were the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_, and was all their adventure
but a mirage and a cheat? Far away was home, and far away the Indies,
and the _Cygnet_ was a little feather tossed between red sky and
heaving ocean.

The thought did not last. As the crowded boats drew alongside, up sprang
the sun, cheering and warming, and at the Captain's command the
musicians of the _Cygnet_ began to play, as at the setting of the watch,
a psalm of thanksgiving. Sailors and volunteers, there had been but
sixty men aboard the _Star_, and all were safe. As they clambered over
the side, a cheer went up from their comrades of the _Cygnet_.

The boat that carried Baldry came last, and that adventurer was the
latest to set foot upon the _Cygnet's_ deck. Her Captain met him with
bared head and outstretched hand.

"We grieve with you, sir, for the loss of the _Star_," he said, gravely
and courteously. "We thank God that no brave man went down with her. The
_Cygnet_ gives you welcome, sir."

The man to whom he spoke ignored alike words and extended hand. A
towering figure, breathing bitter anger at this spite of Fortune, he
turned where he stood and gazed upon the ocean that had swallowed up his
ship. Uncouth of nature, given to boasting, a foster-child of Violence
and Envy, he yet had qualities which had borne him upward and onward
from mean beginnings to where on yesterday he had stood, owner and
Captain of the _Star_, leader of picked men, sea-dog and adventurer as
famed for daredevil courage and boundless endurance as for his
braggadocio vein and sullen temper. Now the _Star_ that he had loved was
at the bottom of the sea; his men, a handful beside the _Cygnet's_