of the battle-lanterns, with a bucket of rum and a pannikin laid by the tackles of every gun. They ran to Topsail Inlet in North Carolina to refit, and then in the spring they were at the Grand Caicos, ready for a long cruise down the West Indies. By this time Sharkey and Copley Banks had become very excellent friends, for Sharkey loved a whole-hearted villain and he loved a man of metal, and it seemed to him that the two met in the captain of the "Ruffling Harry." It was long before he gave his confidence to him, for cold suspicion lay deep in his character. Never once would he trust himself outside his own ship and away from his own men. But Copley Banks came often on board the "Happy Delivery," and joined Sharkey in many of his morose debauches, so that at last his misgivings were set at rest. He knew nothing of the evil that he had done him, for of his many victims, how could he remember the woman and the two the best, and after supper five of them drank deeply together. There were the two captains, Birthmark Sweetlocks, Ned Galloway, and Israel Martin, the old buccaneersman. To wait upon them was the dumb steward, whose head Sharkey split with his glass because he had been too slow in the filling of it. The quartermaster had slipped Sharkey's pistols away from him, for it was an old joke with him to fire them cross-handed under the table, and see who was the luckiest man. It was a pleasantry which had cost his boatswain his leg; so now when the table was cleared they would coax Sharkey's weapons away from him on the excuse of the heat, and lay them out of his reach. The captain's cabin of the "Ruffling Harry " was in a deck house upon the poop, and a stern-chaser gun was mounted at the back of it. Round shot were racked round the wall, and three great hogsheads of powder made a stand for dishes and for bottles. In this grim room the five pirates sang and roared and drank, while his side. He fought like a wild-cat, and the silent steward still filled up their screamed for help. glasses and passed the box and the candle "Ned!" he yelled. "Ned! Wake round for their tobacco-pipes. Hour after up! Here's villainy! Help, Ned, help!" hour the talk became fouler, the voices But the three men were far too deeply hoarser, the curses and shoutings more sunk in their swinish sleep for any voice incoherent, until three of the five had to wake them. Round and round went closed their bloodshot eyes and dropped the rope, until Sharkey was swathed like their swimming heads upon the table. Copley Banks and Sharkey were left face to face, the one because he had drunk the least, the other because no amount of liquor would ever shake his iron nerve or warm his sluggish blood. Behind him stood the watchful steward, forever filling up his waning glass. From without came the low lapping of the tide, and from over the water a sailor's chanty from the bark A trader sailed from Stepney town, Wake her up! Shake her up! mainsail ! A trader sailed from Stepney town, a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and helpless against a powder-barrel, and they gagged him with a handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long and clutched him at last. The two captors had their plans all arTry her with the ranged, and they were somewhat elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder-barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor. They piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled in a heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun, and they triced him sitting over the port-hole, with his face about a foot from the muzzle. Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to right or left, and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning, so that there was no chance that he should work free. The two boon companions sat listening in silence. Then Copley Banks glanced at the steward, and the man took a coil of rope from the shot-rack behind him. 44 Captain Sharkey," said Copley Banks, do you remember the Duchess of Cornwall,' which you took and sank three years ago off the Statira shoal?" "Curse me if I can bear their names in mind," said Sharkey. “We did as many as ten ships a week about that time." "There were a mother and two sons among the passengers. May be that will bring it back to your mind.' Captain Sharkey leaned back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose jutting upward. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it. "But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came you to think of it?" "It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my wife and the lads were my only sons.' Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smoldering fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame. He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt. Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of rope was cast about him, and in an instant his arms were bound to "Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as well. "To reach you I have had to sink to your level. For two years I strove against it, hoping that some other way might come, but I learned that there was no other way. I've robbed and I have murderedworse still, I have laughed and lived with you-and all for the one end. And now my time has come, and you will die as I would have you die, seeing the shadow creeping slowly upon you, and the devil waiting for you in the shadow." Sharkey could hear the hoarse voices of his rovers singing their chanty over the water: "Where is the trader of Stepney town? Wake her up! Shake her up! Every stick a-bending! Where is the trader of Stepney town? His gold's on the capstan, his blood's on his gown, All for bully Rover Jack, The words came clear to his ear, and just outside he could hear two men pacing backward and forward upon the deck. And yet he was helpless, staring down the mouth of the nine-pounder, unable to move an inch or to utter so much as a groan. Again there came the burst of voices from the deck of the bark: "So it's up and it's over to Stornoway Bay, Pack it on! Crack it on! Try her with the stun sails! There was a skiff alongside, and in it It's off on a bowline to Stornoway Bay, To the dying pirate the jovial words and rollicking tune made his own fate seem the harsher, but there was no softening in his venomous blue eyes. Copley Banks had brushed away the priming of the gun, and had sprinkled fresh powder over the touch-hole. Then he had taken up the candle, and cut it to the length of about an inch. This he placed upon the loose powder at the breech of the gun. Then he scattered powder thickly over the floor beneath, so that when the candle fell at the recoil it must explode the huge pile in which the three drunkards were wallowing. palm-trees. They waited and waited, Then Copley Banks, his heart singing within him, touched his companion upon the shoulder, and they plunged together into the lonely and unexplored jungle of the Caicos. Two months later an outwardbound tobacco ship from Havana found two desolate outcasts upon Mosquito You've made others look death in the Point, and, touched by their tale of outface, Sharkey," said he. "Now it has rage and marooning, landed them safely come to be your own turn. You and in London, where all trace of them was these swine here shall go together." He forever lost. MR. C. D. GIBSON ON LOVE AND LIFE. A NOTE BY ANTHONY HOPE, Author of "The Prisoner of Zenda," "Phroso," etc. With reproductions of some of the more significant drawings by Mr. Gibson. O speak in adequate terms and with competent knowledge of the technical qualities which have won for Mr. Gibson's work its high and deserved fame would not be in my power, and I am not going to make any attempt at such a task. But lack of the qualifications of a critic of art does not interfere with the pleasure and interest with which one who is from time to time called upon to study somewhat similar aspects of life turns over a portfolio of the drawings in which this artist records his impressions of society and reflects the spirit with which he regards his material. THE ARTIST'S PREFERENCE FOR THE ATTRACTIVE SIDES OF LIFE. If you thus direct your mind rather to the thing expressed than to the excellence of the means at the artist's command for expressing it, your first thought, perhaps, will be that you are following one who is undoubtedly a bit of a satirist; his humor is bound to make him that; yet he is a cheerful satirist. Even when he is presenting scenes for which we can expect nothing but a frown from the moralist, he is seldom irredeemably grim; his indignation is liberally tempered with amusement, and is chastened by a recognition that ordinary folk may occupy some of their time in foolish and unbecoming ways and yet not be such very bad fellows after EDITOR'S NOTE. The drawings by Mr. Gibson which illustrate this paper are reproduced by the kind permission of the publishers of Life," copyrighted by Mitchell and Miller: and the publishers of Pictures of People," copyrighted by Robert Howard Russell. all. His pen is dipped in charity, and he prefers subjects where this pleasantest of the virtues need not despair of proper opportunity. There are Bohemians, ragamuffins, persons whose characters will not bear investigation; but he seldom shows you the most revolting vices, such as cruelty, mercilessness, or the hatred of good. And, thanks probably in part to his very remarkable power of depicting beautiful human beings (a gift, I venture to think, rather curiously rare), he turns by preference to the attractive sides of life and draws for much of his work on the normal, simple, healthy procession of our days from an eager youth, through a vigorous middle age, to a calm and honorable decline. But youth is his favorite; when its reality is gone he will still bring it back in visions. Look at these two pictures," Previous Tenants" and "The Old Tune." These touch finely the note of gentle sadness with which man, resigned but never reconciled, accepts his decay and mortality; they breathe the sigh with which he remembers how the fruit of life tasted and that now he is too stiff and infirm to climb the trunk of the tree and bring down the prize. But there is no moroseness; the young girl stands by the old man, reminding us that youth is deathless, although the young are not. HIS CUPID. The same color of mood is very visible in Mr. Gibson's treatment of love, a subject which properly engages much of his attention. The little figure of Cupid which he is so fond of drawing seems to me very significant as well as very charming. No doubt the satirist peeps out here; the boy is not tragic (Mr. Gibson perhaps eschews as too easy that path to a reputation for profundity); he is hardly serious, though he is engaged on work that has serious results. He can, indeed, assume great emotions for his own purposes; he can sigh and look very despairing. But there is a want of sincerity about these assumptions; they are tricks played to persuade you to let him in. His native temper is an insinuating impishness, cloaked sometimes by a deceitful innocence and pathos, but breaking through at every minute. This may be studied in "The Last Guest.' Here, again, the artist lightly touches the note of sorrow, of youth gone, of the inevitable contrast that years so cruelly perfect. But Cupid does not take the moment that way at all. He sits laughing and sipping champagne! He's not old. And he seems very much amused to find himself where he is; the place was very differ ent when he came; he is chaffing his faithful hosts; he finds them, I fear, a little absurd. Look at him again in a most delightful drawing, "One More Victim," where he stands in his smith's apron and looks at the chains with which he has bound his prisoner ; his face is alight with roguish triumph, and he hugs himself with fat little arms; he had those chains locked on her before she knew that he had so much as begun to forge them. There is another drawing, which I have not before me now, but remember very well. A pretty young widow, clad in mournful black, sits alone-as she thinks; the world is over for her, poor thing! Then her eyes fall suddenly on the small impudent form which has got into the house somehow and sits there deriding her; he exults all the more because he knows that the solemn will be much shocked by his arrival. In such a guise he is irresistible; you would fall in love, if only for the sake of sharing the fun. HIS LOVERS. It helps us to sympathize with Cupid's triumphs when we look at the girls over whom they are won. We perceive that there is something to conquer. For the girl whom the artist gives us is not a ready prey to sentiment and does not yield very easily. She is happy, healthy, and proud; there is a touch of austerity and a hint of haughtiness in her maidenly air; she does not languish, though no doubt she might sometimes flirt securely. Love must stalk his game; though confident of success in the end, he is strategic in his approaches; he seeks to surprise her, gets in when she isn't looking, and knows that he is most dangerous when he is least expected. So it should be; the artist's humorous presentment of the artifices of his Cupid's pursuit is a true testimony to the quarry's purity of heart and healthy soundness of nature; we believe that the hard-won victory will be complete, and do not refuse our consent when we are invited to trust to such a permanence of it as will resist the lapse of years and the decay of beauty. And Mr. Gibson is most commendably jealous for his pretty girls; he knows that they have much to give, and would not have them give it unworthily. He finds for them very handsome young men, fine fellows who worship them as they deserve, and he is roused to an unusual directness of indignation when they play false to themselves and go hunting after money, rank, and such-like snares. His pencil is never more relentless than in depicting the husband in such a match, with his lined, |