"He will not leave our company yet awhile," answered Ferne, with calmness. "As I thought--." The dark figure had dropped from the bowsprit of the _Star_ into the waiting boat, which at once put after its fellows. Behind the deserted ship suddenly streamed out a red banner of the dawn; stark and black against the color, lonely in the path that must be trod, she awaited her end. To the seafaring men who watched her she was as human as themselves--a ship dying alone. "All that a man hath will he give for his life," quoth Arden, somewhat grimly, for he was no lover of Baldry, and he was now ashamed of the emotion he had shown. "To go down with her," said Ferne, slowly,--"that had been the act of a madman. And if to live is a thing less fine than would have been that madness, yet--" He broke off, and turning from the _Star_, now very near her death, swept with his gaze the billowing ocean. "I would we might see the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_," he said, impatiently. "What is lost is lost, and Captain Baldry as well as we must stand this crippling of our enterprise. But the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_ are of more account than the _Star_." Out of a cluster of mariners and landsmen rose Robin-a-dale's shrill cry: "She's going down, down, down! Oh, the white figurehead looks no more into the sea--it turns its face to the sky! Down, down, the _Star_ has gone down!" A silence fell upon the decks of the _Cygnet_ and upon the overfreighted boats laboring towards her. Overhead mast and spar creaked and the low wind sang in the rigging, but the spirit of man was awed within him. A ship was lost, and the sea was lonely beneath the crimson dawn. Where were the _Mere Honour_ and the _Marigold_, and was all their adventure but a mirage and a cheat? Far away was home, and far away the Indies, and the _Cygnet_ was a little feather tossed between red sky and heaving ocean. The thought did not last. As the crowded boats drew alongside, up sprang the sun, cheering and warming, and at the Captain's command the musicians of the _Cygnet_ began to play, as at the setting of the watch, a psalm of thanksgiving. Sailors and volunteers, there had been but sixty men aboard the _Star_, and all were safe. As they clambered over the side, a cheer went up from their comrades of the _Cygnet_. The boat that carried Baldry came last, and that adventurer was the latest to set foot upon the _Cygnet's_ deck. Her Captain met him with bared head and outstretched hand. "We grieve with you, sir, for the loss of the _Star_," he said, gravely and courteously. "We thank God that no brave man went down with her. The _Cygnet_ gives you welcome, sir."