heard how had fared the _Cygnet_ and the _Marigold_, then listened to
Baldry's curt recital of the _Star's_ ill destinies. The story ended, he
gave his meed of grave sympathy to the man whose whole estate had been
that sunken ship. Baldry sat silent, fingering, as was his continual
trick, the hilt of his great Andrew Ferrara. But when the Admiral, with
his slow, deliberate courtesy, went on to propose that for this
adventure Captain Baldry cast his lot with the _Mere Honour_, he
listened, then gave unexpected check.

"I' faith, his berth upon the _Cygnet_ liked him well enough, and though
he thanked the Admiral, what reason for changing it? In fine, he should
not budge, unless, indeed, Sir Mortimer Ferne--" He turned himself
squarely so as to face the Captain of the _Cygnet_.

The latter, in the instant that passed before he made any answer to
Baldry's challenging look, saw once again that vision of the other
morning--the flare of dawn, and high against it one desperate figure, a
man just balancing if to keep his life or no, seeing that for the thing
he loved there was no rescue. Say that the doomed ship had been the
_Cygnet_--would Mortimer Ferne have so cheapened grief, have grown so
bitter, be so ready to eat his heart out with envy and despite? Perhaps
not; and yet, who knew? The _Cygnet_ was there, visible through the port
windows, lifting against serenest skies her proud bulk, her castellated
poop and forecastle, her tall masts and streaming pennants. The _Star_
was down below, a hundred leagues from any lover, and the sea was deep
upon her, and her guns were silent and her decks untrodden.... He was
wearied of Baldry's company, impatient of his mad temper and peasant
breeding, very sure that he chose, open-eyed, to torment himself from
Teneriffe to America with the sight of a prospering foe merely that that
foe might feel a nettle in his unwilling grasp. Yet, so challenged, when