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was determined not to leave this place without you if we waited here a twelvemonth. As for the authorities, it was, as Mr. McShanus says, all blubber and fingers, and the General’s money hot in their pockets. When we got back from St. Michael’s, the little Jap came down to the harbour with his story. You were up in the hills, he said, and there was a spring to be dammed to get you out. He had done what he could, rolling the rocks into the water with his own hands until he could hardly stand upright for fatigue, but we sent a boat’s crew up last night and another to-night, and they played bowls with the stones like the good men they are. I would have gone down with your servant, but he’d the conceit to go alone. It’s natural to such a man—no words, no fuss, just a coil of rope about his waist and a couple of revolvers in his hands. He took the Scotch boatswain because he says Scotchmen give nothing away—‘Honourable Englishmen too much tongue,’ he says. I left it with him, because I believe he spoke the straight truth. When he had gone up we posted a couple of men on the shore here, and Mr. McShanus and I took our stand at the cliff’s head. We hadn’t been there more than half an hour when the first of the rifle-shots was fired. We saw a number of men on the hill-side, and they had fired a rifle for a signal, as we supposed, to others on the shore below. By-and-by we heard another rifle-shot, but saw no one. A little while after that you came down.”

      I told them that there were two men stone dead at the entrance to the tunnel, and this astonished them greatly. We could only surmise that the Jew’s sentinels had quarrelled amongst themselves, and that the second of the shots had been fired by a wounded man as his comrade emerged from the tunnel. Be it as it might, the hazardous nature of my escape became plainer every moment. It needed but Larry’s intimation that a steamer had left the island two hours ago to tell me that my life had been saved almost as by a miracle.

      “They have heard from Europe that the game is up, and are running to another haven,” I said. “There was no longer anything to be got from me, so out came their pistols. If they touch at any port north of Tangier, the police will lay hands upon them. That is not likely. My own opinion is that they are running for the great ship which we saw drifting out there in mid-Atlantic. If it is correct, the game becomes exciting. We can leave no message which can be safely delivered. Should the Government send a cruiser, the officer of it will hardly set out for a blind-man’s bluff. If we had coal enough ourselves⁠——”

      Captain Larry interrupted me with scarce an apology.

      “That was one of my reasons for going to St. Michael’s, doctor. Mr. McShanus will tell you that we were lucky. We filled our bunkers—at a stiff price, but still we filled them. The yacht is ready to put to sea this instant if you so desire it.”

      His news both amazed and troubled me. I will not deny that I had been much tempted to stand by the island until I had definite news of Joan Fordibras and her safety. And now the clear call came to embark without an instant’s delay upon a quest which I owed both to myself and to humanity. Undoubtedly I believed that the Jew had taken refuge upon the Diamond Ship. Behind that belief there stood the black fear that he might have carried the child with him to be a hostage for himself and his fellow rogues, and to stand between my justice and his punishment. This I knew to be possible. And if it were so, God help her amid that crew of cut-throats and rogues, hidden from justice upon the unfrequented waters of the Southern Ocean.

      But it might not be so, and pursuit of them might leave her to perils as great, and insult as sure, in one or other of those criminal dens the rogues had built for themselves in the cities of Europe. Surely was it a memorable hour and manifest of destiny when it found the yacht ready to put to sea without delay.

      “Captain,” said I, “do the men understand that this is a voyage from which none of us may return?”

      “They so understand it, Dr. Fabos.”

      “And do they consent willingly?”

      “Turn back, and you are upon the brink of a mutiny.”

      “Then let us go in God’s name,” said I; “now, this very hour, let us do that duty to which we are called.”

      CHAPTER XX.

       THE SKIES BETRAY.

       Table of Contents

      A Message Comes from the Diamond Ship.

      I shall carry you next to a scene in the Southern Atlantic, to a day in the month following my escape from the Azores. The morning is a brilliant morning of torrid heat and splendid sunshine. The sea about us is a sea gleaming as a sheeted mirror of the purest silver; a vast, still, silent sea, with a cloudless horizon and a breath as of Southern springtime. The yacht White Wings is changed but little since last you saw her at Villa do Porto.

      A close observer would mark the mast which carries her apparatus for Marconigrams; she steams very slowly, with a gentle purr of her engines that seems to soothe to sleep. There is a trim sailor on the look-out in her bows, and the second officer paces the bridge with the air of one who has long since ceased to enjoy an active occupation. Down amidships shouts of laughter claim my attention and turn my steps to the spot. The laughter is the laughter of honest seamen. The victim is my friend, McShanus.

      He picked himself from the deck, brushed his clothes methodically, and told me that the game had been Ju-Jitsu.

      “’Tis the little yellow devil again, and me on my back like a turtle. Says he, ‘The honourable Irishman no puttee Okyada on the floor.’ Says I, ‘Ye wisp of hay, I could knock ye down with my thumb.’ ‘The honourable Irishman try,’ says he. So I just put my hands upon his shoulders and gave him a bit of a push. Sons of Ireland! he dropped to the floor directly I touched him, and where is the relic of Timothy McShanus? Sure, he caught me on the soles of his feet as I fell over him, and shot me twenty yards—me that has the blood of kings in me veins. He grassed me like a rabbit, sir, and there are those who laughed. Risu inepto res ineptior nulla est. Let them hear Martial and be hanged to them!”

      I comforted Timothy with what words I could, and told him that they were bringing breakfast up to the deck.

      “I want a few words with Larry and yourself,” said I, “and hungry men are poor listeners. You have amused the crew, Timothy, and that is something in these days. Be thankful to have played such a noble part and come and eat immediately. There is a capital fish curry—and the loaves are hot from the oven.”

      “Faith,” he replied, “if you make me as warm inside as I am out, ’twill be my clothes I am selling to the natives.”

      And then he asked almost pitifully.

      “’Tis not to say that ye are going back to Europe, Ean, me bhoy?”

      “The very thing in my mind, Timothy. I’ll tell you when we have had our ‘parritch.’ We were not born to spend useful careers in the Doldrums. Let us remember it after breakfast.”

      They had stretched a friendly awning over the aft deck, and hereunder we took our coffee and such food as a man cared to eat in such a temperature. When breakfast was done and we had lighted the morning cigarette, delicious beyond words under such circumstances, I began to speak very frankly to Timothy and the Captain of our present situation and the impossibility of continuing it further.

      “The obstinate man is about to surrender to his friends,” I said. “We have now been running to and fro between Porto Grande and this Styx of an ocean for nearly a month. We have sailed half-way to the Brazils and back, and discovered no more traces of the Diamond Ship than of the barque which Jason steered. When I consented to quit Villa do Porto, I believed that the Jew, Valentine Imroth, would be taken afloat in the vessel we saw when first we returned from South Africa. I still believe it—but what is the good of belief when the ocean guards his secret and no eyes of ours can pry it out? He has escaped us, vanished in a cloud, and left us to gird at ourselves for the precious weeks we have lost. It may be that my deductions were wrong from the first, that he has fled to Paris or to America, and that the Diamond Ship is safely in some harbour where no civilised Government