All that next day Joan and Susan, terror-stricken, clung to each other in the latter’s cabin. The men were reasonably civil: told them they might get themselves food, and let them alone. But that night a further terrible quarrel burst out between, as they learned afterwards, those who wished to murder the girls and go off with the treasure and those who feared murder more than the loss of the gold. Once again there were the reports of shots and the groans of wounded men. The fusillade went on at intervals all night, until next morning one of the divers—a superior man with whom the girls had often talked—had come in with his head covered with blood, and asked the girls to bandage it. Susan had some slight surgical knowledge, and did what she could for him. Then the man told them that of the entire ship’s company only themselves and seven others were alive, and that of these seven four were so badly wounded that they would probably not recover. Among these was Blessington. Sime and James Dangle were dead. The slightly injured men threw the dead overboard and cleaned up the traces of the fighting, while the girls ministered to the seriously wounded. Of course, in the three days up till the arrival of the avengers—who had by a strange trick of fate become the rescuers—one man had died. Of the eight-and-twenty who sailed from Antwerp there were therefore left only nine: the two girls and four slightly and three seriously wounded men. None of those able to move understood either engineering or seamanship, so that they had luckily decided to remain at anchor in the hope of some ship picking up their flag of distress. “There is just one thing I should like to understand,” said Cheyne to Joan, when later on that day a prize crew had been put aboard the _L’Escaut_ and steam was being raised for the return to England, “and that is what happened to you on the night that we burgled Earlswood. You got back to your rooms, then left again with Sime and Blessington?”