"She has lost her reckoning, probably," said the boy, "and made the
first land to the north. Lucky she didn't fall in with those Florida
wreckers, for though the Americans don't carry on the African trade
nowadays, they know what to do with a cargo if it gets once hard and
fast on the reefs."

"What know you of these matters?" asked the old don, turning a
curious eye on the boy.

"O, I hear them talk of these things, and you know I saw a cargo
'run' on the south side only last month," continued the boy. "There
were three hundred or more filed off from that felucca, two by two,
to the shore."

"It is a slaver," said one of the officers, "a little out of her
latitude, that's all."

"A beautiful craft," said the lady, earnestly; "can it be a slaver,
and so beautiful."

"They are clipper-built, all of them," said the old don. "Launched
in Baltimore, United States."

Senorita Gonzales was the daughter of the proud old don of the same
name, who was of the party on the Plato at the time we describe. The
father was one of the richest as well as noblest in rank of all the
residents of the island, being of the old Castilian stock, who had
come from Spain many years before, and after holding high office,
both civil and military, under the crown, had at last retired with a
princely fortune, and devoted himself to the education of his