This would be to say that the message still troubled me and that I had by no means come to a resolution upon it. Let it be admitted that it found me a little wanting in courage. If reason, the sober reason of one who has made it his life’s task to read the criminal mind, the principles which guide it and the limits within which it is logical, if reason such as this read the Jew’s ultimatum aright, then might it be derided utterly. The man would dare nothing against Joan Fordibras while an alternative remained to him. She was his last card. Should he harm her, henceforth he must become a fugitive, not from the justice of a state, but from a man’s vengeance. This I plainly perceived—nevertheless, the lonely watches of the night brought me an echo of her child’s voice, a word spoken as it were from a child’s heart; so that I could say that the little Joan, who had turned to me in her trouble, had looked into the very eyes of my soul, that she was a prisoner yonder, alone among them all, a hostage in the hands of ruffians, their first and last hope of ultimate salvation from the gallows and the cell. She suffered—she must suffer the tortures of doubt, of suspense, it might even be of insult. And I, who had spoken such fine words, I could but rage against her persecutors, threaten them idly or write down a message of their contumely. Such was the penalty of the hour of waiting. I wonder not that I found it almost insupportable. I have written that the third officer made his report of a strange steamer about two bells of the middle watch. Not less curious than he, I paced the bridge with him until dawn, and heard no further tidings. When Larry himself turned out, it was just before the hour of sunrise, and we stood together (McShanus coming up from the saloon with a welcome jorum of steaming coffee) to see the break of day, and to scan the face of the waters for any confirmation of the young officer’s story. How still it was, how sublime, how wonderful! Unchanging in its awe and mystery, the birth of day, whether it be viewed from the deck of a ship, the summit of a mountain, or even from the heart of a great and sleeping city, must ever remain a spectacle of transcendent beauty and majesty. It is as though the Eternal spoke to the sea and the land from the open gate of heaven itself—a command to live anew for the work of the day upon which the Holy Spirit would breathe. On the ocean there is that added glory of a vast horizon, of the immeasurable ether and the fading magnitude of the stars. Driven back reluctantly, as the poet has written, Night draws off her armies and the sun chariots speed on. You see them afar, a glow of chill grey light beneath the vault of the stars. Winds moan fretfully; the sails above you sag and shiver; stillness falls upon the waters—a silence as profound as that of man’s deepest homage. For a little while a trance has come upon things inanimate.