Captain Silas Porthoustoc, with his tongue in his cheek, went home.
His cottage was situated on the hillside beyond Mousehole. When ashore, he spent much of his time gardening, and so poor is the Cornish soil that to grow anything worth having the ground has to be plentifully manured. Hence, it occasioned no comment when Captain Silas toiled up the hill with a wheelbarrow full of seaweed, since seaweed is an excellent fertiliser. Had any one, sufficiently curious and daring to risk incurring the old skipper's anger, investigated what was under the seaweed the result would have surprised them.
In three days, Silas made forty-eight trips with his wheelbarrow. At the end of that time his garden still required more manure; but every ounce of the booty from the Alerte was snugly stowed away in the cave behind the kitchen of Silas Porthoustoc's cottage.
Darkness had fallen when the Alerte rose to the surface, after her eighteen hours' repose. Before the moon rose the crew had set up the funnel, masts and rigging, and by nine in the evening she was shaping a course slightly to the west'ard of the Casquets—that dangerous and frequently fog-bound ledge of rocks six miles west of Alderney.
Up to the present, Captain Cain had not put into execution his threat of punishing Broadmayne and his chum for their "desertion." For one thing, he meant to make an example of them before the crew, and consequently waited until the men had had their greatly-wanted rest; for another, he believed in "prolonging the agony," or delaying the actual punishment in order that the thought of it would prey upon the minds of the culprits.
From information obtained through the medium of Captain Silas Porthoustoc, the pirate skipper of the Alerte knew that a small French steamer, the Surcouf, was leaving St. Malo for the French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon, lying off Newfoundland. Amongst other items, she carried the sum of five hundred thousand francs for the treasury of these Gallic dependencies and a quantity of valuable silver plate, the private property of one of the chief officials of St. Pierre.
An hour before sunrise the Alerte stopped her engines. She was then nine miles W.N.W. of the Casquets. By means of her wireless she learnt that the Surcouf would not clear St. Malo earlier than ten o'clock, or two hours before high water.
That interval gave Captain Cain his opportunity to carry out his threat to the Sub and Vyse.
All hands were mustered on deck. Seized by a couple of the crew, Rollo Vyse was hauled to the up-turned boat that formed the screen for the quick-firer. Although boiling with rage, Vyse kept his feelings under control. Resistance was useless. He might easily fell his two captors, but he could not hope to defy the whole crew successfully. At one moment he harboured a scheme to break loose and hurl himself upon the pirate captain; but to do so, he would have to run the gauntlet of a dozen active and strongly-built men. So, in the circumstances, he made up his mind to take his gruelling with as much fortitude as possible.
Stripped to the waist, Vyse was secured to the boat, his arms over the keel and his ankles lashed to one of the gunwales.