DAWN.

And some Talk of a Ship that Passed in the Night.

I have it in my mind that it was just upon the stroke of one o’clock of the morning, or two bells in the middle watch, when this amazing message came to me. Larry and the Irishman were asleep at that time, the third officer keeping the bridge and sending down to summon me to the Marconi instrument. Indefatigable as my friends had been in their energies and zeal, there are limits to human endurance which no prudent master ignores; and to their bunks I sent them despite their indignation. For myself, I can never sleep in the hour of crisis or its developments. Physically, I am then incapable of sleep. A sense of fatigue is unknown to me. I seem to be as one apart from the normal life of men, untrammelled by human necessities and unconscious even of mental effort. Perhaps the subsequent collapse is the more absolute when it comes. I have slept for thirty hours upon a question finally answered. The end of my day is the end also of whatever task I have for the time being undertaken.

The men were sleeping, and why should I awake them? Fallin, the young officer, had but little news to report. The Diamond Ship no longer wasted her shells in angry impotence. Her searchlight had ceased to play upon the moonlit waters. Such tidings as came were of a steamer’s masthead light seen for an instant upon our port-bow and then vanishing.

“It’s an unusual course for tramps, sir,” the young officer said, “and to tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure enough about it at all to wake the Captain. If it were a ship out of Buenos Ayres, she’s keeping more south than usual, but I’ve altered the course for a star before now, and you don’t care to wake up such a seaman as Captain Larry to tell him you’ve done that. His orders to me were to go down and report anything unusual. Well, a glimpse of a ship’s light shouldn’t be unusual, and that’s a fact.”

I agreed with him, though, landsman that I was, I thought I could read the omen better than he. If he had seen the masthead light of a strange steamer, she could be no other than the second of the relief ships the Jew awaited.

Herein lay many and disquieting possibilities. Given coal and stores enough, what was there to prevent the rogues putting in to some South American port, landing there such plunder as they had, and dispersing to the cities wherein their friends would shelter them? I foresaw immediately a complete frustration of my own plans and a conclusion to my task humiliating beyond belief. Not improbably that great hulk of a ship sailed already under the colours of some irresponsible republic. She might, I judged, fly the Venezuelan flag or that of Honduras or Nicaragua. The ports of such governments would be ready enough to give her shelter if backsheesh enough were to hand. And what, then, of all our labours—above all, what, then, of little Joan?

This would be to say that the message still troubled me and that I had by no means come to a resolution upon it. Let it be admitted that it found me a little wanting in courage. If reason, the sober reason of one who has made it his life’s task to read the criminal mind, the principles which guide it and the limits within which it is logical, if reason such as this read the Jew’s ultimatum aright, then might it be derided ut............