g the passengers. Maybe that will
bring it back to your mind."

Captain Sharkey leant back in thought, with his huge thin beak of a nose
jutting upwards. Then he burst suddenly into a high treble, neighing
laugh. He remembered it, he said, and he added details to prove it.
"But burn me if it had not slipped from my mind!" he cried. "How came
you to think of it?"

"It was of interest to me," said Copley Banks, "for the woman was my
wife, and the lads were my only sons."

Sharkey stared across at his companion, and saw that the smouldering
fire which lurked always in his eyes had burned up into a lurid flame.
He read their menace, and he clapped his hands to his empty belt.
Then he turned to seize a weapon, but the bight of a rope was cast round
him, and in an instant his arms were bound to his side. He fought like
a wild cat, and screamed for help. "Ned!" he yelled. "Ned! Wake up!
Here's damned villainy! Help, Ned!--help!"

But the three men were far too deeply sunk in their swinish sleep for
any voice to wake them. Round and round went the rope, until Sharkey
was swathed like a mummy from ankle to neck. They propped him stiff and
helpless against a powder barrel, and they gagged him with a
handkerchief, but his filmy, red-rimmed eyes still looked curses at
them. The dumb man chattered in his exultation, and Sharkey winced for
the first time when he saw the empty mouth before him. He understood
that vengeance, slow and patient, had dogged him long, and clutched him
at last.

The two captors had their plans all arranged, and they were somewhat
elaborate. First of all they stove the heads of two of the great powder
barrels, and they heaped the contents out upon the table and floor.
They piled it round and under the three drunken men, until each sprawled
in a heap of it. Then they carried Sharkey to the gun and they triced
him sitting over the port-hole, with his body about a foot from the
muzzle. Wriggle as he would he could not move an inch either to the
right or left, and the dumb man trussed him up with a sailor's cunning,
so that there was no chance that he should work free.

"Now, you bloody devil," said Copley Banks, softly, "you must listen to
what I have to say to you, for they are the last words that you will
hear. You are my man now, and I have bought you at a price, for I have
given all that a man can give here below, and I have given my soul as
well.

"To reach you I have had to sink t