"I took a snap-shot at Vargus and missed him. Almost simultaneously he fired directly at the light of the torch which Mr. Van Adams held. The bullet went through Mr. Van Adams' heart, and he fell back dead in my arms--I was steering the launch. I fired off all the cartridges in my pistol, but the thunder drowned the noise. The Pirate Ship began to move. I saw the lights in her side moving along--and then she lifted and disappeared." The awful voice ceased, and all of us in that room stood like waxen figures in a show. * * * * * For three days the Press and public were kept in entire ignorance of what had happened during the storm. Upon the fourth, just as I was beginning to think that all my measures were in vain and that the Pirate Ship had vanished utterly, the Head Office in Whitehall received two long telegrams from the Prefect of Finistère in France and the Chief of Police of Quimper, the old cathedral city in Brittany. On one of the wild and lonely Breton moors a goat-herd had discovered the wreckage of a large airship. By it was the body of a young man, but only one body. The telegrams urgently asked me to come over at once. I did so, in my fastest patrol boat. Lying in a wild wilderness of gorse and heather were the remains of the Pirate Ship. It had been destroyed beyond possibility of reconstruction, and destroyed methodically and deliberately while at rest upon the ground. There was no doubt about that. The body I afterwards saw in the Morgue at Quimper was that of Gascoigne. He had not met his death by any accidental means, but had been stabbed in the back. He must have been dead for quite two days before the goat-herd made his discovery, and of Vargus, living or dead, there was not a trace. I was back in London again that night, and just as I was going to bed in Half Moon Street the bell of the flat rang. Thumbwood went to the door and announced that Mr. Danjuro wished to see me. He was in evening dress, and quite his old self again to outward appearances, except that his black hair had turned an iron grey. For a moment or two we discussed details of the inquest that had been held _in camera_ upon poor Van Adams, arrangements made for the trial of the three surviving pirates, and so on. Then I told him what I had seen at Quimper. "Mr. Muir Lockhart told me of the telegrams from France," he said. "I called at Whitehall, but you had already started for Quimper, Sir John. I must apologize for such a late call, but I was anxious to hear your news. Now I see my way clear." "I suppose, after your great loss, you will go back to America, or perhaps Japan, and settle down?" He shook his head. "You know," I continued, "that if you cared for it, there is a highly-paid and important position open to you with the Air Police? Nothing would give me greater pleasure, as you know, than to have you as a colleague."