A long, white ship was steaming slowly up the inlet, and
passed within a few hundred feet of the cliff on which they were
standing.

``Why, it's the `Vesta'!'' exclaimed Hope, wonderingly. ``I
thought she wasn't coming for a week?''

``It can't be the `Vesta'!'' said the elder sister; ``she was not
to have sailed from Havana until to-day.''

``What do you mean?'' asked Langham. ``Is it King's boat? Do
you expect him here? Oh, what fun! I say, Clay, here's the
`Vesta,' Reggie King's yacht, and he's no end of a sport. We can
go all over the place now, and he can land us right at the door
of the mines if we want to.''

``Is it the King I met at dinner that night?'' asked Clay,
turning to Miss Langham.

``Yes,'' she said. ``He wanted us to come down on the yacht, but
we thought the steamer would be faster; so he sailed without us
and was to have touched at Havana, but he has apparently changed
his course. Doesn't she look like a phantom ship in the
moonlight?''

Young Langham thought he could distinguish King among the white
figures on the bridge, and tossed his hat and shouted, and a man
in the stern of the yacht replied with a wave of his hand.