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 decks of the _Cygnet_ and upon the overfreighted
boats laboring towards her. Overhead mast and spar creaked and the low
wind sang in the rigging, but the spirit of man was awed within him. A
ship was lost, and the sea was lonely beneath the crimson dawn. Where