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The honest men, happily, for so I called the sailors of the ship, had suffered considerably less. I found them profoundly grateful for such services as I could render them; nor did the American hesitate to tell me frankly the story of the mutiny.

“We were making for Rio, but Mr. Ross stood out,” he said. “A relief’s expected, and I guess there are some law-sick folk on board her. He treated us like dirt, and began to talk of rafting. Do you know what rafting is, doctor—no, well, it’s putting living men overboard on a raft as big as a deal board and wishing ’em good luck while they go. Don’t try it while you can sail saloon. Colin Ross fell sick of a fever and is down below raving now. We got the arms by tickling the mate’s whiskers and promising him Ross’s berth. That was the first and the last of it. We shot ’em down like sheep, and now we’re going ashore to spend our money—those that live, though they’re like to be few enough.”

Here was a truth beyond all question. I stood on the deck of a veritable plague ship. A wail of death rose unceasingly. Night had come down, and a thick white mist enveloped the ocean all about us. The yacht was nowhere to be seen. Of all the hours of that great endeavour, this, to me, was the most terrible, alike in its menace and its suggestion.

For I said that the yacht might lose me in the fog and leave me, the prisoner of these desperate men, and their hostage against the justice which awaited them.

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Dr. Fabos Visits Colin Ross.

I was in a situation of grave peril; but it would have been imprudent beyond measure to have admitted it. Possibly the accident of their advantage did not occur to the men, nor had they discovered it. There was no order on the ship, no commander, no person in authority above others. The agony of wounds forbade any consideration of that which should be done or of the methods of doing it. I perceived that the men regarded me in some sense as their good angel, paying me the compliment of trusting me, and obeying my commands as faithfully as if I had been their captain. They could even remember that I had gone fasting, and speak of food and drink.

“Old Valentine knew a good tap when he tasted it, and there’s plenty of the right sort on board,” the American said to me good-naturedly. “You only give a name to it and the corks will be flying like rockets. Ask for what you’re wanting, doctor, and I’ll skin the lubber who doesn’t run to fetch it. The Lord knows what my mates would have done if you hadn’t come among them.”

It was honestly said, and as honestly meant. And yet, willingly as I would have accepted his cordial offer, fear of the consequences held me back. Who would dare to think of drink amid such a crew as this, or to remind men that drink was to be had? I could depict a Saturnalia defying the powers of a Poe to describe, such an orgie as a sane man might dream of in a horrid sleep, should these ruffians broach the casks or be reminded of the spirits which the ship carried.

My immediate anxiety was to divert their thoughts from my own situation, and to lead them to regard me rather as one of themselves than as a stranger. As for the mystery of my little Joan’s disappearance from the ship, the excuses which had been made to me, and the obvious sincerity of them, I knew no more than the dead what these might mean. While at one time I would doubt if she had ever been on the ship at all—plainly as I had thought to see her there—there were other moods in which I could almost believe that these ruffians had killed her, and that she also must be numbered among the victims of the night. This, however, would mark a moment of despair, to be forgotten readily when action called me to some new task. These men had sworn that Joan lived. Why should I question a sincerity which all my observation declared to be genuine?

So thus the matter stood when darkness came down and the fog lay thick about the Diamond Ship. Okyada, my servant, had vanished unaccountably, nor had I heard a single word concerning him since we came on board together. The yacht had disappeared from my ken, and the shrewdest eyes could not detect her situation, or the quickest ears give news of her. In these trying circumstances I welcomed a request from one of the seamen that I would visit Colin Ross, the captain of the vessel, and until lately the representative of Valentine Imroth, aboard her. This man I found lying grievously wounded by a bullet which had entered the left lung and penetrated in such an ugly fashion that his life must be a question of hours. His was not an unpleasant face, nor was his manner in any way repellent. I told him frankly, when he asked me, that he could not live, and he answered with a wan smile that was almost a sob.

“Good God! sir,” he said, “how little any man, who makes a beginning on a crooked road, ever sees the end of it! I was the captain of a Shields collier two years ago, doing well, and calling my home my own. When Mr. Imroth found me out, I would no more have done a shabby thing than have harmed my little baby girl, who’s waiting for me in Newcastle now. Money bought me—I’ll not deny it. I promised to run this ship to the Brazils for a thousand guineas, and there’s Imroth’s seal upon it on the table yonder. You may not believe me, but what the story of this business is, how these men came here, or why they have come, I know no better than the Pope of Rome—and that’s the truth, if my life’s the price of it. And yet, sir, that it’s a bad business I’d be a fool to deny. He who touches pitch gets plenty on his fingers. I knew that Val Imroth was a bad lot the first day I saw him—and bad enough are his companions on this ship. Why, good God! there’d have been murder done every day if it hadn’t been for fear of the man and his words. He puts a palsy on you when you hear his step—his breath’s a flame of hell—this crowd shivered at his look. It’s fear of him that’s kept them quiet since he ran for shore; it’s fear of him which will send them all to the dock in the end; as sure as I lie here telling you so.”

I cannot conceal the fact that this interview affected me greatly. Here was a robust British sailor, a man perhaps of thirty-five years of age, brown-haired, blue-eyed, and of an open cast of countenance, about to give up his life and to pass for ever from the love which awaited him in England because a monster had breathed a breath upon him, and had cried in his ears the fables of the gold. Hundreds of men, as innocent as this man, were exiles from wife and children to-day, outcasts, jail-birds, suspects, human derelicts, because of this devilish net which had enmeshed them, of these criminal arms which had embraced them, and this voice of lust which charmed them. Many a man have I seen die—but not as this seaman died, with a child’s name upon his lips, and a child’s image before his eyes. Of what avail to speak at such a moment of the Eternal Hope in the justice of an Almighty and all-Merciful God, or to recite those platitudes in which pious folk take refuge? Colin Ross was thinking of the child who nevermore would call him father, or by him to be called child again.

This, however, is to anticipate the hour. There was much upon which I would gladly have questioned the man; but little that he had the strength to answer me. Just as the seamen had sworn that it was all well with Joan, so did he bear them out with such emphasis as his failing strength could command.

“We were to make the Brazils and take a passage for Miss Joan to London. Her father, General Fordibras, is there, doctor. If harm has come to her, it is since I left the deck. The men worshipped her—there are rogues enough, I grant you, who would have had their say, but I shot the first dead with my own hand, and the men answered for the second, God help him! You’ll find Miss Joan all right, and take her back to her father. For the rest, I can’t advise you, sir. You are safe enough on board here while this trouble is new—but when it’s past, save yourself, for God’s sake; for your life will not be worth a minute’s purchase. Remember what’s at stake if this ship makes port and you are there to give an account of her. Hands and passengers alike will prevent that. No, doctor, get aboard your yacht while you can, and leave these men to their destiny.”