"It seems that your quarrel will have to wait some other meeting-place than England," he said. "Perhaps the laws of that terra incognita to which he goes forbid the duello."
"He will not leave our company yet awhile," answered Ferne, with calmness. "As I thought--."
The dark figure had dropped from the bowsprit of the Star into the waiting boat, which at once put after its fellows. Behind the deserted ship suddenly streamed out a red banner of the dawn; stark and black against the color, lonely in the path that must be trod, she awaited her end. To the seafaring men who watched her she was as human as themselves--a ship dying alone.
"All that a man hath will he give for his life," quoth Arden, somewhat grimly, for he was no lover of Baldry, and he was now ashamed of the emotion he had shown.
"To go down with her," said Ferne, slowly,--"that had been the act of a madman. And if to live is a thing less fine than would have been that madness, yet--"
He broke off, and turning from the Star, now very near her death, swept with his gaze the billowing ocean. "I would we might see the Mere Honour and the Marigold," he said, impatiently. "What is lost is lost, and Captain Baldry as well as we must stand this crippling of our enterprise. But the Mere Honour and the Marigold are of more account than the Star."
Out of a cluster of mariners and landsmen rose Robin-a-dale's shrill cry: "She's going down, down, down! Oh, the white figurehead looks no more into the sea--it turns its face to the sky! Down, down, the Star has gone down!"
A silence fell upon the decks of the Cygnet and upon the overfreighted boats laboring towards her. Overhead mast and spar creaked and the low wind sang in the rigging, but the spirit of man was awed within him. A ship was lost, and the sea was lonely beneath the crimson dawn. Where were the Mere Honour and the Marigold, and was all their adventure but a mirage and a cheat? Far away was home, and far away the Indies, and the Cygnet was a little feather tossed between red sky and heaving ocean.
The thought did not last. As the crowded boats drew alongside, up sprang the sun, cheering and warming, and at the Captain's command the musicians of the Cygnet began to play, as at the setting of the watch, a psalm of thanksgiving. Sailors and volunteers, there had been but sixty men aboard the Star, and all were safe. As they clambered over the side, a cheer went up from their comrades of the Cygnet.
The boat that carried Baldry came last, and that adventurer was the latest to set foot upon the Cygnet's deck. Her Captain met him with bared head and outstretched hand.