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heaped with merchandise of all kinds which had been taken from those

so unlucky as to have met these cruel and desperate men.

After a short inspection of the place he returned to the deck and again

seated himself in the bow.

The crippled condition of his traveling machine was now his chief

trouble, and although a good breeze had sprung up to fill the sails and

the little bark was making fair headway, Rob knew he could never expect

to reach home unless he could discover a better mode of conveyance

than this.

He unstrapped the machine from his wrist to examine it better, and while

holding it carelessly in his hand it slipped and fell with a bang to the

deck, striking upon its round edge and rolling quickly past the cabin and

out of sight. With a cry of alarm he ran after it, and after much search

found it lying against the bulwark near the edge of a scupper hole, where

the least jar of the ship would have sent it to the bottom of the ocean.

Rob hastily seized his treasure and upon examining it found the fall had

bulged the rim so that the old dents scarcely showed at all. But its

original shape was more distorted than ever, and Rob feared he had

utterly ruined its delicate mechanism. Should this prove to be true, he

might now consider himself a prisoner of this piratical band, the

members of which, although temporarily disabled, would soon regain

consciousness.

He sat in the bow, sadly thinking of his misfortunes, until he noticed

that one of the men began to stir. The effect of the electric shock

conveyed by the tube was beginning to wear away, and now the

buccaneer sat up, rubbed his head in a bewildered fashion and looked

around him. When he saw Rob he gave a shout of rage and drew his

knife, but one motion of the electric tube made him cringe and slip away

to the cabin, where he remained out of danger.

And now the other four sat up, groaning and muttering in their

outlandish speech; But they had no notion of facing Rob's tube a second

time, so one by one they joined their leader in the cabin, leaving the boy

undisturbed.

By this time the ship had begun to pitch and toss in an uncomfortable

fashion, and Rob noticed that the breeze had increased to a gale. There

being no one to look after the sails, the vessel was in grave danger of

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