When Jack appeared on the Merle, rather late that afternoon, Jerry met him by the steps, his arm in a sling.

"Good heavens, Tab," cried the captain, "what's the matter? What have you done to your arm, boy?"

"Nothing much," Jerry answered. "Just got a little piece of the cutter in it in a night engagement. What the deuce kept you so long?"

"But was it last night?" Jack insisted. "Did you get into trouble?"

"We were under fire," Jerry laughed; "but I had the only casualty."

"The devil you did! What sort of a trap did your infernal Englishman lead you into?"

"That's just what I want to tell you before you see him. What in the world made you so late? I've been waiting all the afternoon."

The captain's face grew radiant.

"Well, you see," he returned, with a little laugh in his throat, "time passed so quickly, and Katrine and I had so much to talk about"—

"Jacko! You've done it!" shouted Tab, loud enough to be heard from one end of the yacht to the other.

The captain grinned warmly, and nodded with sparkling eyes.

"Oh, good man!" cried Tab, wringing his hand. "Good old Jack! Long life and all happiness to you, you dear old pirate!"

His words tumbled out helter-skelter, and his honest blue eyes were moist with pure joy at his friend's happiness. He admired Miss Marchfield from the bottom of his heart, and Jack was the dearest friend he could ever have. He rejoiced as sincerely and as warmly as if the good fortune of the captain had been his own.

"Thank you, old man," laughed Jack, bubbling over with good spirits; "but if it hadn't been for you, I—I'd never have done it."

"Tush!" flouted Jerry. "Don't talk bosh! It was only a matter of time anyway. But I'm glad it's all right."

They had been standing at the head of the steps, and now the captain moved along the deck.

"What did you send for me to come out in such a hurry for?" he inquired.

"Hurry!" ejaculated Jerry. "Do you call this coming out in a hurry? If it hadn't been that you left a born diplomat in charge, you might have lost two hundred pounds by being so slow."

"Two hundred pounds?" the other echoed. "What on earth are you talking about?"

"Come into the cabin before you go aft," was Jerry's answer. "I want to tell you about that."

"And about your arm, old man. What is the matter with you?"

"That's part of it," Tab returned, as they went below together. "I'm trying among other things to recover damages."

When some little time later the two friends came on deck and went aft to where the guest was sitting, Jack was in full possession of the whole situation.

"Jack, Mr. Gordon Wrenmarsh; Mr. Wrenmarsh, Captain John Castleport," Jerry said.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Wrenmarsh," Jack said, extending his hand.

He was evidently in the best of humor. His spirits on that day could hardly be other than at their highest, and he had been vastly amused by Jerry's plan of raising funds to pay off the men.

"Thanks," responded the archÆologist. "I was afraid the pleasure was largely mine. I've been expecting you all day."

"Well," Jack said, seating himself comfortably, "I am here at last. I am sorry if I kept you waiting. You might have arranged anything with Mr. Taberman, though."

"I tried to," Mr. Wrenmarsh responded dryly, "but he seemed to me so unpractical in his ideas that I thought it better to wait for you."

"I hope you won't find me unsatisfactory in the same way," Jack returned. "At least I am practical enough to know that in this weather it will be more comfortable if we have something."

He summoned Gonzague, and the trio were soon furnished with tall glasses of sangaree, which they sipped with relish.

"Mr. Taberman has suggested,—though I fancy he's half in jest," began the collector, when these preliminaries had been attended to, "that two hundred pounds is a fair price for such a trivial service as running up to England and landing me and my boxes."

"I am glad you think the matter trivial," observed Jack, with a smile; "it makes it so much easier for me to say that I do not find it convenient to go to England at all."

"Oh, I say now," Wrenmarsh responded, with a sudden keen glance at Jack as if he were surprised at the quickness with which his remark had been met and turned against him; "of course you'll go to England. That was settled long ago, you know."

"Was it? I supposed that I, as captain of the Merle, had some voice in such a matter."

"Of course nothing was settled," broke in Jerry. "I made a conditional arrangement—entirely conditional, mind you—with Mr. Wrenmarsh that you would take him to England."

"Yes; that is what I said," the collector asserted imperturbably. "Only the price that you named"—

"Seems to me a very reasonable one," interpolated Jack.

"Not seriously?" Wrenmarsh said, evidently determined not to show that he was at all ruffled. "Only consider, if I go ashore here, I may get—I might become a national complication. And you wouldn't want to be mixed up in that sort of a thing," he added, with a chuckle. "An international complication," he murmured to himself, as if the idea appealed so strongly to his vanity that he was half tempted to be put on land at once to take up the part. Then he recalled his wandering thoughts, and looked Captain Castleport in the eye. "If you land me in any country except England, I am quite done for, as you Americans would say. It stands to reason if there is any paying to be done, you should pay me for keeping you out of a scrape; for of course if I go ashore it will be known that the Merle ran away from the carabinieri at PÆstum, and"—

"Rubbish!" interrupted Jack brusquely. "Don't talk that kind of poppy-cock! Even if there were any truth in it, it wouldn't be decent for you to say so after getting the Merle into the scrape."

"And giving me your word that the yacht was in no possible danger," put in Jerry indignantly.

"Oh, no real danger, of course," Wrenmarsh said hurriedly, "only it might be unpleasant for you, and you might not like to be detained."

"Why must you go to England?" asked Castleport. "Why not to Malta or Cyprus or Korfu even? They're protectorates and English ground."

"The sun never sets, you know," responded Wrenmarsh, with his extraordinary ventral chuckle. "The truth is they won't do. Korfu and Cyprus would be as bad for me as Naples, on account of my reputation. I'm known to have run out a lot of things, you see. Gibraltar or Malta would suit me well enough—if it weren't for the same reason. There isn't a hotel on the entire shores of the Mediterranean that I could put up at with those boxes in safety."

"I hardly suppose I'm expected to take that too literally," Jack said, with a smile.

He reflected a moment. He could see that the collector certainly had good reason for wishing to remain on the yacht, and that it could not but be of very great convenience to him to be taken to England. He was no less convinced from what Jerry had told him that the antiquities which the archÆologist had on board must be worth thousands of pounds, and that their possessor could afford to pay well for their safety. He was thoroughly stirred up, moreover, by the thought of the episode of the night before. That Jerry should have been put in actual peril of his life by Wrenmarsh for his own purposes was to Jack so outrageous that he was half tempted to order the collector and his boxes off the Merle at once to take his chances with the officials on the quays of Naples. As Jerry had planned reprisals along another line, however, and as after all Jack could not have brought himself to desert a man in extremity, the captain determined to go on as they had begun.

"Two hundred pounds strikes me as fair enough," he said.

"Too much—too much! Make it fifty," responded Wrenmarsh.

"Two hundred!" repeated Jack.

"I'm sorry; I can't do that," the collector said, with a great show of decision. "You'll have to take me to Malta. What'll you do that for?"

"Three hundred," Jack returned quietly, although he could not refrain from a secret exchange of glances with Jerry.

"What!" the other cried, in an exaggerated shriek. "A run like that? Three hundred pounds! It's not a twentieth the distance to England."

"That's so," was the captain's answer, "but you see we should have a good deal less value in your company. Besides, you'd get your boxes ex territorio a great deal quicker."

He had by this time become so interested in the game he was playing that the beating of the collector seemed in itself a thing worth straining every nerve to gain.

"They're ex territorio now," Mr. Wrenmarsh said, "as they're on a foreign yacht. But no matter about that. What'll you take to set me over to Gibraltar?"

"Oh, that would cost you three hundred and fifty, because there you're so much nearer England than you'd be at Malta."

He glanced again at Jerry, with an inward chuckle at the utter balderdash he was talking and a consciousness how closely it resembled the nature of the arguments with which Wrenmarsh had beguiled Tab. For a minute there was silence, and then the archÆologist spoke angrily.

"You're too commercial," he said, with an unconcealed sneer. "I see no way in which we can come to an agreement. I never was equal to trading with a dollar-getting Yankee."

Tab started and looked to hear Jack break out at an insult so gross, but the captain merely smiled.

"As you are our guest," he said, "there's no chance for me to answer you properly, but you must remember we're not looking for a job. Shall I send you ashore now, or would it suit you to take a boat with me in half an hour? Or perhaps," he added, his manner most elaborately courteous, "on account of your boxes, it would suit you better to be set ashore after dark."

"Give you one hundred pounds," the collector said, still fighting, and ignoring the captain's words entirely.

"We need not go on with the wrangle," Jack said, rising. "I'm not bargaining with you. If it's worth two hundred pounds to you, all right. If it isn't, we'll part here, and hope you have the gratitude to appreciate what has already been done for you at the risk of Mr. Taberman's life. Come, we've wasted too much time over this already."

"Do you think my time isn't worth anything?" cried the other,—apparently losing all control of his temper. "I've wasted too much already. Get up your damned anchor, you mercenary Yankee"—

"Come, sir!" broke in Jack sharply, "apologize at once! At once! You have been insulting us this half hour like an utter cad, and I've made all the allowances I'm equal to."

The collector regarded him with furious eyes, but seemed struggling with himself until he could command his manner and his voice.

"I—I beg your pardon," he said in a hard tone. Then he added, in a voice softer and more grave, "Indeed, I beg your pardon most sincerely. My cursed temper got the better of me. Does your offer still hold?"

"If you wish," Jack answered stiffly.

"Then—two hundred pounds—I accept it. Two hundred pounds sterling, to be paid on our safe arrival in port at Plymouth." He sighed, and put out his hand to the captain. "Will you pardon my tongue?" he asked.

There was more ingenuousness in this trifling act than in anything Tab or Jack had yet seen in him. The real man seemed for a moment to show; and as Jack accepted the collector's apology and took his hand, Jerry had a fleeting glimpse—short as a flash of changing light—of another and franker Wrenmarsh, accustomed to hide under a veil of shams and mockeries made necessary by his difficult vocation.

Wrenmarsh then asked if he might have some letters mailed ashore, and Jack offered to take them himself in half an hour's time. While the collector was below writing these, the captain and the mate talked things over on deck. Tab had to congratulate Jack again, and over and over, fairly beaming with delight whenever he thought of the happy stage to which affairs had been brought. When he discovered that the captain had confessed the lifting of the Merle, he was for a moment disconcerted.

"Oh, Jacko, how could you give that away?" he cried.

"I had to be honest," Jack replied, and added, with a little shade of unconscious patronage, "You'll see how it is yourself, old man, when it comes your turn. You have to make a square deal, of course."

"Yes, I s'pose so," assented the mate humbly. "I hope she won't tell Mrs. Fairhew."

"Oh, we told her together," Jack stated cheerfully. "Katrine thought we'd better. I'm glad I did, too; for she's written home about meeting us, and it's sure to get round to Uncle Randolph sooner or later."

"How did she take it?"

"Oh, do you know," returned Jack, laughing at the remembrance of his talk with Mrs. Fairhew, "I think she was more bothered that she hadn't guessed it than she was shocked at us. She couldn't help letting me see that she thought it an awfully good joke on Uncle Randolph. She said she should write to him to-day and remind him that she'd often told him he tried to keep me in leading strings. She said she did have a suspicion from your jocoseness when we first came over that there was some joke about our coming, but we parried her questions so well she forgot all about it. She said nobody could have dreamed of anything so preposterous, so of course she didn't guess it."

"Didn't she say it was on account of her age she didn't see through us?" queried Jerry, with a grin.

"By Jove, she did; and then turned it off by saying she never supposed a Marchfield would be engaged to a pirate. She says, though, that I've got to cut back at once. She won't have me going about with Katrine in a stolen yacht."

"It's time to start anyway. It'll be getting late by the time we're across, and if she's written home, the sooner the Merle is in Boston harbor the better. I suppose we can get off in a week?"

"We go to-morrow," Jack answered calmly.

"To-morrow! Great Scott! What are we sitting here for? There are oceans of things to be done."

"Of course we can get stores at Plymouth if we need to, and I've already ordered a lot of things to come out to-night. We have to get Wrenmarsh safe, of course, and that'll take some time."

"He's a windfall," commented Jerry.

"And like most windfalls, not entirely sound? Tell Gonzague to fix up the stateroom Bardale had, the one next mine. I must get ashore now; she'll be waiting. You're to come to dinner."

"I'll come fast enough. Oh, you bully old pirate, I'm awfully glad for you!"