Yes, the love of life had prevailed with Captain Inglefield of the _Centaur_, and, no matter how painful his moral conflict, it is obvious that his departure was attended with a kind of skulking ignominy. He ran away from his comrades to save his own skin and left them in the lurch. This is quixotic, perhaps, but are not all questions of honor more or less irrational? The captain’s narrative makes no farther mention of the sinking _Centaur_. At five o’clock of a September afternoon in the North Atlantic, two hours of daylight remained even in thick and cloudy weather. The four hundred men aboard the ship could watch the pinnace as she scudded before the wind with a blanket stretched for a sail and her course laid for the Azores. I imagine they damned the soul of their captain in curses that were wrenched from the bottom of their hearts instead of extenuating his conduct and wishing him luck. And presumably Captain Inglefield turned to gaze at the foundering man-of-war with her people clustered on deck or busied with the pitifully futile rafts. Nobody knows how much longer the _Centaur_ floated. The time must have been mercifully brief. When she went under, every man on board was drowned. The captain expected sympathy, and you may offer him as much as you like when he relates of his voyage in the small boat: It was then that I became sensible how little, if anything, our condition was better than that of those who remained in the ship. At least, it seemed to be only the prolongation of a miserable existence. We were altogether twelve in number, in a leaky boat, with one of the gunwales stove, in nearly the middle of the Western Ocean, without compass, quadrant, or sail; wanting great coat or cloak, all very thinly clothed, in a gale of wind and with a great sea running.... On examining what means we had of subsistence, I found a bag of bread, a small ham, a single piece of pork, two quart bottles of water, and a few French cordials. They were thirteen days adrift and suffered exceedingly, but only one man died of hunger and cold, and the others recovered their strength in the hospitable port of Fayal. These were the captain, the master, a young midshipman, a surgeon’s mate, a coxswain, a quartermaster, and five seamen. CHAPTER XV THE BRISK YARN OF THE _SPEEDWELL_ PRIVATEER