y pale and quiet, looking where
the two ships lay motionless, the boat from the one now at the very
side of the black steamer, whose name, the _Ocean King_, we could
plainly read. She had, unnoticed by us, seen the work of the last
shell, which splintered the groaning vessel, and made her reel upon the
water, and Mary's instinct told her that we stood where danger was.

"Don't you think you're better below, Mary?" asked Roderick; but she
had her old answer--

"Not until you go; and why should I make any difference? I overheard
what you said. Am I to stand between you and those men's lives?"

She clung to my arm as she spoke, and her boldness gave us new courage.

"I am for standing by to the end," said I; "if we save one soul, it's
an English work to do, anyway."

Roderick looked at Mary, and then he turned to the skipper--

"Do you wish to go on the other tack now?" he asked; but the skipper
was himself again.

"Gentlemen," he said, "it's your yacht, and these are your men; if you
care to keep them afloat, keep them. If it's your fancy to do the other
thing, why, do it. It's a matter of indifference to me."

His words were heard by all the hands, and from that time there was
something of a clamour amongst them; but I stepped forward to have out
what was in my mind, and they heard me quietly.

"Men," I said, "there's ugly work over there, work which I make nothing
of; but it's clear that an English ship is running from a foreigner,
and may want help. Shall we leave her, or shall we stand by?"

They gave a great shout at this, and the skipper touched the bell,
which stopped the engines. We lay then quite near both to the pursued
and the pursuer, and there was no longer any doubt that we had been
seen.

Glasses were turned upon us from the decks of the yellow ship, and from
the poop of the _Ocean King_, whose men were still busy with the signal
flags, and this time, as we made out, in a direct request to us that we
should stand by.

I doubt not that the excitement and the danger of the position alone
nerved us to this work of amazing foolhardiness, which was so like to
have ended in our complete undoing; and, as I watched the captain of
the steamer parleying with the men in the launch below him, I could but
ask--What next? when will our turn be?

But the scene was destined to end in a way altogether different from
what we had anticipated.

While a tall man with fair hair--my glass gave me the impression t