What stories could not its cabins tell! What crimes had been committed—murder and lust and shedding of blood—what awful cries had gone up from its decks, the cries of strong men at the gate of death, of women in their agony! All these phantoms came to me as I paced the quarter-deck and asked, almost as a man in despair, what kept my friends or how long the mists would prevail? I could imagine a day when this mighty idea had first occurred to the Jew’s cunning intellect, and he had acclaimed the possibilities of it. What police, and of what nations, would seek their criminals upon the high seas, or search there for the jewels which the chief rogues of Europe brought to a sanctuary so sure? What mind would have read this riddle aright unless accident had suggested its answer? I claimed nothing for myself; a thousand times an irony would it have been to do so. Let me escape these decks, and how much further was I upon the road to finality? I could tell a plain tale to the Government, certainly, and could open the doors of this temple of assassins to the world—but who would crush so vast a conspiracy? What unity of international action, what initiative would war upon the greater evils of it, hunting the tigers from their dens or ridding the cities of their allies? All that I had done, all my planning, all my thinking, had left the Jew a free man and sent me a prisoner on the deck of his ship. And God alone could give me freedom, that God in whose immediate Providence I have never ceased to believe! This was the outcome of my philosophy as I stood by the gangway and watched the shifting mists; here opening a little silvered pathway—as to an arbour of delights; there beating down again in dank clouds of vapour and shutting all the hither scenes from my view. The men had left me alone for the time being, but their absence seemed a greater peril. I could hear a loud argument going on by the fo’castle, and voices raised in persuasion or in anger. The monster ship herself drifted helplessly, as a great stricken beast lurching in agony and seeking only a place to end its woes. Every faculty that I possess told me that I was in great danger. These rogues would come forward presently and put some proposition to me. So I argued, nor did the night give me the lie. Shuffling and hesitating they came, some twenty or more of them, before another hour had passed, all together in a deputation, and as ready, I would swear, to cut me down where I stood as to drink the rum which an obliging purser had served out to them. The American, I perceived, was to be their chief speaker, and with him was the man called Bill Evans. Advancing by the promenade deck in a body, they seemed to find some little difficulty when it came to expressing themselves in plain English; and had the situation been less dangerous, it would have been ridiculous enough. “Well, my men,” I cried, being careful to have the first word at them; “what is it, now? Speak up, I shall not eat you.”