By this time we were standing well up for the Mozambique Channel, which I had heard the Indiamen intended to take in company; a piece of information that made me the more anxious to overtake the Seringapatam, at latest, by the time they reached open water again, where, being the only ship from Bombay, she would no doubt part from her consorts. We had a cruiser that year, as I knew, in the Mozambique, where there were some rumours of pirates after the war, so that in case of her happening to speak the Seringapatam close, and having got any word of Westwood's affair, he ran a chance of being picked off. However, that wasn't by any means the thing that troubled me most: somehow or other, whenever the picture of Violet's face brought the Indiaman's decks clear into my mind, with all about her, I couldn't get rid of the notion that some ill-luck would come across that ship before she got into port. If any pirate craft were to dodge the whole bevy of Indiamen up the head of the channel, as was pretty sure to be the case, he would probably wait for some signs of separating, and be down upon a single one not long after she cleared the Leychelles islands, where a lonely enough stretch of the Indian Ocean spreads in. The more I entered upon the thought of it, the more unsufferable it got; especially one day in the mouth of the Mozambique, when it fell a dead calm with a heavy up-and-down swell, fit to roll the sticks out of her; the high blue land of Madagascar being in sight, sometimes to starboard, sometimes to port, then astern, and the clear horizon lying away north-west, dark with a breeze from round the coast. As the hot sun blazed out above us, and the blue water came plunge up over the rail, blazing and flashing, first one side dipped, then the other, I could fancy the passengers on the Indiaman's poop in a light breeze with a suspicious lateen-rigged sail creeping up on her quarter. I thought I saw Violet Hyde's eyes sparkle against the glare of light, and her lips parting to speak--till I actually stamped on the deck, my fists clenched, and I made three strides to the very taffrail of the schooner. All at once I met my second mate's eye coolly fixed on me, which brought me to my senses in a moment, the more so as there was something about this man Jones I couldn't make out, and I had made up my mind to keep a sharp eye on him; though the fact was, it annoyed me most to feel him seeing into _me_, as it were, without troubling himself. "We shall have the breeze before long, sir, round Cape Mary yonder," said he, stepping forward. "So I expect, myself, Mr Jones," said I, "though you evidently know the coast better than I do." With that I gave him a careless side-look, but to all appearance there was nothing particular in his, as he told me he had seen it two or three times before.