Mr. Carter was so familiar with the spot alongside which the Crow lay at anchor, that he made straight for that part of the quay and looked down over the side, fully expecting to see the dirty captain still lying on the tarpaulin, smoking his dirty pipe.

But, to his amazement, he saw a strange vessel where he expected to see the Crow, and in answer to his eager inquiries amongst the idlers on the quay, and the other idlers on the boats, he was told that the Crow had weighed anchor half an hour ago, and was over yonder.

The men pointed to a dingy speck out seaward as they gave Mr. Carter this information — a speck which they assured him was neither more nor less than the Crow, bound for Copenhagen.

Mr. Carter asked whether she had been expected to sail so soon.

No, the men told him; she was not expected to have sailed till daybreak next morning, and there wasn’t above two-thirds of her cargo aboard her yet.

The detective asked if this wasn’t rather a queer proceeding.

Yes, the men said, it was queer; but the master of the Crow was a queer chap altogether, and more than one absconding bankrupt had sailed for furrin parts in the Crow. One of the men opined that the master had got a swell cove on board to-day, inasmuch as he had seen such a one hanging about the quay-side ten minutes or so before the Crow sailed.

“Who’ll catch her?” cried Mr. Carter; “which of you will catch her for a couple of sovereigns?”

The men shook their heads. The Crow had got too much of a start, they said, considering that the wind was in her favour.

“But there’s a chance that the wind may change after dark,” returned the detective. “Come, my men, don’t hang back. Who’ll catch the Crow yonder for a fiver, come? Who’ll catch her for a fi’-pound note?”

“I will,” cried a burly young fellow in a scarlet guernsey, and shiny boots that came nearly to his waist; “me and my mate will do it, won’t us, Jim?”

Jim was another burly young fellow in a blue guernsey, a fisherman, part owner of a little bit of a smack with a brown mainsail. The two stalwart young fishermen ran along the quay, and one of them dropped down into a boat that was chained to an angle in the quay-side, where there was a flight of slimy stone steps leading down to the water. The other young man ran off to get some of the boat’s tackle and a couple of shaggy overcoats.

“We’d best take something to eat and drink, sir,” the young man said, as he came running back with these things; “we may be out all night, if we try to catch yon vessel.”

Mr. Carter gave the man a sovereign, and told him to get what he thought proper.

“You’d best have something to cover you besides what you’ve got on, sir,” the fisherman said; “you’ll find it rare and cold on ‘t water after dark.”

Mr. Carter assented to this proposition, and hurried off to buy himself a railway rug; he had left his own at the railway station in Sawney Tom’s custody. He bought one at a shop near the quay, and was back to the steps in ten minutes.

The fisherman in the blue guernsey was in the boat, which was a stout-built craft in her way. The fisherman in the scarlet guernsey made his appearance in less than five minutes, carrying a great stone bottle, with a tin drinking-cup tied to the neck of it, and a rush basket filled with some kind of provision. The stone bottle and the basket were speedily stowed away in the bottom of the boat, and Mr. Carter was invited to descend and take the seat pointed out to him.

“Can you steer, sir?” one of the men asked.

Yes, Mr. Carter was able to steer. There was very little that he had not learned more or less in twenty years’ knocking about the world.

He took the rudder when they had pushed out into the open water, the two young men dipped their oars, and away the boat shot out towards that seaward horizon on which only the keenest eyes could discover the black speck that represented the Crow.

“If it should be a sell, after all,” thought Mr. Carter; “and yet that’s not likely. If he wanted to double on me and get back to London, he’d have gone by one of the trains we’ve watched; if he wanted to lie-by and hide himself in the town, he wouldn’t have disposed of any of his diamonds yet awhile — and then, on the other hand, why should the Crow have sailed before she’d got the whole of her cargo on board? Anyhow, I think I have been wise to risk it, and follow the Crow. If this is a wild-goose chase, I’ve been in wilder than this before to-day, and have caught my man.”

The little fishing smack behaved bravely when she got out to sea; but even with the help of the oars, stoutly plied by the two young men, they gained no way upon the Crow, for the black speck grew fainter and fainter upon the horizon-line, and at last dropped down behind it altogether.

“We shall never catch her,” one of the men said, helping himself to a cupful of spirit out of the stone-bottle, in a sudden access of despondency. “We shall no more catch t’ Crow than we shall catch t’ day before yesterday, unless t’ wind changes.”

“I doubt t’ wind will change after dark,” answered the other young man, who had applied himself oftener than his companion to the stone-bottle, and took a more hopeful view of things. “I doubt but we shall have a change come dark.”

He was looking out to windward as he spoke. He took the rudder out of Mr. Carter’s hands presently, and that gentleman rolled himself in his new railway rug, and lay down in the bottom of the boat, with one of the men’s overcoats for a blanket and the other for a pillow, and, hushed by the monotonous plashing of the water against the keel of the boat, fell into a pleasant slumber, whose blissfulness was only marred by the gridiron-like sensation of the hard boards upon which he was lying.

He awoke from this slumber to hear that the wind had changed, and that the Pretty Polly— the boat belonging to the two fishermen was called the Pretty Polly— was gaining on the Crow.

“We shall be alongside of her in an hour,” one of the men said.

Mr. Carter shook off the drowsy influence of his long sleep, and scrambled to his feet. It was bright moonlight, and the little boat left a trail of tremulous silver in her wake as she cut through the water. Far away upon the horizon there was a faint speck of shimmering white, to which one of the young men pointed with his brawny finger It was the dirty mainsail of the Crow bleached into silver whiteness under the light of the moon.

“There’s scarcely enough wind to puff out a farthing candle,” one of the young men said. “I think we’re safe to catch her.”

Mr. Carter took a cupful of rum at the instigation of one of his companions, and prepared himself for the business that lay before him.

Of all the hazardous ventures in which the detective had been engaged, this was certainly not the least hazardous. He was about to venture on board a strange vessel, with a captain who bore no good name, and with men who most likely closely resembled their master; he was about to trust himself among such fellows as these, in the hope of capturing a criminal whose chances, if once caught, were so desperate that he would not be likely to hesitate at any measures by which he might avoid a capture. But the detective was not unused to encounters where the odds were against him, and he contemplated the chances of being hurled overboard in a hand-to-hand struggle with Joseph Wilmot as calmly as if death by drowning were the legitimate end of a man’s existence.

Once, while standing in the prow of the boat, with his face turned steadily towards that speck in the horizon, Mr. Carter thrust his hand into the breast-pocket of his coat, where there lurked the newest and neatest thing in revolvers; but beyond this action, which was almost involuntary, he made no sign that he was thinking of the danger before him.

The moon grew brighter and brighter in a cloudless sky, as the fishing-smack shot through the water, while the steady dip of the oars seemed to keep time to a wordless tune. In that bright moonlight the sails of the Crow grew whiter and larger with every dip of the oars that were carrying the Pretty Polly so lightly over the blue water.

As the boat gained upon the vessel she was following, Mr. Carter told the two young men his errand, and his authority to capture the runaway.

“I think I may count on your standing by me — eh, my lads?” he asked.

Yes, the young men answered; they would stand by him to the death. Their spirits seemed to rise with the thought of danger, especially as Mr. Carter hinted at a possible reward for each of them if they should assist in the capture of the runaway. They rowed close under the side of the black and wicked-looking vessel, and then Mr. Carter, standing up in the boat gave a “Yo-ho! aboard there!” that resounded over the great expanse of plashing water.

A man with a pipe in his mouth looked over the side.

“Hilloa! what’s the row there?” he demanded fiercely.

“I want to see the captain.”

“What do you want with him?”

“That’s my business.”

Another man, with a dingy face, and another pipe in his mouth, looked over the side, and took his pipe from between his lips, to address the detective.

“What the —&mda............