The owners of the Hawk could not be found. The authorities decided that we had the right to offer her for sale and to divide the money among ourselves in proportions according to rank. Her value was placed at eighteen thousand dollars—but MacWilliams, backed by a group of merchants, purchased the ship for fifteen thousand dollars. He had not, canny Scot, returned from Barbary with empty pockets. He bought the Hawk at auction, and was able to obtain it at a low price because other merchants, when they saw his eagerness to obtain possession of her, refrained from bidding.

I was eager to take passage for America, and MacWilliams, to accommodate me, hurried the sale along so that Mustapha and myself could have our share. With three hundred dollars apiece in our possession, we bade him an affectionate farewell.

He changed the name of the Hawk to the Dove, and vowed to me that she should be used only on honorable missions.

"Lad, lad," he said, as he gripped my hand, "it's glad I am to see you returning to a God-fearing home. When you remember William MacWilliams, blot out the remembrance of ill deeds connected with my name, and think of me as a repentant man who yet intends to leave a good name behind him!"

We sailed for Baltimore in the brig Lafayette, Captain Lord. As we entered the Patapsco River Mustapha pointed out a schooner lying off Fell's Point. "Blessed be Allah—it's The Morning Star!" he cried.

"Pray then that her crew are not going ashore to spend our fortune!" I said.

Our first thought was to go directly aboard the schooner, but we then considered that we should have to furnish proof to her skipper that the sacks belonged to us, and that in such dealings it would be better to have the rector's support; therefore, we decided to seek him first.

As we passed a shop near the docks, I observed this sign above its door:

ALEXANDER FORSYTH
Exporter of
Fish, Flour, Tobacco, Corn and Furs
Importer of
Teas, Coffee and Spices

I entered and pounded on a desk.

"I want to buy a shipload of cannon balls to fire at the Dey of Algiers! I want to charter a frigate that will blow Joseph, Bashaw of Tripoli, to perdition! Fish, flour, tobacco—who's dealing in such tame stuff—it's blood and thunder I'm after purchasing; it's muskets and cutlasses I want. Show me your stock, man!"

A man with the build of a mastpole came out of the counting-room and stared at me. I swaggered towards him, but, suddenly, overcome by amusement at his puzzled look and joy at beholding him again, I sprang forward and threw my arms about him.

"David!" he cried.

"Alexander," I answered.

We stood hugging each other like two polar bears.

In a few minutes of hurried chat, I found out that my brother, recovering his health, had married Nell King, a Baltimore girl, and was prospering as a merchant. Commodore Barney, who had backed Alexander in business, was at sea. (How I fell in with him later and increased the family fortunes by acting as chaplain on his privateer Polly may not be told now.)

Customers came into the shop, and promising to call on Alexander and Nell that night, I broke away and went on up to the house. Mustapha, gaping at the strange western land I had brought him to, and as bewildered as I had been when I wandered through his desert cities, walked closely beside me, clutching my arm. I saw some of the bullies who had mutinied on board The Rose of Egypt. I think they recognized me, but Mustapha and I were a stalwart pair, and the looks cast our way by the dock loafers were more of respect than of hostility.

We approached the rector's house at dusk. A welcoming light shone through the elms. I was swaggering along, thinking how much of a man I would appear to the rector. The yellow glow from the window, however, spread an influence that changed me into a soft-hearted boy. Here was I, a sailor hardened through contact with all sorts of men, toughened by wind, wave and warfare, yet brushing a tear from my cheek as I saw the lamp in the parsonage shining out cheerier than the ray of a lighthouse on a tempestuous night.

The door was bolted—I knocked. A girl answered, her face in the shadows.

I was as much taken aback as if I had seen a ghost. I was not used to seeing girls around the old home. Besides, Alexander had not warned me.

"Is it someone to see father?" she asked timidly.

"You are Nell, Alexander's wife?" I said boldly, "and a pretty choice he made!"

"No!" she said, and I stood there in worse confusion than ever.

Yet there was something vaguely familiar in her tone.

"I beg your pardon," I said, "I thought Dr. Eccleston still lived here."

"He does!" she replied. "Please come in!"

We stepped into the hallway. I looked around, taking in each familiar object.

"I am David Forsyth," I said, "perhaps you have heard the rector speak of his boy who went to sea."

"I recognized you at first, David," she said, her face still in the shadows. "What a grand surprise for the rector!"

I walked towards the library, but the rector had heard our voices. He came out, spectacles in one hand, a book in the other. He stared at me as if he could scarcely credit his own sight.

I was in his arms the next moment.

"David," he shouted. "I had almost given you up for lost! No letters! And all the time I've been waiting to thank you for sending me my precious jewel!"

I looked at Mustapha in puzzlement. What did he mean by "jewel"? Had he gotten the treasure?

He turned to the mysterious girl, whose gold hair flashed in the lamplight as if ten thousand diamonds were netted in it. I had seen a girl's hair flashing in just such a way before! But where?

He saw me twirling my hat and grasped the situation:

"David," he explained, "this is my daughter! General Eaton told me that it was you who first pointed her out to him in the Arab camp."

Heigho! I had gone forth to seek adventures, and here at my home door was a more marvelous thing than any I had come upon. The girl that General Eaton had bought from the Bedouin hag was no other than the daughter the rector had lost in the desert! She was taller and lovelier, and the more I looked the more flustrated I became. I had always been shy before girls, and now I stood like a gawk, blushing under her gaze. I wanted the floor to open when she came forward and held up her lips in a matter-of-fact way for my kiss.

However, I did not dodge the invitation, for all my bashfulness. Indeed, I might as well record here that that sisterly kiss became a few months later the kiss of a sweetheart—but since I have no notion of having this book end in a love story, we had better get back to our course.

Mustapha, who had kept himself well in the rear, was now discovered by Anne, and what a jabbering in Arabic took place. Whenever after that I started to tell Anne of my adventures I found that she had already heard it from Mustapha. I can't say that I was displeased at this, because the lad—not that I deserved it—held me in high esteem, and painted me in every episode as a great hero.

Over the supper table we learned how the rector and Anne had been united. General Eaton had landed in Baltimore, and the rector, beholding beside the General a girl who bore a striking resemblance to his wife, stopped the officer in the street, questioned him, brought him and his ward to the parsonage as his guests, and there, by matching his story with that of Anne's, discovered that she was no other than his own daughter. Her mother—Anne had only a slight remembrance of her—must have died early in her captivity.

The next morning Mustapha and myself induced the rector to take a stroll with us. We reached the dock where The Morning Star was moored just as she was being unloaded. As we started to go aboard we bumped into a string of stevedores. Our search ended there and then, for among the baggage these men carried were our sacks.

"Toss those confounded bags aside," cried the officer in charge of the unloading. "I wonder if the cheeky rascal who sent them aboard thought I was going to hunt over Baltimore for 'Rev. Ezekiel Eccleston of Marley Chapel.'"

I approached him in my most respectful manner.

"Here, sir, is the Reverend Eccleston. He is the gentleman for whom the sacks are intended, and I'm the 'cheeky rascal' who shipped them. Your coxswain will recognize Mustapha here as the lad who stowed them in your cutter. There wasn't much need of shipping the curios after all, since my schooner arrived here almost as quickly as your ship."

He looked at me as if he wanted to pour out a flood of oaths. Then his gaze wandered over the rector's garb and he grew less surly.

"It's lucky for you, sir," he said to my guardian, "that we didn't pitch those sacks overboard! I like this cub's cheek—sending freight aboard without even saying, 'By your leave!' If the bags hadn't been addressed to a parson, overboard they'd have gone!"

"Your forbearance is much appreciated," said the rector. "The boy, I believe, was in a trying situation."

I took out a roll of banknotes.

"We'll pay you in full for all the bother you've been put to. You really saved this stuff from falling into the hands of the Turk, Joseph Bashaw. Yet there was another skipper who wanted in the worst way to carry those bags! In fact, he inquired for The Morning Star at several South Atlantic ports. I think you came in sight of him. But we're none the less grateful to you, sir!"

He snatched from me a pound note. "Always glad to serve the Church," he said civilly to the rector. "By the way, my men said there appeared to be metal ornaments in the sacks—candlesticks for worship, I suppose?"

The rector, at a loss for a reply, stared at the sacks.

"Something of that sort! They will be very useful to the Church," I answered, shouldering one. Mustapha followed suit with another, and the rector, good man, dragged the third sack to a wagon I had hired. With a load of worry removed from Mustapha and myself, we drove homeward. I heard afterwards that The Morning Star, though then a freighter for the Government, was a converted privateer and had even been suspected of piracy while in Uncle Sam's employ. Her men had probably captured and sunk many a ship without obtaining loot half as valuable as these, our riches, which they so carelessly carried.

On the way home the rector questioned me concerning the contents of the sacks, but I evaded him. Now, as we stood in the hallway, with the sacks at our feet, I myself popped a question.

"Rector," I said, "if you were suddenly handed a good-sized fortune, what would you do with it?"

He smiled.

"I suppose, David, that we all like to indulge in such day-dreams. First, I should erect a larger church here—this business of hanging our church-bell to a tree is getting sadly out of fashion. Then I should build mission chapels in the border settlements. Then Alexander should have capital with which to expand his trade with the West Indies. Then I should send you to Yale College—it's really time now, David, that you settled down to your studies. Then I should send General Eaton some funds. Congress praised him, but has since neglected him, and the poor fellow is low in spirits and failing in health. Then——"

"Rector," I said, "all those wishes and as many more are granted. I found both Aladdin's lamp and Ali Baba's cave in the deserts of Africa. Stand by and watch me bring all of your day-dreams true! Fall too, Mustapha, servant of the geni!"

With our jackknives we slashed open the sacks. The treasure hoard of the ancients—the priceless jewelry and trinkets which the rector long ago had discovered and then sealed up and abandoned—poured out in gleaming confusion at his feet.