y mermaiden singing!"

"I know not," replied Ferne, his hands upon the railing. "Perchance 'tis
so. They say they are fair women.... The sound is gone. I would I might
hear thy sister singing."

"How silver and how solemn is the sky!" said his companion. "Perhaps it
was the echo of some heavenly strain. There goeth a great star! They say
that the fall of such stars is portentous, speaking to men of doom."

His Captain laughed. "Hast added so much astrology to thy store of
learning? Now, good-wife Atropos may cut her thread by the light of a
comet; but when the comet has flared away and the shearer returned to
her place, then in the deep darkness, where even the stars shine not,
the shorn thread may feel God's touch, may know it hath yet its uses....
How all the sea grows phosphorescent! and the stars do fall so thickly
that there may be men a-dying. Well, before long there will be other
giving of swords to Death!"

In the silence which followed his words, lightly spoken as they were,
young Sedley, who indeed owed very much to Mortimer Ferne, laid
impulsively his hand upon his Captain's hand. "On the night you give
your sword to Death, how great a star shall fall! An I go first, I shall
know when the trumpet sounds for your coming."

"When I give my sword to Death," said Ferne, absently. "Ay, lad, when I
give my sword to Death.... There again, do you not hear the singing? It
is the wind, I think, and not the people of the sea. It hath a mocking
sound.... When I give my sword to Death."

From the tops above them fell a voice of Stentor. "Sail ho! sail ho!"
Upon which they gave for the remainder of the tropic night small
attention to aught but warlike matters. With the morning the three ships
counted to the general gain the downright sinking of a small fleet from
Hispaniola, and the taking therefrom porcelain, many bales of rich silk
and rosaries of gold beads, a balass-ruby, twenty wedges of silver, and
a chest well lined with ducats.

With this treasure to hark them forward, on and on sailed the ships; and
now land birds came to them, and now they passed, floating upon the
water, the leafy branch of a strange tree with red, cuplike blossoms.
Full--sailed upon the quiet sea they held their course, while the men
upon them, eager-eyed and keen, watched for land and for the galleons of
Spain. Content with the taking of the _Star_, calamity now kept away
from the ships. None upon them died, few were sick, master and ca