CHAPTER XIII
H.M.S. ROSARIO
As we pulled up alongside we saw her bulwarks forward crowded with the blue-jackets. The Captain's quick eye, which nothing escaped, detected among them the bronzed faces of Dan Gardiner and another trader whom he had left at Providence Island.
"She's come to take me, sure enough," he said to me. " The moment I looked at those two fellows they dropped back out of sight. Never mind, come aboard and I'll see it through."
As soon as we gained the deck he advanced towards a group of officers standing on the quarter-deck, and, raising his hat, said, "Good morning, gentlemen. I am Captain Hayston of the brig Leonora, cast away on this island in the earlier part of the year."
There was a moment's silence; then a tall man, the captain of the cruiser, stepped out from the others, sur- veyed Hayston from head to foot, and said, "Oh, ah, in- deed! then you are the very man I am looking for. This is Her Majesty's ship Rosario, and you are a prisoner, Mr. Hayston!"
Hayston simply bowed and said nothing, retiring to the port side, where he was placed under the charge of the sergeant-major of marines, who, as also all others on board, looked with intense curiosity at the man of whose doings they had heard so much in their cruises in the Pacific Ocean.
