When poor stunned Captain Marpole came to his senses, it was to find himself tied to the mainmast. Several handfuls of shavings and splintered wood were piled round his feet, and Jonsen was sprinkling them plentifully with gun-powder--though not perhaps enough, it is true, to ‘blow up the ship and all in it.’ The small fair mate stood at hand in the gathering dusk with a lighted torch, ready to fire the pyre. What could a man do in such straits? At that dreadful moment the gallant old fellow had to admit that he was beaten at last. He told them where his freight-money--some £900--was hidden: and they let him go. Just as the darkness closed in, the last of the pirates returned to their ship. Not a sound was to be heard of the children: but Marpole guessed that they had been taken there too. Before releasing his crew he lit a lantern and began a sort of inventory of what was gone. It was heart-breaking enough: besides the cargo, all his spare sails, cordage, provisions, guns, paint, powder: all his wearing apparel, and that of his mate: all nautical instruments gone, cabin stores--the saloon in fact gutted of everything, not even a knife or spoon left, tea or sugar, nor a second shirt to his back left. Only the children’s luggage was left untouched: and the turtles. Their melancholy sighing was the sole sound to be heard. But it was almost as heart-breaking to see what the pirates had _left_: anything damaged, such worn-out and useless gear as he had been only waiting for some ‘storm’ to wash overboard--not one of these eyesores was missing. What, in Heaven’s name, was the use of an insurance policy? He began to collect the rubbish himself and dump it over the side. But Captain Jonsen saw him: ‘Hi!’ he shouted: ‘You dirty svindler! I will write to Lloyds and expose you! I will write myself!’ He was horribly shocked at the other’s dishonesty. So Marpole had to give it up, for the time at any rate: took a spike and broke open the fo’c’sle: and as well as the sailors found Margaret’s brown nurse. She had hidden there the whole day: probably from motives of fright. iii You would have thought that supper on the schooner that night would have been a hilarious affair. But, somehow, it was _manqué_. A prize of such value had naturally put the crew in the best of humours: and a meal which consisted mainly of crystallised fruit, followed as an afterthought by bread and chopped onions served in one enormous communal bowl, eaten on the open deck under the stars, after bed-time, should have done the same by the children. But nevertheless both parties were seized by a sudden, overpowering, and most unexpected fit of shyness. Consequently no state banquet was ever so formal, or so boring.