I suppose the instinct of self-preservation inspired Stephen Vallance to make that frantic rush, though there was no possible means of escape out of the vessel, except into the open boat, or the still more open sea. As he receded from the advancing detective, one of the fishermen sprang towards him from another part of the deck. Thus hemmed in by the two, and dazzled, perhaps, by the sudden brilliancy of the moonlight after the darkness of the place below, he reeled back against an opening in the side of the vessel, lost his balance, and fell with a heavy plunge into the water. There was a sudden commotion on the deck, a simultaneous shout, as the men rushed to the side. "Save him!" cried the detective. "He's got a belt stuffed with diamonds round his waist!" Mr. Carter said this at a venture, for he did not know which of the men had the diamond belt. One of the fishermen threw off his shoes, and took a header into the water. The rest of the men stood by breathless, eagerly watching two heads bobbing up and down among the moonlit waves, two pairs of arms buffeting with the water. The force of the current drifted the two men far away from the schooner. For an interval that seemed a long one, all was uncertainty. The schooner that had made so little way before seemed now to fly in the faint night-wind. At last there was a shout, and a head appeared above the water advancing steadily towards the vessel. "I've got him!" shouted the voice of the fisherman. "I've got him by the belt!" He came nearer to the vessel, striking out vigorously with one arm, and holding some burden with the other. When he was close under the side, the captain of the _Crow_ flung out a rope; but as the fisherman lifted his hand to grasp it, he uttered a sudden cry, and raised the other hand with a splash out of the water. "The belt's broke, and he's sunk!" he shouted. The belt had broken. A little ripple of light flashed briefly in the moonlight, and fell like a shower of spray from a fountain. Those glittering drops, that looked like fountain spray, were some of the diamonds bought by Joseph Wilmot; and Stephen Vallance, alias Blackguard Steeve, alias Major Vernon, had gone down to the bottom of the sea, never in this mortal life to rise again. CHAPTER XLV. GIVING IT UP. The _Pretty Polly_ went back to the port of Kingston-upon-Hull in the grey morning light, carrying Mr. Carter, very cold and very down-hearted—not to say humiliated—by his failure. To have been hoodwinked by a girl, whose devotion to the unhappy wretch she called her father had transformed her into a heroine—to have fallen so easily into the trap that had been set for him, being all the while profoundly impressed with the sense of his own cleverness—was, to say the least of it, depressing to the spirits of a first-class detective.