And then for a long while there was silence. I imagined that unknown crew debating my words as though they had been a message of their salvation. A relief ship was coming out to them. They were saved from the perils of the shore and that more terrible peril of thirst. When the machine next ticked out its unconscious confession, it was to bid me hasten, for God’s sake. “I am Valentine Imroth. What has kept you ashore?” “The police and Fabos.” “Then Fordibras is a traitor!” “You have his daughter with you?” “Is that known in Europe?” “It is suspected.” “By the mouth of Fabos. He has received my message. Has Sycamore sailed?” “He is two days behind me.” “What coal has he aboard?” I sat back from the instrument and answered not a word. Be it said that, directly I had already convinced myself that this mysterious unknown Diamond Ship was in reality a vessel hauled to, as it were, permanently in mid-Atlantic, the corollary of attended steamers needed no demonstration. Regularly from Europe or America, I imagined, tenders of considerable size set out to water, provision, and to coal the great receiving hulk wherein the Jew hid his booty and harboured his outcasts. There would be a great going to and fro of rascals, of course, relief crews, and a very system of changing duties. But the great ship would never make the shore unless driven thereto by ultimate necessity; and the very fact of those equatorial latitudes being chosen for her cruising ground, latitudes of profound calm and void of winds, contributed to the probability of my surmise. So much was plain—but the moment the arch-rogue asked me what coal the tender carried, then instantly I realised my peril and quitted the instrument abruptly. Of the tender I knew nothing. A false word might undo all that accident had done for me so nobly. I had wisdom enough to draw back from it. “They will set it down either to prudence or a bad receiver,” I said to myself as I quitted the cabin, in a greater state of mental agitation than I had known since I sailed from England. “It could not be better. Let them flash what news they will, I have their story, and to-morrow Europe shall have it too.” Larry was on the quarter-deck when I went aft and Timothy McShanus stood at his side. I was astonished to hear that it was already six o’clock and to see the sun setting. Together, my best of friends remarked on the pallor of my face, and asked me what, in heaven’s name, had kept me so long in the cabin. “Gentlemen,” I said, “the Diamond Ship is some hundred odd miles from us as we lie, and Joan Fordibras and the Jew are aboard her. Captain Larry, will you give the necessary orders? and, Timothy, for God’s sake, send me up a whisky-and-soda and the longest cigar on the yacht. I am going to think, man—I am going to think.”