"I'll pray God he doesn't. For I don't see what you can do if he does."

"I'm inclined to think that the best thing would be to let him take what he
wants and go. He let the _Mary Jane_ go, you say?"

"She went one way and he the other, when he'd sunk us, and we were told he
rarely makes prizes. Just helps himself to the best, like a pirate. He's
just a pirate, and nothing else."

"Discretion is sometimes the better part of valour," he said musingly.
"When you can't fight it's no good pretending you can, and this old hooker
can't do more than seven knots, and not often that. We've been last dog all
the way round. The frigates used to pepper us till they got tired of it;"
and he went out, and I knew what his advice would be if he should be asked
for it.

About midday I felt so much myself again--until I got onto my feet, when I
learned what forty-eight hours starving on a spar can take out of a
man--that I got up and dressed myself, by degrees, in some things I found
waiting for me in one of the other bunks.

I hauled myself along a passage till I came to a gangway down which the
sweet salt air poured like new life, and the first big breath of it set my
head spinning again for a moment.

I was hanging on to the handrail when a man came tumbling down in haste.

"It's you," he cried, at sight of me. "Cap'n wants you;" and we went up
together, and along the deck to the poop, where the captain stood with his