the one man who had not
left the _Star_. He stood erect upon her bowsprit, a dark figure
outlined against the livid sky.

[Illustration: "IT WAS BALDRY'S SHIP, THE LITTLE _STAR_"]

The watchers upon the _Cygnet_, from Captain to least powder-boy, drew
quick breath.

"Ah, sirs, he loved the _Star_ like a woman!" ejaculated Thynne the
master, and, "He swore terribly, but he was a mighty man!" testified the
chief gunner. Robin-a-dale swung himself to and fro in an ecstasy of
terror. "He rides--he rides so high!" he shrilled. "Higher than the
gallows-tree! And he stands so quiet while he rides!"

Upon the poop young Sedley, standing beside his Captain, veiled his eyes
with his hand; then, ashamed of his weakness, gazed steadfastly at the
lifted figure. Arden, drumming with his fingers upon the rail, looked
sidewise at Sir Mortimer Ferne.

"It seems that your quarrel will have to wait some other meeting-place
than England," he said. "Perhaps the laws of that _terra incognita_ to
which he goes forbid the duello."

"He will not leave our company yet awhile," answered Ferne, with
calmness. "As I thought--."

The dark figure had dropped from the bowsprit of the _Star_ into the
waiting boat, which at once put after its fellows. Behind the deserted
ship suddenly streamed out a red banner of the dawn; stark and black
against the color, lonely in the path that must be trod, she awaited her
end. To the seafaring men who watched her she was as human as
themselves--a ship dying alone.

"All that a man hath will he give for his life," quoth Arden, somewhat
grimly, for he was no lover of Baldry, and he was now ashamed of the
emotion he had shown.

"To go down with her," said Ferne, slowly,--"that had been the act of a
madman. And if to live is a thing less fine than would have been that
madness, yet--"

He broke off, and turning from the _Star_, now very near her death,
swept with his gaze the billowing ocean. "I would we might see the _Mere
Honour_ and the _Marigold_," he said, impatiently. "What is lost is
lost, and Captain Baldry as well as we must stand this crippling of our
enterprise. But the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_ are of more account
than the _Star_."

Out of a cluster of mariners and landsmen rose Robin-a-dale's shrill
cry: "She's going down, down, down! Oh, the white figurehead looks no
more into the sea--it turns its face to the sky! Down, down, the _Star_
has gone down!"

A silence fell upon the deck