Our surmise that the rogues would agree presently among themselves and fall upon us for their common satisfaction was not supported by the facts. We breakfasted at our leisure and smoked a full pipe upon it, still unmolested and apparently unobserved. It may be that they had become accustomed to our presence. For seven days and nights now we had harassed them unceasingly. By messages, by gunshots, by our searchlight, had we pursued that policy of persistence which, we believed, would most surely demoralise and defeat them. And they had been powerless to harm us; helpless before our attack, as I judged from the first that they would be. They fired no shot at us, and the morning passed in patient waiting. Great as our hopes were—my own too great for any expression—the Diamond Ship had no further message for us, nor did the sea speak. Void from horizon to horizon, the southern ocean fretted to sleep beneath a torrid sun and left us with that sense of isolation from the world and from men which the great sea alone can inspire. Some among us, it may be, had fallen almost to despair when the rogues set to again. This would have been at three bells of the afternoon watch. A gunshot heard faintly across the waters appeared to be the signal for some new attack. I heard the rattling echoes of a volley, and upon that a second and a third. Our glasses showed us a great press of men, engaged almost hand to hand amidships. Then a haze of smoke settled down upon the ship, and for many minutes it hid her completely from our sight. You may imagine with what beating hearts and almost breathless hopes we watched this second encounter and waited for its issue. Very wisely, Larry would not approach the scene a second time or risk again those perils we had so readily faced before. Whatever harvest we might reap, our garners would be as readily filled afar as by any mad concession to curiosity which should drive us within the danger zone. If the rogues were killing each other, as evidently they were, it could serve us not at all to witness the horrors of that tragedy or seek in some vague way to take part in it. As for its deeper meaning, I had from the first clenched my thoughts against that and refused to take cognisance of it. The knowledge that Joan Fordibras was the prisoner of such a crew, that other decent women might be aboard the Diamond Ship with her—that, I say, had I permitted it once to master me, would have brought me to such a state of frenzy that no sane act afterwards could have atoned for its follies. Earnestly, persistently, I strove to drive the truth away, and to blind my eyes to it. “She is not on the ship,” I would say—or again, “They will not harm her, for she alone stands between them and the gallows.” God knows how much of a pretence it was—and yet, I think, the very effect of will brought salvation to us. A mad attack upon them would have undone all. I realise to-day the good providence which saved me from that.