
“Yes, we have rescued you,” Horace said. “You are free now. If you will hold your mother’s head for a moment I will fetch the doctor; we have one on board.”
 
“If you would get a little water, sir, she will soon come round. She has fainted several times since we were captured.”
 
Horace, however, caught sight of Macfarlane.
 
“Doctor, here is an English lady among the captives. She has fainted. Please see to her. I will run to get some water;” and he sprang over the bulwark on to the deck of the schooner.
 
“Bring some brandy with you too,” Macfarlane said as he hurried to the side of the fainting woman.
 
Horace rushed down to the cabin, and returned with a jug of water, a decanter of brandy, and a tumbler. The doctor sprinkled some water on the lady’s face, poured a few drops of spirits between her lips, and in a minute or two she opened her eyes.
 
“It is all right now, madam,” he said as she looked round in a confused way. “You are safe among friends and British sailors.”
 
“Thank God for His mercies!” she murmured, while tears fell down her cheeks. “It seems almost too great happiness to be true.”
 
 
In a few minutes she was well enough to be assisted down to the cabin of the schooner, where she was left to the care of her daughter for a time. Half an hour later she was able to relate her story to Mr. Beveridge. She was, she said, the wife of an English merchant at Smyrna. They lived a short distance out of the town, and had, since the troubles began, gone but little abroad, for although it was only the Greeks who had been involved in the massacre that had taken place there some months before, there was a good deal of hostility upon the part of the lower class of the population against all Christians. One evening she had been with her daughter in the garden, her husband being engaged till late at his business in the town. It was just getting dark, and she was about to re-enter the house, when five or six ruffians of the lowest class rushed into the garden, seized her and her daughter in spite of their shrieks, threw thick cloths over their heads, and then carried them away. They were taken for some distance, when they stopped, and she heard an animated conversation and the clink of money. Then they were placed in a boat, and presently carried up on to the deck of a ship and taken below.
 
When their mufflings were removed they found they were in the hold of a vessel with a large number of Greek captives. She endeavoured in vain to make herself understood by the sailors who came below, and who, she perceived at once, were not Turks. She told them that she was English, and that her husband would pay a large sum if she and her daughter were set on shore unharmed. No attention was paid to her entreaties, but on her persisting she was brutally knocked down, and in a short time a man, who was evidently an officer, came down and forced them both to take off their European dresses and put on others that some of the Greek women were ordered to hand over to them. It was now evident to her that they had been seized by some of the ruffians of the town and sold to the Algerines, who were in no way particular as to the nationality of their slaves, and that they were destined to be sold in the slave-market of either Tunis or Algiers.
 
 
A few hours after they were taken on board they heard the anchor run up, and could soon tell by the ripple of the water against the planks that they were under weigh. All hope now left them, and they had passed a terrible six days, overcome by despair, and half suffocated by the foul air of the hold. Hope had again sprung up when a gun was fired overhead, and it was soon evident that the vessel was engaged in an encounter with an enemy. At last the firing ceased, then there was a sound of shouting and the clashing of swords on the deck above their heads. Presently the hatchways had been opened and a Greek had come down and told them that the vessel had been captured from the Turks, and that they were free. She fancied that she heard English voices, but until she had reached the deck and saw the faces and uniforms of the sailors, she thought that she must be mistaken. After that she remembered no more until she heard the doctor’s voice.
 
“I am rejoiced indeed that I have been enabled to save you and your daughter from the horrors of slavery,” Mr. Beveridge said. “We have had the pleasure of rescuing many hundreds of Greek women and children from the hands of the Turks, but I never expected to find a countrywoman among them. This cabin will be at your disposal, except that we must, I fear, take our meals here. The cabin adjoining will be wholly yours. In the course of a week I hope to land you at Corfu, thence you will be able to write to your husband and arrange either for joining him again at Smyrna, or taking a passage for England, which would, I should think in the present state of things, be the wisest course. My purse will be entirely at your disposal. I am the owner of this schooner, which is called the Misericordia, and although we fight under the Greek flag, and have come out to assist them to obtain their independence, we are principally devoting ourselves to saving the unhappy victims of this war.”
 
The lady, whose name was Mrs. Herbert, expressed her deep gratitude, and Mr. Beveridge at once took possession of Miller’s cabin, as the lieutenant would, he had no doubt, remain in charge of the prize. When the capture was made, the schooner was some eighty miles to the east of Rhodes, and after talking the matter over with Miller, Martyn decided to land the Algerines on Caxo, an islet lying some fifty miles to the south-west of Rhodes. Miller and Tarleton were for the present to continue on board the prize. The prisoners, forty-eight in number, were transferred into the schooner. The next evening they arrived off Caxo, where the Algerines were landed in boats. Martyn then went on board the polacca.
 
“I have been thinking, Miller, that as we seem to have frightened all the Turks into remaining in port for the present, I will leave you and Tarleton on board the polacca, and give you twenty men and let you cruise on your own account, while we take these women and children round to the Ionian Isles. We will shift two of the eighteen-pounders on board this craft. No one will suspect you, and you will have a good chance of picking up some more prizes, while the sight of our white sails sends everything running into port as far off as they can be seen. We can rendezvous here again this day fortnight.”
 
“I should like that very much,” Miller said, “and I think it is a capital plan. I must ask Mr. Beveridge to let me have Marco, or I shall have no means of making myself understood either by Turk or Greek.”
 
A fortnight later the schooner returned to the island. She had had rough weather for the last three days of her voyage, but the sky had now cleared again.
 
“There is the island,” Martyn said, as Horace came up at six o’clock in the morning to take charge of the watch, for he had now command of the starboard watch, and Tom Burdett had the port. “There is the island, but there is no sign of the polacca yet. I wonder Miller is not here first. If we had been having calms I should not have been the least surprised at his not turning up, but with this strong southerly wind there is no reason why he should not have been here. Go up to the main-top, Horace, and take a look round.”
 
 
But Horace could see no sail in sight.
 
“You are not uneasy about Miller surely,” Mr. Beveridge said at breakfast, seeing that Martyn was not in his usual spirits.
 
“Well, I am rather uneasy, sir. Miller would be more likely to be a day too soon than too late, and with the wind from the south he could have calculated his time here from wherever he happened to be, within an hour or two. The wind has been strong with us, and for aught I know it may have been blowing a gale more to the east. We don’t know much about the sailing qualities of the polacca, certainly she was very light in ballast, and if she has been caught off a lee shore in a heavy gale she may not have been able to claw off, especially if she happened to be embayed when it came on. Of course we must give him twenty-four hours more, but if he does not come then we will shape our course north-east and cruise along the coast; as we get eastward we may pick up some fishing craft or small coaster and hear what the weather has been there, possibly even get news of the polacca. If Miller gets here after we have left, he will guess what course we have taken. Very likely he will land a boat and learn that we have been here, and the course we took when we sailed away, and would then be guided by circumstances. At any rate, if nothing has happened to him, we are sure to meet sooner or later.”
 
“Do just as you think best, Captain Martyn. I most sincerely trust that there are no grounds for your uneasiness. Hitherto everything has gone well with us, and it would be terrible indeed if anything should have happened to our two friends and so many of our brave fellows.”
 
The day passed slowly. A look-out was kept in the top, but until the sun went down no sail was seen above the horizon. The crew shared the anxiety of their captain, and gathering in groups, discussed what could have occurred to prevent their consort arriving at the rendezvous.
 
“I don’t believe as the Turks have caught them,” one of the sailors said. “You won’t never gammon me into taking in such a yarn as that. I don’t believe as there is a Turk living would get the weather gauge of Lieutenant Miller. As to tempests, that is different. We don’t care for tempests one way or the other on board the schooner, but then she is a craft such as you don’t see twice in a v’yage round the world. If they had been in her I shouldn’t have felt noways uneasy; but seeing as how they are in a outlandish brig whose ways they don’t understand, it may be that if they was caught off a lee shore by a heavy gale, even the first lieutenant with our men at his back couldn’t get her out of the mess.”
 
“I said all along,” another sailor put in, shaking his head, “as there was bad luck coming. Three days ago I dreamed of a black cat, and everyone as knows anything knows as there ain’t nothin’ more unlucky to dream about than a black cat.”
 
“Surely, Bill,” another said, shaking his head gravely.
 
“Well, mates, it is my opinion,” Tom Burdett said gruffly, “as there is something in dreams, but in nine cases out of ten it is something as has gone afore and not what comes after. I know once when I came back from a v’yage I had written a letter to tell my old woman what time I should arrive. I reckoned to be in to dinner. Well, the coach broke down and I did not get in till nine o’clock. The old woman had made a plum-duff pretty nigh as big as my head, knowing as I was fond of it, and she was in such a taking at my not having been in to eat it at dinner that I sat down and I finished that there pudding cold for supper. Well, I dreamt of about ten million black cats and about as many sharks mixed up together, but if you will believe me nothing came of it; and ever since that I have held to the opinion that when you have a bad dream, what you have got to think about when you wake ain’t what it means in the future, but what you have been having for supper.
 
“Now, I expect if Bill there was to turn his mind back he would remember that the night as he had that dream, he had been filling hisself up with fruit or such like trash afore he turned in. I don’t say as nothing has happened to Lieutenant Miller and our mates, but I am cocksure as that black cat Bill said he dreamt on hadn’t nothing to do with it either way. Why, bless me, in my village there is hundreds of women as thinks of nothing but dreams and tokens. It is no matter what you dream of, they have got a ’terpretation of it, and if the ’terpretation happens to be a bad one they bother their husbands and brothers and sons, as the case may be, not to put to sea, and there is many a good fisherman whose cupboard is bare half the year, through listening to them. I may have my ideas as to whether harm are come to that polacca or not, but if every seama............