" I said, and told him further of the
round hole that bored itself in John Ozanne's forehead right before my
eyes.

"By ----!" he said again, and more lustily than ever. "I hope to God we
don't run across him! Which way did he go, did you say?"

"He went off nor'-east, but his prowling-ground is hereabouts. What guns do
you carry, sir?"

"Ten eighteen-pound carronades."

I shook my head. "He could play with you as he did with us, and you could
never hit back."

"---- him!" said the old man, and went out much disturbed.

The cheery little doctor chatted with me for a few minutes, and told me
that both they and the Indiaman we saw _Red Hand_ looting belonged to the
convoy we had seen pass three days before, but, having sprung some of their
upper gear in the storm, they had had to put into Lisbon for repairs, and
the rest could not wait for the two lame ducks.

"Think he'll come across us?" he asked anxiously.

"I'll pray God he doesn't. For I don't see what you can do if he does."

"I'm inclined to think that the best thing would be to let him take what he
wants and go. He let the _Mary Jane_ go, you say?"

"She went one way and he the other, when he'd sunk us, and we were told he
rarely makes prizes. Just helps himself to the best, like a pirate. He's
just a pirate, and nothing else."

"Discretion is sometimes the better part of valour," he said musingly.
"When you can't fight it's no good pretending you can, and this old hooker
can't do more than seven knots, and not often that. We've been last dog all
the way round. The frigates used to pepper us till they got tired of it;"
and he went out, and I knew what his advice would be if he should be asked
for it.

About midday I felt so much myself again--until I got onto my feet, when I
learned what forty-eight hours starving on a spar can take out of a
man--that I got up and dressed myself, by degrees, in some things I found
waiting for me in one of the other bunks.

I hauled myself along a passage till I came to a gangway down which the
sweet salt air poured like new life, and the first big breath of it set my
head spinning again for a moment.

I was hanging on to the handrail when a man came tumbling down in haste.

"It's you," he cried, at sight of me. "Cap'n wants you;" and we went up
together, and along the deck to the poop, where the captain stood with his
officers and a number of ladies and gentlemen. From the look of them they
all seemed disturbed a