ing to me
from the sea, and that, though I would have helped the man whose hand
was above the waters, I could not move, for an iron grip, as the grip
of Fate, held me to my place.

When I awoke for the third time, the dinghy was held firmly by a
boat-hook, and was being drawn towards a jolly-boat full of seamen. I
rose up, rubbing my eyes as a man seeing a vision; but, when the men
shouted something to me in German, I had another exclamation on my
lips; for I was alone in the boat, and Black had left me.

Then I looked across the sea, and I saw a long black steamer lying-to a
mile away, and the men dragged me into their craft, and shouted hearty
words of encouragement, and they put liquor to my lips, and fell to
rowing with great joy. Yet I remembered my dream, and it seemed to me
that the voice I had heard in my sleep was the voice of Black, who
cried to me as he had cast himself to his death in the Atlantic.

* * * * *

Was the man dead? Had he really ended that most remarkable life of evil
enterprise and of crime; or had he by some miracle found safety while I
slept? As the Germans rowed me quickly towards their steamer, and
comforted me as one would comfort a child that is found destitute by
the way-side, I turned this thought over again and again in my mind.
Had the man gone out of my life wrapped in the mystery which had
surrounded him from the first? Did he still live to dream dreams of
vengeance and of robbery? Or had he simply cast himself from the dinghy
in a fit of insanity, and died the terrible death of the suicide? I
could not answer the tremendous question; had no clue to it; but I had
not reached the shelter of the steamer which had saved me before I made
the discovery that the belt of linen which had been about Black's waist
was now about mine, tied firmly with a sailor's knot, and when I put my
hand upon the linen I found that it was filled with some hard and sharp
stones, which had all the feel of pebbles. Instinctively I knew the
truth: that in his last hour the master of the nameless ship had
retained his curious affection for me; had made over to me some of that
huge hoard of wealth he must have accumulated by his years of pillage;
and I restrained myself with difficulty from casting the whole there
and then into the waters which had witnessed his battles for it. But
the belt was firmly lashed about me, and we were on the deck of the
steamer before my be