"No more than you are, my pippin," answered the traveller, insolently.
The two men were still standing face to face. Something in that insolent tone, something that brought back the memory of half-forgotten times, startled the detective. He lifted the lamp suddenly, still looking in the traveller's face, still muttering in the same half-absent tone, "Not Joseph Wilmot!" and brought the light on a level with the other man's eyes.
"No," he cried, with a sudden tone of triumph, "not Joseph Wilmot, but Stephen Vallance—Blackguard Steeve, the forger—the man who escaped from Norfolk Island, after murdering one of the gaolers—beating his brains out with an iron, if I remember right. We've had our eye on you for a long time, Mr. Vallance; but you've contrived to give us the slip. Yours is an old case, yours is; but there's a reward to be got for the taking of you, for all that. So I haven't had my long journey for nothing."
The detective tried to fasten his other hand on Mr. Vallance's shoulder; but Stephen Vallance struck down that uplifted hand with a heavy blow of his fist, and, wresting himself from the detective's grasp, rushed up the cabin-stairs.
Mr. Carter followed close at his heels.
"Stop that man!" he roared to one of the fishermen; "stop him!"
I suppose the instinct of self-preservation inspired Stephen Vallance to make that frantic rush, though there was no possible means of escape out of the vessel, except into the open boat, or the still more open sea. As he receded from the advancing detective, one of the fishermen sprang towards him from another part of the deck. Thus hemmed in by the two, and dazzled, perhaps, by the sudden brilliancy of the moonlight after the darkness of the place below, he reeled back against an opening in the side of the vessel, lost his balance, and fell with a heavy plunge into the water.
There was a sudden commotion on the deck, a simultaneous shout, as the men rushed to the side.
"Save him!" cried the detective. "He's got a belt stuffed with diamonds round his waist!"
Mr. Carter said this at a venture, for he did not know which of the men had the diamond belt.