If only I'd not gone off on that shunt to India--And they six weeks in
these damnable swamps--if they won ashore at all! You still believe
they had a chance of that?"

"Aye. As I explained to your lordship, if the _Impala_ hadn't lost all
her boats before she struck, there's a fair probability that the water
inside the reefs--"

"Yes, yes, to be sure! If there was the slightest chance for any one
aboard--Lady Bayrose, Miss Leslie and their maids, the only women
passengers, and a British ship! Everything must have been done to save
them. While Tom--he'd be sure to make the shore, if that was within
the bounds of possibility. Yet even if they were cast up alive--six
weeks on the vilest stretch of coast between Zanzibar and the Zambezi!
They may be dying of the fever now--this very hour! Deuce take it,
man! d'you wonder I'm impatient?"

"Aye, m'lord! But here's the dawn, and McPhee is keeping up a full
head of steam. We'll soon be doing seven knots."

As he spoke, the skipper turned to step into the pilot house. Lord
James faced about to the eastern sky, where the gray dawn was
beginning to lessen the star-gemmed blackness above the watery
horizon. Swiftly the faint glow brightened and became tinged with
pink. The day was approaching with the suddenness of the tropical
sunrise. In quick succession, the pink shaded to rose, the rose to
crimson and scarlet splendor; and then the sun came leaping above the
horizon, to flood sea and sky with its dazzling effulgence.

Captain Meggs had entered the pilot house in the blackness of night.